Kati Schmidt

California's Carbon Champions in this week's Climate Tech Roundup number 21 #climatetechquartet. Cool stuff happening in our state to fight #CO2. Here are 4 #California early-stage companies working on clever ways to capture or utilize carbon. Check them out: Ebb Carbon HQ: California Founders: Ben Tarbell, Matthew Eisaman, Todd Pelman Ebb Carbon uses #electrochemistry to remove carbon dioxide from the ocean while also reducing ocean acidity. Their innovative approach not only helps combat climate change but also addresses the growing problem of #oceanacidification, benefiting marine ecosystems. Blue Planet Environmental Systems Inc. HQ: California Founder: Brent Constantz Blue Planet Systems is creating carbon-negative #concrete by mineralizing CO2 in building materials. Their process captures CO2 from industrial sources and permanently stores it in synthetic #limestone aggregate, which can then be used in concrete production, effectively turning a carbon problem into a valuable #construction material. Curious about more climate tech startup updates? Stay in the loop, I publish a new episode of my #climatetechquartet every week. Twelve HQ: California Founders: Kendra Kuhl, Etosha (Eee-tah-sha) Cave, and Nicholas Flanders Twelve is transforming CO2 into valuable products and materials. Using their carbon transformation technology, they're able to convert captured carbon dioxide into chemicals, materials, and fuels that are typically made from #petroleum. Heirloom HQ: California Founders: Shashank Samala, Noah McQueen Heirloom Carbon is accelerating the natural process of #carbonmineralization. By enhancing the ability of minerals to absorb CO2 from the air, they're developing a scalable, permanent carbon removal solution. #carboncapture #climatetech #CO2 #carbon #carbonoffset #greenstartups #cleantech #california #Innovation #carbonremoval #netzero #sustainability

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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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I am beyond excited to unveil Rerail I, which is a labor of love and a vehicle for making my life’s passion a reality. Rerail I, is an angel fund, backed and supported by founders and operators. I invest $200-500k checks at pre-seed/seed into founders looking to utilize fintech as a strategic advantage, with a skew to Europe, but globally! Focused on people & networks I have always been people first. I have cultivated one of the deeper networks of founders and operators in Fintech (& beyond), which become an extension of my team to the founders I back. The power of being collaborative I only realised the power of being collaborative, when I started angel investing back in 2020. I was captured by the transparent, trusted conversations I could have with founders, and the collaboration with the rest of the investors, many of which I have grown up with. I formalized that with the first fund I co-founded, Cocoa, and look forward to amplify that further with Rerail Everything is Fintech  I believe that fintech is a horizontal, not a vertical; the support function of any market. From climate to healthcare and logistics, fintech supports every market. Fintech can also be a revenue model (e.g. vertical SaaS, marketplaces), a target customer, or just a business component. Rerail seeks to invest in founders that can utilize fintech not in fintech companies only With quality talent density at its highest, technological waves like AI, there’s never been a better time to start Rerail. To any entrepreneur out there starting something new where you think Rerail could be a fit, do not hesitate to reach out to [email protected] Can’t wait for the journey ahead 💥 🚀 -> https://rerail.vc -> https://lnkd.in/dn2uSfg7 P.S. A big thank you to Romain Dillet for the awesome TechCrunch coverage!

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Summary: The article discusses the impact of hype on consumer and investor behavior in the tech industry, using the example of the autonomous vehicle service Waymo and the startup Mill. Key takeaways: Hype often leads people to focus on potential future developments, rather than the current limitations or challenges of a product or service. Social media plays a crucial role in amplifying hype and creating excitement for products, even in less glamorous industries like trash technology. Companies need to balance leveraging hype for marketing purposes with providing a positive product experience in order to build lasting relationships with customers. Counter arguments: Some companies may be more interested in using hype and buzz to attract investors, rather than focusing on the actual problem their product or service is solving. Investors should be cautious of companies solely relying on hype, and instead assess their potential based on their ability to efficiently solve a problem. #venturecapital #vc #venture #startups

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The funding landscape for founders has been tough over the past two years—but for female founders, it's been even tougher. At Fierce Foundry, we're stepping up to change that. Like the trailblazing organizations How Women Invest and WE Global Studios, we’re fueling the flywheel of female investment. Our innovative approach isn’t just about making noise—it’s about making measurable impact. Join me at my info session today (and every other week - register via the link below) to learn how you can help drive meaningful change for female founders. Let’s make it happen! 🌟 https://lnkd.in/e9FUg9Uj

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Just shipped this week's Diaspora.nz podcast with Paul Copplestone, founder & CEO at Supabase. We talk about: ⚡️why open source is an unfair advantage — as a product development strategy, supercharging recruiting, and helping build customer community. ⚡️how they are building the end-to-end tech stack for AI startups — seeing many customers grow into the millions of users in just weeks, growing to be one of the most tagged products by makers on Product Hunt + most redeemed Y Combinator “perks.” ⚡️raising $116M, and scaling to ~80 people in 30+ countries over the past 4.5 years, operating as a distributed + asynchronous team. ⚡️building three startups over nearly a decade living in South East Asia. Subscribe + listen links in comments below👇 Subscribe at diaspora.nz for weekly episodes 🎧👈

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💡 Sunday read. Was catching up on some reading today and enjoyed this TechCrunch article with Marc Lore. His comments about startups and taking risk - specifically seeking out risk specifically - is insightful. From the article 👇 "But startups are very different than big companies. When you’re at a big company like Walmart [whose U.S. e-commerce business Lore ran after selling it one of his companies], it’s all about incremental improvement. There’s no incentive to take risk. As a startup founder, chances are you’re going to die. Chances are you are going to die every day that you’re living and doing this startup. The probability is 80%, with only a 20% chance of this actually working. So you have to take that into account when you’re making decisions. You have to seek opportunities to take risk, to reduce your risk of dying. The status quo is the worst thing you can do. Doing nothing is the most risk you can possibly take." Full article here https://lnkd.in/gQhuyeiu

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Want to hear a jaw-dropping statistic? Only 2% of total capital invested in U.S. VC-backed startups went to companies founded solely by women. Mixed-gender founding teams received a bit more, while male-exclusive founding teams took the staggering majority. What’s even crazier is that female founders use 25% less of the capital they’re allocated than men. So, not only are they receiving less, but they’re also more responsible with the little they receive. This has a negative impact on practically everyone, as there are so many female founders who could provide even more value to the world by accessing the necessary funds. Instead, they’re forced to bootstrap, often running out of funds just as their business is about to take off. So what’s the solution? More female VCs and founders. We’ve already seen some amazing female founders in recent years, like those behind Bumble, Canva, and Glossier. Imagine how much better the world could be if we had more. If you're a female founder seeking guidance and support, check out Fierce Foundry. They are committed to empowering women entrepreneurs, providing valuable resources and tools to help you succeed. The more successful female founders we have, the more proof and eventual capital allocation women will receive. I encourage women worldwide to be bold and build startups. It’s your bravery that continues to provide proof that we’re capable of amazing things.

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👀 Founders who are the right fight for the Community VC forums and Iceberg 👀 The most successful founders—the top 0.1%—achieve remarkable outcomes by systematically building vast networks of investors and supporters, leveraging them for capital, promotion, and critical resources. Companies like Zeroco (raising $5m in 7 hours from 3082 supporters) and Superhuman (raising $75m off the back of a 50k person waitlist) are prime examples. However, most founders: 👉 Lack the experience, network, or structured approach to replicate this success 👉 Spend 10+ hours a week chasing support (emailing, booking meetings, having pointless conversations) with little predictability or payoff 👉 Leave untapped value on the table with their investors and advocates That’s why we’ve built Community VC as a growth engine and Iceberg, a supporter CRM designed to replicate Zeroco and Superhumans’ success by helping founders attract, nurture, and activate their first 10, 100, and 1,000 supporters. In the past 6 months we have supported 30+ companies in building their supporter base to close capital for less than 3 hours per week (compared to 10 normally) and we’re still improving. We have 100 founders working with us and 500 on our waitlist. Every week we are receiving 10+ new sign ups, with zero marketing spend so far. A recent example of ROI on 10 nurtured supporters through our ecosystem by a founder: ✅ 3 months ✅ 15 hours total spent nurturing ✅ 50 referred deals ✅ $24,500 revenue 💯 That’s $326 per hour per advocate nurtured in revenue 💯 Plus investment of $25,000 Imagine if a founder who was gearing up for a raise of any type had an army of 100 or 1000 people who could be activated at an even better ROI with an automated, personalised system... How? 👉Founders uncover investors through their own network, via Community VC and other channels by distributing their Iceberg profile links 👉The link collects supporter data and adds them to the systematised Supporter CRM 👉The founders are prompted with evolving best practice investor comms to nurture and engage the supporters for help and capital Not only are founders attracting more supporters than they ever were, they are closing capital faster and with more aligned people with Community VC and Iceberg. 🕐Why now? The future of outsized returns will come by supporting small teams who can achieve huge amounts in extremely niche sectors, with much less funding. They will achieve this through leveraging AI and leveraging their community.

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Founders, what would you want to hear from a VC who loves your idea but is at capacity? It's a good problem to have, but right now at Developer Capital we have a full pipeline to diligence of incredible Founders and innovative ideas. Deal memos take him, talking to customers takes him, helping existing Portco's takes time. Time is our gating factor. But we keep meeting with Founders who's ideas we think are worth doing the work on. My current approach is to meet with these founders, but be transparent about our backlog. If they dont hear back from us for a couple weeks they shouldnt freak out. Is this the right approach? What would you want to hear from the VC in that spot? #VentureCapital #Founders #Startups #VCAdvice #Entrepreneurship #InvestorInsights #StartupJourney #Funding #Transparency #DeveloperCapital

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"When was the last time you cried?" That's what Ara Katz, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Seed Health, loves to ask in interviews. She wants to know what moves you. In more than 200 interviews with some of the most successful founders on the planet, I've never encountered this question. It's an incredible example of digging into the essence of a candidate's humanity and understanding what truly motivates them. Often, who you're working with is far more important than what you're doing. This week on Inc. Magazine For Starters, I had the pleasure of hosting Ara and digging into the mission behind Seed Health: to lead the field of translating breakthrough science into innovations that impact every aspect of our health related to the microbiome. With 800%+ revenue growth in the last 3 years, Seed Health has quickly become one of the most trusted and beloved synbiotic brands on the market. Ara embodies the core values of a great entrepreneur. She questions all that we believe to be true and has a vision for the future that others may not yet understand. In this episode we cover why she believes science isn’t finished until it's widely understood, how Seed has crafted their brand identity through a deep respect for the interconnectivity of art and science, and SO much more. Listen here: bit.ly/3A6rn6k

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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Tribe AI just raised our first external round of capital from Bryce Roberts at Indie, with significant participation from our customers, partners and network of top AI engineers. We’re excited to share this milestone in TechCrunch (thanks Rebecca Szkutak for sharing our story!) along with some long overdue updates:  💲 Raised $3.25M to keep up with demand and build the platform to enable service delivery at a tremendous scale 🚀 8 figure revenue run rate, more than doubling year over year (and accelerating) 🏛 Enterprise customers from the Fortune 20  🧠 500 top AI engineers from places like Google, Tesla, Meta and OpenAI As a refresher, Tribe is an AI-native services company that helps Enterprises build best in class AI products. Our team is augmented by a talent network of over 500 top AI engineers from places like Google, Tesla, Meta and OpenAI who bring both industry and deep technical specialization to our project deployments. These are the people who have built the infrastructure that is powering the AI wave and know it better than anyone. After bootstrapping Tribe AI since 2019, we decided to raise this capital because the market opportunity was simply too big. Even as we were reinvesting our profits back into the business, we still saw more demand than our capacity could support. We’re grateful to have met Bryce and have him believe in us and the opportunity we saw. We’re also extremely proud to have the major stakeholders in our business (our customers, partners and network of top AI engineers) invest in the round as well. We’re on a mission to help Enterprises realize the value of AI for their business, and we’re building a category defining AI company in the process. Read all about it 👇 https://lnkd.in/dYRDQDjp

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Cool case study of how Arrived invited their customers and community to invest in their Series A, alongside the VCs. Favorite quote: "About 65% of our Community Round investors were also active Arrived users. Following the Community Round, these investors have invested, on average, 3.9x more on the Arrived platform compared to those who did not participate." That's the vision for Wefunder. If startups invite their customers to become investors and owners, that will result in more active and loyal customers, more passionate brand ambassadors, stronger community, and faster growth. VCs emphasize the "value add" of their capital. This is the value add of a Community Round. https://lnkd.in/gpiz5nxX

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Weekly Wrap 🗞 First up, Lyft has launched a "Price Lock" subscription for commuters, allowing users to cap their regular ride prices at $2.99 per month. The service is designed to help riders manage the unpredictability of fare costs, especially for regular commutes. In other words, the feature allows you to lock in the price for a specific route during a selected time window. Why this matters ⬇️ Lyft’s Price Lock offers commuters budget predictability, appealing in an economy where managing costs is critical. For the gig economy, this introduces new ways to cater to customer preferences and expand Lyft’s service offerings, making it a strategic move to deepen user loyalty. What’s next: Expect Lyft to further innovate in subscription models, expanding beyond commuters. This could lead to wider, customizable service options for specific use cases—potentially attracting more users from its competition. ------- Next, Latin America's subscription economy is evolving rapidly, driven by consumer demand for simplified digital services. A new study across six LATAM markets reveals that 77% of subscribers prefer Super Bundling, consolidating multiple services into one platform. This trend presents a significant opportunity for content providers to increase customer acquisition, retention, and engagement. Why this matters ⬇️ Super Bundling simplifies service management, addressing consumer frustrations with rising costs and service fragmentation. What’s next: Expect more operators to develop integrated service bundles, tapping into LATAM's growing demand for consolidated digital solutions. This could reshape the subscription landscape and set a new standard globally. ------- Lastly, Canva is significantly increasing prices for its Canva Teams subscription in 2024, with some users seeing a jump from $120 to $500 annually—a 300% hike. The company justifies this with its recent generative AI features like Magic Media and Magic Expand, which enhance design capabilities. While a discount reduces the first-year cost, the steep rise has sparked a backlash from users, with many reconsidering their subscription. Why this matters ⬇️ The price hike reflects Canva’s shift from affordable design software to a premium AI-driven platform, raising concerns about user retention. What’s next: As Canva adds AI features, expect more price restructuring. Competitors like Adobe may benefit from user migration as costs rise. We’re watching this one closely. See you next week. ✏️ ------- 📌 Want the weekly wrap in your inbox? Join my free newsletter (link in profile).

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Congratulations to Roland Reynolds and the team at Industry Ventures on the raise of its latest $900M hybrid fund (split three ways, 40% backing VC funds, 40% directly investing in promising Series B startups from their existing partnerships, and 20% acquiring stakes in emerging investment firms from other LPs looking to exit). Read more from Marina Temkin, CFA at TechCrunch below. #VC #venturecapital #fundraising #startups #investing #news #technews #startupnews

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I’m thrilled to be announcing that Notion Capital is leading the $15m Series A investment in Cogna today. In the industry, we like to think that software has been eating the world. But when you look at the data a better description would be more of a nibble. Depending on what source you look at the software industry represents between 5-8% of global GDP. Contrast that with the services industry that represents between 60-70% of GDP and worth around $25 trillion on a global basis. Most services have been out of reach for the software industry. They have either been too complex or too specialized for off the shelf software to access in any economically viable way. But that’s beginnning to change with GenAI leading to the emergence of ‘service as a software.’ Cogna is at the forefront of this opportunity - building precision software at scale and delivering huge productivity gains for traditional industries. We know Ben Peters & Lars Mennen well having backed their previous company Five AI that was acquired by Bosch in 2022. And we’re very excited to be backing them again together with Hoxton Ventures & Chalfen Ventures Read my full blog post on why we invested here. Radu Bozga Ben Peters Lars Mennen Bryan G. Mike Chalfen Hussein Kanji Kirsten Connell https://lnkd.in/eh8mhcJb

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Should we prioritize people, or tech innovation in our large-scale development projects? The strategy's slowly shifting to people. And that’s exactly how California Forever CEO Jan Sramek wins over skeptics like Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. Not bad. “There’s a lot of baggage that tech has created in building new cities that, unfortunately, we are at the receiving end of”, explains Sramek. So smart cities and tech libertarian network states aren't the focus here. Quite the contrary. He calls the project (in this context) “really, really boring.” The focus: ∙ More housing ∙ Walkable cities ∙ Affordable by design* ∙ Improving the country for residents *(housing prices to start at $400k) I recently covered California Forever, dubbing it a future ‘Tech Utopia’ given its massive Silicon Valley backing. So it’s exciting to see Sramek's positioning and skillful handling of the grilling. Is the era of the smart city over due to its 'baggage'? Time will tell. More on California Forever and other visionaries designing new cities from scratch here: https://lnkd.in/e9-i386q Full interview: https://lnkd.in/eMnT8QhU #futureofcities #urbandevelopment

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In 2011, Tracy Young co-founded PlanGrid, which made software for construction teams. After scaling the company to 450 people and raising $69 million, it was acquired by Autodesk in 2018 for $875 million. That’s a win, but Tracy and her partners didn’t go for the exit because they’d reached the peak of the mountain. They cut the deal because PlanGrid was behind, and they didn’t know how to catch up. “It was really challenging for us to go up market,” she told me in August when I interviewed her in her office. “We nailed SMB, we did a good job moving upstream towards mid-market, but we just really sucked at selling to the enterprise. And by the time we got to $80 million in ARR, it was the only route left.” Three years later, during the pandemic, Tracy and her husband, Ralph Gootee, co-founded TigerEye, a RevOps AI agent that lets analysts answer questions and allocate resources based on data that’s updated multiple times each hour. Last year, TigerEye closed a $30 million Series A. She describes it as “moneyball for business,” the tool she wished she’d had at PlanGrid when she was fighting entrenched competitors who were just better at enterprise sales. In part one of our interview, she explains why they started their new company up in stealth and how TigerEye reflects her vision of what enterprise software should accomplish. I was particularly interested in how she developed customer personas and messaging while keeping a low profile. “If anything, stealth gave us the ability to really go broad in the number of profiles,” she said. ”It gave us the chance to really test out messaging, so that was pretty cool.” She also shared what she’d learned as a CEO her second time around when it comes to building early teams and managing a hybrid workplace. Read the rest on Substack: https://lnkd.in/gn8FuPzf 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gyyPBb93 🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gzPbpeMx Thanks very much for appearing on Fund/Build/Scale, Tracy!

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