At One Ventures

Who caught the premiere of "Adaptation Nation" on The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper on CNN last night? ?? "On journeys from London to Silicon Valley, I met dozens of brilliant innovators devoted to rebuilding healthier, wealthier and happier communities from every sector, like the “fix-a-flat” for leaky homes that can cut heating bills in half and the van-size drones that could move supply chains from the roads to the sky," notes CNN Climate Correspondent Bill Weir in his introduction... That van-size drone company was MightyFly, one of the #climatetech disruptors in our portfolio. They will be able to haul 500 pounds of cargo up to 600 miles, for businesses to deliver to others businesses, with applications for retail, manufacturing, medical or defense industries, founder and CEO Manal Habib told CNN. These autonomous electric drones will displace the Amazon-sized, fossil-fueled supply chain of today, and all the traffic and pollution that comes with it, At One founding partner Tom Chi said, because it is "intrinsically adaptable." Because of the form factor of this vehicle and the fact that it doesn't necessarily need to go through major airports, it has the ability to do much more of kind of a point to point grid connection across the country, he explained. And due to that inherent efficiency, the cost will be so compelling that businesses will find it difficult to pass up. "What if we made it so that the thing that had the best unit economics was also best for the planet? Right? Then a lot of the fights that we're having around, like, please, let's do some good things for the planet, please, let's do some -- we could just skip them," he told Bill Weir. https://lnkd.in/eckTtiZn. *CNN subscribers can watch the documentary starting today, online or in the app.

"Being connected to non-human rhythms is really important... You can't yell at a tree and have it grow ten times faster, but a lot of time we think we can yell at a human and make them grow ten times faster." As someone who helps people connect to themselves and the outdoors (and a serial outdoor journaler), I really loved hearing this advice from Tom Chi during yesterday's Climate Wisdom Fellowship call. I deeply respect his work in tech towards planetary regeneration through At One Ventures and it was just great to hear how simple, natural practices can support big, complex, technical solutions. What happens to your thought process when you leave the devices at home and just take a journal and pen outdoors to work on that next big idea / intractable problem? ?? ??? ?? ??

"Sometimes, there's more waste than house," explains Aleksandr Gampel, on stage at our last annual meeting, referring to the traditional homebuilding process. Aleks is CEO of Cuby, a portfolio company in the built environment. Cuby is completely reimagining the way we build homes, moving us from a process that created FOUR TONS of waste ??? for every house built to virtually zero. But it's not just about reducing waste. Cuby can select materials that are low-carbon, reduces the skilled labor coefficient and thus cost, and shifts from relying on a complicated global supply chain to being in control as a last-mile solution. #foundertalks #climatetech #uniteconomics #housingcrisis

One of multiple #takeaways on surprising #deeptech performance even in early stages #naturebased (ref: Colossal Biosciences)

How do you put the "fun" in fundamentals? Helen Lin has the answer... It's looking carefully at the unit economics of a prospective deep tech business and determining exactly what the "unit" is. Hear how she differentiates between product-level ??? and plant-level ?? unit economics, and why that matters for growing manufacturing businesses. #climatetech #bankable #scalematters

As we face uncertainty around global trade, supply chain security is top of mind for apparel manufacturers. ?? True circularity ??, where local textile waste is recycled directly into new products, is a surefire way to abate that risk. That's not WHY we invested in Ravel, the closed-loop purification recycling technology for blended fabrics... but it sure is an added benefit. Ravel makes textile-derived rPET (recycled polyester) that can be transformed back into fiber, yarn, fabric, and eventually clothing.?This means retail brands can literally "drop it in" to their existing sourcing supply chain. To find out the other, evergreen reasons why we decided to back Ravel in their ambitious but realistic mission to finally get clothing ?? out of landfills and reduce the 92 million tons of waste generated annually, read our memo: https://lnkd.in/g4ZRNYzf Led by Helen Lin and Danaé Robert, we are all-in on this deal led by Zahlen Titcomb, Kristen Albrecht, and John B. Goods. Thanks also to co-investors Collaborative Fund, Collateral Good, Climate Capital, Moonstone Venture Capital and BetterWay. cc Tony Moses and William Dunbar for their help with setting up strong manufacturing and IP pathways... not all heroes ink term sheets ????♂?

The beginning, indeed! Looking forward to the progress we can make toward a truly circular, closed loop process for textile recycling. #purification #recycle #fashion #venture

Celebrating two treasured members of At One who have each been promoted to the role of Principal on the investment team... Danaé Robert is our "green chemist" based in California with both an academic background and a fiery passion for creating sustainable materials. She has been critical in identifying scalable solutions for the construction and fashion supply chain, and under her leadership we have welcomed two new companies in these areas into our portfolio. Danae is "here, there, everywhere" in her support of both the At One team on heads-down diligence periods and our companies. Brian Steinberg is our New York based investor who can pull in promising impact seed-stage deals with one hand while helping a portfolio company raise tens of millions in capital with the other. Brian is our lean, mean, financial-modeling machine who has stepped in and up into multiple opportunities to grow and enhance our network. He has also put his own intellectual energy into understanding the energy transition and forged new pathways forward for our nuclear, energy storage and optimization companies. As Victor Hugo said, perseverance [is the] secret of all triumphs. Please join us in commending these two on their hard-earned, well-deserved promotions!

Sugarcane is nasty. For the environment, that is. It's a crop heavily reliant on both water?? and fertilizer. ?? But one of the less-obvious reasons is it has limited growing regions. It mostly grows in tropical climates, meaning the amount of biodiversity ?? ?? it displaces is quite extreme. Fortunately, Avalo, Inc is working on lowering the nasty footprint of sugarcane production. ?? They are using advanced AI and ML tech to bring out traits like drought resilience and nitrogen efficiency in sugarcane... 2-3X faster than traditional breeding practices. Because we can't wait any longer for positive change in agriculture. Speaking of waiting... they are also working on other crops, like broccoli. ?? “There’s no pest life cycle that is shorter than 45 days," CEO Brendan Collins tells AgFunder. "We were able to get a crop that was harvestable in 37 days.” Fast-growing broccoli seems like an obvious win – more harvests (and therefore more output) per year for farmers. But a not-obvious benefit is that growers can also stop using pesticides. The broccoli grows too rapidly for pests to gain traction, he explained. Investing in companies solving obvious problems is already a win. With Avalo, we get to win in not-obvious ways, too. See the full article published about their latest fundraise this week: https://lnkd.in/dXqJAP4m