For Entrepreneurs, Capital Providers, and Co-investors Accelerating Sustainable Industry

Aurora Solar Raises $250 Million to Digitize Solar

Aurora Solar Raises $250 Million to Digitize Solar

The renewable markets are way way bigger than any of us expected… even those of us that are witnessing the growth first-hand. At Energize we are starting to see accelerating growth rates across the portfolio at revenue levels that usually succumb to scale. One of those success stories is Aurora Solar, and they have a …

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Truck You: Ford & Sunrun vs. Tesla

Truck You: Ford & Sunrun vs. Tesla

I wrote this yesterday for Forbes about the recent announcement between Sunrun and Ford. Fun read, I hope. And the announcement is a big impact in renewables. TRUCK YOU: The battle royale in mobility Business development job descriptions tend to be filled with lots of buzz words and are heavy on “strategy”. Most professionals in …

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A win for Renewables: SparkCognition acquires Ensemble Energy

A win for Renewables: SparkCognition acquires Ensemble Energy

SparkCognition is a world-class technology company, based down in Austin. The company helps drive growth or expand margin for their customers by leveraging award-winning machine learning technology, proven artificial intelligence systems, and a multinational team of AI thought leaders. The company has an incredible respect for the customer and looks to create industry-specific customer collaborations …

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Energize invests in TWAICE

Energize invests in TWAICE

Energize Ventures is proud to lead the oversubscribed $26M Series B investment in TWAICE, the leading software platform for battery analytics. Existing investors Creandum, Cherry Ventures, Speedinvest and UVC also participated in the round. Energize principal Tyler Lancaster joins TWAICE co-founders Stephan Rohr and Michael Baumann on TWAICE’s board, and associate Mark Tomasovic joins as a …

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The Linear to Circular Economy

The Linear to Circular Economy

There are many frameworks to approach the transition towards a more sustainable future. One theme that we have been using increasingly often here at Energize is the concept of a “Circular Economy”. Eileen Waris is leading the charge on a few deep dives in this area and I suspect we will be quite active investing …

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Birthdays and Goals

Birthdays and Goals

I officially turn 1 year older today and am the ripe old age of 36. Hopefully some birthday cake tonight. I am a sucker for birthday cake. A lot of people I know plan year-specific goals or “resets” – and they are incredibly successful in year-over-year advancements. I don’t plan that way. I prefer bigger, …

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CB Insights AI 100

CB Insights AI 100

CB Insights is a top research organization for the private markets. They do a great job creating market maps and recognizing the emerging technology leaders within a theme. Last week CB insights released their Top 100 AI-enabled companies. For a few reasons, this is an exciting list: “AI” as a buzzword peaked in 2016 and …

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What is an “Edge Operating Strategy”?

What is an “Edge Operating Strategy”?

Over the past decade, a common question t Fortune 500 CTOs and CIOs were seeking to answer was “what’s your cloud strategy?” It is still only the 3rd or 4th inning in that cloud transition. And the scale of the cloud technology market, as evidenced by trackers like the Bessemer Cloud Index, is apparent. So …

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CDPQ & Energize Ventures

CDPQ & Energize Ventures

We all know venture-backed startups need to raise capital. A lesser known fact is that venture firms identify and raise capital from “Limited Partners” in their own fundraising process. When Energize’s LPs were performing due diligence on us recently, one of our portfolio executives gave excellent feedback: “I hope the Energize LP base can scale …

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Pennies & Train Tracks

Pennies & Train Tracks

I was speaking with one of Energize’s Limited Partners this week. For the VC newbies, LPs are the groups (endowments, family offices, corporates) that actually give our Fund our capital. Here at Energize we have a number of very experienced family office investors as part of our LP base. I consider myself fortunate that I …

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