💥 Spacebound 🚀
There are investible opportunities in Spacetech for capital allocators with shorter term horizons and lower risk profiles as well as those prepared for multi-year deep tech product development. 🛰🛫🗺
Spacetech commercial market opportunities outsize the traditional government based markets with the added benefit of qualifying for dual use and associated grants and multi-year government contracts. There are software and platform solutions as well as hardtech solutions.
Light Speed Moment: The Future is Us!
Wow! Talk about bringing it in. L'ATTITUDE VENTURES conference in San Diego was an amazing showcase of LatinX talent in business, entertainment, and sports.
Loved hearing the operators, founders, and investors enthusiastically articulate how their journeys have culminated in their visions forward.
“I wake up every day on fire with purpose.”
Guillermo Diaz Jr, Founder and CEO of Conectado Inc and former CIO of Cisco, said that. Who doesn’t want to feel that way?
“We need an ecosystem of people to invest in companies.”
THIS IS COMUNIDAD: LATINX INNOVATORS AND CAPITAL PROVIDERS.
I met with four promising LatinX founders as part of the Latino Business Action Network’s (LBAN) capital provider matching session at Stanford University last month.
LBAN’s mission is to grow the American economy by empowering Latino entrepreneurship across the US. 1,271 talented people have graduated from its selective inaugural accelerator and 17 business scaling programs. LBAN has a strong and growing network of capital providers, corporate partners, educators, and ecosystem builders. I love being a part of this incredible community.
Sisters (and Allies) Connecting with Sisters
The Columbia female founders network is strong, growing, and has terrific allies. I had the pleasure of meeting up with my student founders and mentees for a chill exchange of ideas on getting traction and navigating the entrepreneurial journey in NYC.
Taking Action on Climate, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice.
Founders, funders, corporates, government, and community stakeholders gathered in Long Beach, California to address climate, sustainability, and environmental justice issues and opportunities to solve them.
After an hour of networking, I moderated two panels covering: 1) investment trends, corporate and government customer needs, and funding; and, 2) innovative solutions. It is encouraging that solutions for climate, sustainability, and environmental equity are increasingly linked with more efficient and lower cost operations as well as benefits and cost savings in public health. Clean air, water, and land objectives should not be viewed solely as societal debt and regulatory compliance imperatives but as inclusive business opportunities driving greater economic growth.
Going Green into Space. Why SpinLaunch is Cool.
I asked SpinLaunch CEO Jonathan Yaney what was one of the most fun parts of his job.
“Proving people wrong who said this could not be done.”
Long Beach, California based SpinLaunch is changing the way payloads are sent into space by removing the complexity and reducing the dependence on carbon-based fuel. What is so fascinating about SpinLaunch is that they have created a greener, cheaper, faster way to launch based on technology that is not new but has not previously been applied to launching rockets into space.
Climate Impact + Circular Economy = Evolectric
Yup, they let me drive their truck. Long Beach, California based Evolectric enables and advances the electrification of existing fleets of vehicles through scalable software and hardware solutions. Co-Founders Bill Beverley and Jakson Alvarez have a vision that addresses currently unmet needs of small and medium enterprises which account for 50% of all commercial fleets and over 80% of all commercial fleet owners. They are incentivized by regulation (Inflation Reduction Act of August 2022) and economics to transition to green fleets. Evolectric ensures that this transition is timely, affordable, and does not run counter to its climate impact mission. This is where the circular economy comes in.
To reduce, reuse, recycle, and save clients money, Evolectric extends the life of existing physical assets an estimated 10-15 years.
Female Founders: We are just getting started.
Columbia female founders and friends gathered as a group by the beach to get to know each other and offer support in their startup journeys.
We thank Sophie Nazerian of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Lisa Smith of Columbia Venture Community (CVC- Project 2.8), and the Long Beach Accelerator (LBA) for co-sponsoring the event in Long Beach, California.
We welcomed a dynamic group of founders including my Columbia Hacking4Humanity student founders, Samantha Arthur and Krystal Eimunjeze, who provided logistical support for the gathering.
Embracing Incremental and Radical Innovation for a Fair and Sustainable World
“Keep looking for doors that create more impact and that will lead you to a very fulfilling journey.”
Janice Tran, Co-Founder & CEO of Kanin Energy
The Columbia Climate School students know how to bring people together to enable what we need to do. We need to tackle climate change now. The climate crisis has made daily headlines with extreme heat, drought, fires, and floods affecting communities across the globe. For new ventures, urgent environmental sustainability needs are more than a societal debt. They represent a massive business opportunity for incremental and radical solutions.
Syndio Founder’s Journey from Payroll Uncertainty to $83 Million in Funding
“Don’t tell anyone but we are doing good as well as making money.” Syndio Founder Dr. Zev Eigen said this to me in a hushed tone when we first met shortly before his company closed its $50 million series C round. Last Wednesday, Zev shared his founder’s journey for another great session of our Hacking for Humanity and the Planet venture incubator course at Columbia.
Inequality in pay is a tough problem to solve. Collecting, analyzing, and reporting on clean, meaningful, and timely data in an actionable way is a huge task. Understanding and remedying the root causes is an even larger task. Dr. Zev Eigen (MIT PhD), Founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Syndio, launched this company because of his deep interest in this spectrum of needs. Syndio focuses on the data pain points to enable the transparency to address the root causes of pay inequality and create inclusivity of opportunity.
Columbia Welcomes Home Alumna Dana Weeks, Co-Founder & CEO of MedTrans Go
You know you are off to a good start when your guest speaker asks to take a selfie with your class.
We had another great session of our H4H venture incubator class last Wednesday at Columbia. Dana Weeks, Co-Founder and CEO of MedTrans Go, joined us to share her founder’s journey and the opportunities ahead.
MedTrans Go is a tech platform that helps doctors, medical practices, hospitals, and facilities to reduce patient cancellations, increase revenue, and efficiently deliver care. This marketplace startup now offers the previously unserved or underserved convenient access to transportation, interpreters, prescription delivery, and telemedicine.
Partsimony founders share their journey launching a climate impact supply chain optimizer.
Nobody was worried about supply chain disruptions six years ago.
My student founders and I welcomed Rich and Roland Mokuolu, cofounders of Partsimony, as guest speakers to Columbia’s H4H impact venture incubator course on Wednesday. The dynamic duo- who happen to be identical twins, engineers, former investment bankers, and distributed supply chain specialists- shared their story of launching a machine learning-enabled supply chain optimizer that addresses the pain points of commodity volatility, supply chain risks, and geopolitical disruptions.
MOTOURISMO, Escape from Covid Hell.
MOTOURISMO is the leading international marketplace for the motorcycle tourism industry. Its business is booming in Europe and it plans to scale in the US with the easing of pandemic related travel restrictions. I interviewed co-founders Michael Carlin and Christoph Kähler at this three-year old, Hamburg-based startup that has survived the tourism meltdown. In the fateful year prior to the global shutdown, MOTOURISMO was selected Startup of the Year and awarded Best Travel Technology in Germany. As the world emerges from the dark shadows of the pandemic, the message for adventurers is now clear. It is time to ride.
3IPK: Blockchain Solutions for Aerospace and Sustainability Tracing
“It all boils down to if you really believe that this is a game changing technology.” Juraj Zamecnik, COO 3IPK
At the end of 2020, the European Space Agency awarded its first blockchain software contract in a competitive bid to a Bratislava, Slovakia based startup named 3IPK. 3IPK is now applying quality control and sustainability tracing of supply chains to a broader range of verticals. Yesterday, 3IPK launched its Gratitude website. Its purpose is to engage and enable customers to be transparent about the social and environmental impact of their supply chains.
This is the inaugural post of my featured founders blog. Let me know what you think!
Welcome to Featured Founders
Welcome! Check out the stories of the people starting promising ventures.