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.
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.
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.
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!