Cash Efficiency is King… is back

Cash Efficiency is King… is back

Over the past year, the markets have gone all-in growth and a “growth-at-all-costs” drove valuation multiples higher. Well, for a number of reasons, the market’s position on growth has somewhat broken free from that unconstrained mentality. Guggenheim releases a great monthly report on these market trends and the takeaways on the second page below show …

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Energize leads Smartcar’s $24M Series B

Energize leads Smartcar’s $24M Series B

Funding news!! Links to the Press release and the Energize blog post, and the blog post on Why We Invested in pasted below. My two cents on the commentary: Two of the largest industries in the world are colliding: mobility and digitization. 40% of the cost of today’s cars are electronic systems and 90% of …

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Portfolio Sales Kickoffs (“SKOs”)

Portfolio Sales Kickoffs (“SKOs”)

Earlier this week I flew down to the Nozomi Networks 2022 SKO (“Sales Kick-off”). The event, a 4-day gathering, including great talks from company and industry leaders. I was excited to be the voice of the investor and spoke to the company’s sales & marketing teams for about an hour. I really enjoy speaking to …

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Here Comes The Sun: How Software Makes Solar Energy More Profitable

Here Comes The Sun: How Software Makes Solar Energy More Profitable

Tyler and I wrote an article today for Forbes on the solar software market: Here Comes the Sun: How Software Makes Solar Energy More profitable. The content is below for your readership as well. The first wave of solar innovation was focused on getting costs down. Now, the industry must look to software and automation …

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Blackstone Invests $3 Billion into Invenergy Renewables

Blackstone Invests $3 Billion into Invenergy Renewables

On Friday Invenergy announced a $3 billion minority, growth equity investment from Blackstone. Existing capital provider, CDPQ, and Invenergy management retain majority control, and Invenergy’s management remain in control of all operational decision making. The press release can be found here. Invenergy was a founding partner to the Energize Ventures story. The Invenergy cofounders, Michael …

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Why big financial firms are scooping up climate modeling companies

Why big financial firms are scooping up climate modeling companies

Earlier this morning Axios published an analysis on the ongoing consolidation in the climate modeling arena. You can find the article here. Energize made an investment in the space in early 2019 when we led the Series B in Jupiter Intelligence. Our belief then was that new climate modeling techniques, enabled by the newest data …

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Ford: a Lesson in Leadership on Electric Vehicles

Ford: a Lesson in Leadership on Electric Vehicles

If you have followed this site, you have seen me post some positive endorsements about Ford. I’ve been quite consistent that I think they are the most proactive incumbent automotive OEM to pivot to the electric vehicle movement. In addition to taking their flagship vehicles and making them EVs (Ford F-150 and Ford Mustang) the …

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LP Commitment & Interest Based on Firm Age & Size

LP Commitment & Interest Based on Firm Age & Size

Yesterday I wrote about the return profiles for emerging managers. That Pitchbook data showed how emerging, specialist managers outperformed the market. This morning one of my teammates shared an article about how LPs are thinking about Fund allocations in 2022. This data, shown below, indicates that LPs are looking to allocate more capital to emerging …

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Performance and Fundraising Progress of Emerging Managers

Performance and Fundraising Progress of Emerging Managers

I saw an analysis recently on performance details around “Emerging Managers”. Emerging managers are investment firms, like Energize, that are in the first 3-4 flagship funds, and within 10 years of founding. Most of the below data came from Pitchbook, a data platform owned by Morningstar. The key takeaways are below: • Contrary to conventional …

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2022 & Hiring

2022 & Hiring

The Energize team is going to release a more formal summary of our 2021 activities. I can’t wait to share more about that – and about some key events we have underway. (We have 4 investments to announce in Q1!) There is a lot of change and growth in the market. With so many moving …

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