Liz Walsh

Wild to see New York Tech Week be such a thing still 2 years later. When we started it at Capital, I had to fight, scratch, claw, and (sometimes) beg people and companies to host events. Didn't look like that publicly because we drove a ton of hype and momentum to it. Eventually, the hype becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. But the 0 to 1 to keep that hype going required a ton of effort. Now the whole thing has a momentum of it's own. For example, two companies that told me no to hosting events just invited me to their tech week events for this year. The lesson - drive enough momentum and eventually something becomes the default. Inevitable. Inevitability can be engineered.

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That feeling when you watch the macro forces that undergird your Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology investment thesis at ⁦‪REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund unfolding every single day: Escalating Geopolitical Tensions; The Climate Crisis & Severe Weather; Consumer Behavior & Demographics. At most venture capital firms, Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology is a tiny, emerging “area of interest” . . . At REFASHIOND Ventures, it’s our entire world. Join us. #IndustrialTransformation #SupplyChain #Innovation #Technology #Startups #VentureCapital

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If you want to know where AI is at, read this article by my colleague Gary Grossman #ai #artificialintelligence

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The best ideas are often timeless. Insights from AI pioneers, like Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, have made a lasting impact and remain relevant even today. Joon Sung Park spoke about how important it is to balance the novel capabilities of cutting-edge technology with the time-tested principles of effective product development. Here's our full conversation: https://lnkd.in/gs4vAD2p

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Climate tech startups are booming this year, fueled by regulatory support, high energy prices, and strong investment. VC-backed deals soared from $2.1 billion to $8 billion in Q1, according to PitchBook. Exits, however, remain a challenge, with total exit value dropping over 50% from 2022 to 2023, reaching $9.3 billion. Yet, there are bright spots: standout startups like Northvolt and KoBold Metals are gaining momentum. These companies are making significant strides and could be gearing up for exciting IPOs in the near future. https://lnkd.in/gWWzYsWe #climatetech #sustainabledevelopmenttechnology #inspireglobalventures

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How do you find Limited Partners and get them over the line? Find out in this webinar next week!

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Earlier this week Texture, led by CEO & co-founder Sanjiv Sanghavi, announced its $7.5m seed round of fundraising with participation from Abstract Ventures, Day One Ventures, Equal Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and a handful of angels. Dorothy Chang and I feel fortunate to count ourselves among the “handful of angels.” We didn’t invest just because Sanjiv is a close friend - though knowing him for over a decade has given us a lot of insight into his mind and how he operates. We invested for a lot of the typical reasons a VC would: Solving big problems with big potential returns - Venture investments only make sense if they have the chance to make massive returns. Texture is building the data infrastructure for energy networks - becoming a common data collection and sharing platform for every player in the energy grid, no matter the type of energy. There is already a huge gaping problem and a huge market here. Building for an inevitable future - On a macro level, as a society, we are moving more and more toward complex, interconnected energy sources as we optimize for the right balance of efficiency, sustainability and costs. Unique insight and founder-market fit - At a first glance, Texture seems like a big departure from what we originally knew Sanjiv from, as a Co-Founder of ClassPass. But since then, he has also played roles as the Chief Product officer at Arcadia, a successful energy data company (Arcadia’s CEO is also an investor in Texture) as well as an investor at Day One Ventures, investing in the energy/climate tech sector.  More details in this week's post: https://lnkd.in/eGBzXHwC

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Divestment requirements have a very real cost. This reduces the ability of endowments and foundations to support their mission driven enterprises. As the list of divestment demands grow, at what point do the consequences outweigh the perceived benefits? Hiding at the end of this article is the below quote: Golden admitted the divestment had undermined Princo’s returns, saying the endowment “would have been better off” otherwise. But he pointed to a bigger concern: the pressure to “keep adding things to divest from”. “Fossil fuels are necessarily part of getting to where the overall economy needs to be [and] it would be impossible for the world to not use fossil fuels tomorrow,” he said. “Divestment is a pretty weak tool to change the economy.” https://lnkd.in/g3SeC8rg #energy #investing #vc

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I had a great conversation recently with Osman Ahmed and Razy Shah AKA The Clueless Capitalists about how psychometric analysis can be a great addition to your toolbox of startup founder evaluation. Specifically, I speak about the OCEAN framework, also known as "The Big Five". In early stage startups there is less business to analyze and the vast majority of the business potential is with the founders as people. How can we scientifically evaluate founders to see if they're a good fit for scaling a startup? https://lnkd.in/gikGAEHd

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Time and time again - how can a group without diversity and therefore inherent bias speak for, or represent a diverse world - especially when it comes to AI (inputs = outputs)? How can this still happen today Meta Facebook, after all the ethical challenges the company already faces on how it uses algorithms. Thank you for this article TechCrunch by Dominic-Madori Davis, Amanda Silberling , Kyle Wiggers and the flag Cindy Gallop! Already in 2021 The New York Times covered the ‘ethical AI’ team at Google and the challenges to excluding bias but failing on retaining a diverse team to work on the problem, when just one year earlier facial recognition technology was found to be biased with a higher failure rate for a person of colour due to the lack of representative datasets. The NYT article https://lnkd.in/eTTrknmK by Cade Metz. https://lnkd.in/eUrnEgRC for research data summarised by Harvard Business School. AI is front of mind at the moment, but you can take this bias in data back to historic product design - such as seatbelts dissadvantaging women. A good book that covers this topic broadly is Invisible Women https://lnkd.in/eVH9K9KR Caroline Criado Perez. I am often asked why I advocate so much for gender equity and women in finance/business, when there is no more problem anymore? Then comes the task of explaining cis white privilige to a man who cannot see it and often feels attacked in the exchange. Building the right incentive structures (if not quotas, which is hard for a free market economist/graduate from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business to accept) is key. But how do you create willingness to change? Surely training and workshops on inherent bias should be de rigour in all firms to drive home the benfits of diversity in ideation and decision making? Well covered in https://lnkd.in/erxQ-PEi by Matthew Syed Consulting . Such data just seems relegated to ESG public market reporting at the moment. At least in private makets funds Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) is driving requesting change management, senior participation and active engagement in initiatives adoption and progress into its reporting requirements. #diversity #equality #businessstrategy #AI #femalegaze #data #ESG #genderequity #datarepresentation

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🌱 For pre-seed/seed founders 🌱 The early stage vc markets have changed drastically -- but many founders don't truly understand how or how much things have shifted until its too late or they are deep into the fundraising process already. This recent Allocate pod lifts the veil on the pre-seed/seed 2024 markets. SO MANY GEMS are packed 💎 into the first 20 min, I had to listen twice. Key takeaways from pre-seed VCs I'm a big fan of Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures, Kirby Winfield at Ascend (PNW represent!) & Nate Williams. 💎 The market in one word: 'turbulent' 💎 Fundraising bi-furcation; 2X founder building in AI (rounds take weeks) vs All Others (rounds take up to 6 months). 💎 "Leading VCs" (ie. first check in) are putting in a TON of work - building conviction & then helping founders fill the round. 💎 Up to 5 rounds pre-A; need lower early valuations to enable step ups 💎 Pre-seed entry valuations have corrected to $5-8M 💎 Round sizes have increased at pre-seed & seed for extended runway Many more insights in the full pod here: https://lnkd.in/gYf-DMr6 #venturecapital #preseed

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Big things on the horizon, we are motivated and blessed to be at the dawn of a new age for the internet. Read more about our journey below or listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eJeNhvVa

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Really interesting insight by Brad Zions of Pitbull Ventures this week in TechCrunch: "Having a good network of multistage firms is one of the ways Brad Zions, founder and general partner at Pitbull Ventures, helps his portfolio companies. 'It’s about knowing the firms that like to invest in particular sectors and then knowing some of the partners who are the right people to champion a project or a potential investment in a startup,' Zions said in an interview." https://lnkd.in/eqCJpgf2 Stu Pollard, Luke McDonough, Pablo Vidal Areán, Adeo Ressi, Mike S.

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ICYMI - Here's the blog post on our recent roundtable on women investors in Upstate NY with Launch NY!

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Linxin Gu great article. thanks for sharing. Pls let us know folks in Boston area can help with your journey

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"What must be true for fusion energy to make a significant reduction in anthropomorphic CO2?" My colleagues know that I have no ideological issue with fusion energy, but the road to commercial viability looks steep. Here are a few reasons: The leading contenders, D-T and D-D fusion reactors, need to solve the neutron issue. How often do you need to shut down the system and replace the parts that have become radioactive? And for D-T, where do you source the Thorium? Aneutronic reactors have their appeal, but need breakthroughs in physics to make sustainable reactions. And for many systems, sourcing the fuel can be problematic. What about water? Almost all designs use the reaction to generate heat to generate steam to spin a turbine. Thermal energy generators need to condense the steam, so they need to be located near a large body of water for heat exchangers or have a constant stream of water for evaporative cooling. And finally, there's the learning curve issue: In the five years that it takes a fusion startup to design, build and test their first prototype reactor, other technologies such as solar and batteries will have gone through five to ten iterations, improving the price/performance ratio each time. What's the real LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) target for a fusion reactor N years in the future? If you're read this far -- thank you! -- and I'll repeat: "What must be true for fusion energy to make a significant reduction in anthropomorphic CO2?" I'm genuinely interested in your answers. #FusionEnergy #CO2Reduction #CleanEnergyTransition

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Great podcast on AI from Marc Andreeson and Ben Horowitz, founders of one of the world's leading VC firms. Worth a listen if you're interested in: >> How startups can use AI effectively and not be replaced by one of the big models.  >> How the AI revolution compares to microprocessor/PC/internet revolutions. >> Our ability as humans to continuing new things to want/need.  >> The hype cycle - and demand/oversupply. #ai #vc

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