Overture Ventures

Last week Overture Advisor and investor Jane Woodward was honored with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Distinguished Alumni Award. Anyone who has had the privilege of meeting Jane understands her deep commitment to making a decarbonized energy future a reality. From co-founding MAP Energy, LLC in 1986, co-founding WovenEarth Ventures in 2020, and teaching the Understand Energy course to hundreds of students, Jane has always been ahead of her time and inspiring those around her. The Overture team is grateful to work with and learn from Jane Woodward. Congratulations on your well deserved honor! https://lnkd.in/gtewWHsi

Overture recently convened our 2nd Annual General Meeting with our investors and founders in Washington, DC. We shared our assessment for the future landscape and benefited from live learnings with senior policymakers like Trump FERC Chair Neil Chatterjee, Trump EPA Administrator Hon. Andrew Wheeler, Senator Martin Heinrich, Senate Finance Committee Chair Senator Senator Ron Wyden, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, and Senator Brian Schatz. Overture's job is to help founders advance in any regulatory environment, thanks to our partner Boundary Stone Partners's strong bi-partisan capabilities. We don't have to agree on every topic with every government agency to make things happen when we do align. I found myself nodding along with senior Republican policymakers on topics like nuclear deployment, permitting reform, grid reliability, NEPA reform, critical minerals & metals, and more. This is not the end of the world for climate. Time to get back up, there's work to do. We took breaks to hear from a mind-boggling astrophysicist, Kevin Hainline, who uses the Webb Telescope to discover new galaxies and study the birth of new planets. Helpful perspective for what 4 years means. Equally enthralled with Conservation International CEO Dr. M Sanjayan. Our joy and meaning comes from working with people we love and admire. A huge thank you to my co-founders Brandon Hurlbut Michael O'Neil and Tamim Mourad for the ride. To my teammates Emma McDonagh, Karen Skelton, James Prussing and Allison Hinckley, PhD. And to our inspiring founders who joined Alfred Johnson, Liz Dennett, PhD, Matt LeDucq, Edward Chiang, Jake Jurewicz, Hannes Boehning, Rob Lawson-Shanks, Tim Trefren, Garret Heaton, Justin Dawe, Barclay Rogers, David Hoyt, Kyle Duchynski, Charlie Jarrott, Matthew Slotkin, Krish Mehta, Jorge Osio-Norgaard, PhD, Nathan Ratledge, John Henry Harris, Shaneez Mohinani, Grant Gunnison, Tim Weiss. Huge thanks to our LPs, who I won't tag, because I immediately stalk all LPs anytime they're acknowledged on this useful social network site. Strongly encourage other GPs to tag their LPs. Anyway let's get back to work!

Today, we are thrilled to welcome Allison Hinckley, PhD as the newest member of the Overture team! Allison is joining as our Senior Principal. Allison comes to us from Fine Structure Ventures where she led climate investing for 4 years. She holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University, a Masters in nanotechnology from University of Cambridge, and a BS in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to her investment experience, Allison also led a R&D team at a climate startup. Please help us give a warm welcome to Allison and be sure to reach out to say hello! https://lnkd.in/d2V-a934

Bill Gates called Graphyte's Carbon Casting "the most promising and cost-effective [carbon removal] solution to come along yet." So how does it work? Watch the video below to see what we've been up to and learn more at graphyte.com.

Overture Co-founder and Managing Partner Shomik Dutta recently joined Jason Rissman on Invested in Climate to share more about Overture's differentiated edge and the importance of the upcoming election. Check out the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/guJRQ6VA

Rio Tinto, one of the largest mining companies in the world, has launched a climate and deep tech accelerator focused on transforming and decarbonizing mining operations.?Congratulations to Overture portfolio company Endolith for being selected to the competitive, inaugural cohort of six companies. Endolith is harnessing the power of microbes to increase recovery rates of copper and lithium while minimizing environmental impact. Learn more in Forbes: https://lnkd.in/eya9aGMt

Overture portfolio company Glacier offers superior sorting technology and analytics for Material Recycling Facilities using robotics and AI. This week, Glacier co-founder Rebecca Hu shared the stage with industry giants Colgate-Palmolive and Amazon at Packaging World’s recent Packaging Recycling Summit to discuss how they are leveraging Glacier's AI solution. Glacier has helped Colgate-Palmolive understand the impact of their new recyclable toothpaste tubes and Amazon is using Glacier's data to optimize its design for new bioplastic packaging that will improve the recyclability of its packaging materials. Glacier's AI camera is not just providing data for data's sake; it is the key link to enabling circularity at scale. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gKU359aR

We are proud to share our latest investment in Molg. Molg is tackling the growing e-waste problem by enabling circular manufacturing with robotics. Molg helps electronics manufacturers tap into the supply of retired servers and other e-waste that still contain immense material value and creates a supply of critical minerals that is not only cheaper, but more domestically secure. Congratulations to Rob Lawson-Shanks, Mark Lyons and the entire Molg team on closing your $5.5M Seed round!

Overture partner Michael O'Neil joined Islandbridge last week as part of their Climate Scenarios 2040 series to to share an update on the landscape of U.S. politics.