Ironspring Ventures

?? Congrats to CEO Bill Catania and the entire OneRail team on raising a Series C round! Now in more than 400 cities in the U.S. and Canada and handling more than 250,000 deliveries a day for around 50 brands, OneRail has seen tremendous growth as it changes the game in last-mile delivery. Ironspring Ventures is proud to have been an early supporter of this pioneering company - keep trucking OneRail!

??The first?Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Summit?is in the books! Last week, we gathered 100+ founders, investors, corporate leaders, and other luminaries across the digital industrial ecosystem?to discuss key business and technology topics at a one day event in New York City. ??Inspired by?Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Podcast (hosted by Ironspring Ventures Co-Founder and General Partner Ty Findley), the Summit brought together thought leaders and innovators to further community and collaboration on important issues critical to advancing progress and building solutions in industrial markets. ? Huge thanks to the "heavy hitters" who joined us for this special ecosystem building event and to our sponsors?CDW (Jeff Simon Nikki Szanyi Lindsey Haan),?Gunderson Dettmer (Wesley Watts Jonathan Goodwin),?Stifel Bank (Matt Trotter Nathaniel Stone Emily Gast), and?Withum (Fatema R. Lauren Grossi, CPA)?who made the event possible!? #digitalindustrial #ecosystem

?? Congrats to Solvento on raising their Series A! Solvento provides liquidity and financial solutions to Mexico’s trucking and logistics market, and we are excited to continue to back co-founders CEO Jaime Tabachnik, CPO Pedro Bosch, and COO Guillermo Bosch as they enhance Solvento’s capabilities and expand the markets they serve. ?? Read more in Axios (full text in comments)?

Check out our latest Nuts & Bolts newsletter! In this edition: ???What's Next in in Manufacturing ?? Exciting Progress in Construction ?? Trending Up in Transport & Logistics ?Adjustments and Advances in Alternative Energy Plus the latest updates from our team, deals, and jobs!

Proud to back Prokeep in its mission to modernize distributor communications. With more than 8,500 distributor locations exchanging 20+ million conversations and $11B in orders facilitated through the platform, Prokeep is transforming how work gets done for distributors. Congrats to CEO Jack Carrere and team on raising a $25M Series A! https://lnkd.in/gQxHEPeX

?? Heavy Hitters Digital Industrial Summit 2024 here we go! Since launching the Heavy Hitters pod in 2019, and now closing in on 100 episodes, we're now bringing the community together live in NYC this week to build ecosystem, share lessons learned, and make new connections across the intersection where heavy industrial industries meet the venture capital asset class. Industrials make up more than 1/2 the US GDP (and millions of skilled heroes), it's mission-critical we help advance these sectors as the technology wave accelerates. Thank you to our partners who are helping make this possible: CDW, Stifel Bank, Gunderson Dettmer, Withum

Thank you to Josh Ewing of Onward Advisors for leading a valuable learning session on how to navigate all aspects of M&A for the Ironspring Ventures founder community! Part of our "Go Faster" knowledge sharing series for portfolio leaders, the program covered: ?? Navigating Today’s M&A Market – Understanding the current market environment and what it means for startups ?? M&A Lifecycle Essentials – Key stages of the M&A process and critical considerations for both buyers and sellers ???? ?? ?? Engaging Buyer Personas – Understanding the buyer’s perspective, including insights into the types of buyers sellers might encounter, and how to effectively connect with these stakeholders given their unique priorities ?? Thorough Preparation – Readiness across tech, team, commercials, financials, and deal dynamics that are essential to understand for a smooth transaction ??♂? Challenges, Risks, and Real-World Insights – Anticipating obstacles, developing mitigation strategies, and learning from real world case studies The discussion helped our founders to become better equipped to navigate M&A conversations with confidence and set a course for how to grow their companies wisely while preparing for future engagement with potential investors and acquirers. We’re grateful to Josh for sharing his time and insight with the Ironspring community!

Cross-border freight between the U.S. and Mexico is reaching unprecedented levels, with Mexico recently becoming the U.S.'s top trading partner. In 2023, trade between the two nations hit a record $800 billion, fueled by reshoring, nearshoring, and a shifting geopolitical climate that has made Mexico a prime destination for manufacturing. To support this momentum, innovation in cross-border logistics is critical. Cargado, co-founded by freight industry veterans CEO Matt Silver and CTO Rylan Hawkins, is stepping up with a platform designed by freight experts for freight experts. As the first collaborative platform for U.S.-Mexico logistics, Cargado is reimagining how shippers, brokers, and carriers work together to streamline operations. By fostering collaboration across trucking companies, customs brokers, facilities, and customs agents, Cargado is setting a new standard for efficient, transparent, and secure cross-border logistics. Cargado already has 100+ customers and 300+ carriers (totaling 55k trucks and 150k trailers) posting and bidding on cross-border freight today. Check out the exciting open roles to join their team: https://lnkd.in/eMYC5AyA? ? #CrossBorderFreight #Logistics #Transportation #SupplyChain #FreightTech #Nearshoring

? Part 7: Only nine days to go until Heavy Hitters Summit: The Digital Industrial Summit! The last (but certainly not least) session to announce is “Powering the Energy Transition”? which will examine the capital, talent, skills, infrastructure, policy, technology, and leadership needed to reach our country’s energy transition goals. We couldn’t be more fortunate to have industry experts Marianne Wu of Congruent Ventures, Varun Jain of SE Ventures, and Elisabeth Reynolds of Massachusetts Institute of Technology along with Ironspring Ventures own Colleen Konetzke to tackle this complex topic by leveraging their diverse set of experiences across the innovation ecosystem. ? What is the role of entrepreneurs, corporates, investors, infrastructure developers, policy makers, and others to push forward the energy transition in 2025? What technology and/or business model innovation do we need – or need more of - to further progress in energy innovation? What about skills to power the human element involved? How can we effectively advance innovation that leverages physical and digital solutions to enable energy transformation (at scale)? How does venture fit it in? And where are we going next? These are just a few of the significant questions these heavy hitters will cover. ?? For more on the first Heavy Hitters Summit https://lnkd.in/gwS8z5tf See you in NYC very soon! *And thank you to everyone who has applied to join the event, we've had enormous interest far outstrip our capacity at this venue. We will be actively monitoring the waitlist, thanks for your understanding as we clearly need to go bigger in 2025!

??? Kudos to Join?on launching Insights, a dashboard for general contractor executives that provides a view into preconstruction project health! Built on top of Join’s project platform, the robust new view enables users to assess whether a project is likely to stay on budget and provides visibility into the impact of past-due and upcoming decisions. ?? Read more in?Engineering News-Record?here. https://lnkd.in/gPQP6Nqb