Venture Capital Funding

Sun Burned Solar panel specialty finance companies are getting burned. Sunnova & Mosaic filed for bankruptcy in the past few days, while SunPower filed/liquidated last year, and Sunrun remains a going concern despite its cash burn. The problem with solar is not on the manufacturing side, it’s with the specialty finance solar companies. Sunnova filed for bankruptcy holding $13.5 million in cash vs. $8.9 billion in debt and will likely move to liquidate as it is difficult for highly leveraged finance companies to restructure—ouch! Solar panel ABS bondholders are also getting burned: - Senior bonds down 10-20 points (no impairment expected) - BBB-rated bonds down 30-40 points (50% impairment probability, case-by-case basis) - BB-rated bonds down 60-80 points (impairment likely) Specialty Finance got into trouble due to these 8 key reasons: 1. Overleverage 2. High cost structure 3. Tariffs for import of the panels (largest solar manufacturers are Chinese) 4. Killing the tax credit for homeowner who purchases the panels (under reconciliation) 5. Homeowners who are unable to re-sell solar power to their local utility in certain key states 6. Rising default rates (despite homeowners with high FICO scores) 7. Financing costs for solar panels has soared in the higher-for-longer environment 8. Yields rose more than the loan rate as the market deteriorated, resulting in losses for the specialty finance company Key points: 1. Like auto’s sometimes it’s not the OEM, it’s the specialty finance crowd that gets itself into trouble 2. ABL managers who financed these specialty finance solar companies will likely incur meaningful loss 3. Select opportunity to purchase distressed/discounted solar ABS 4. This should not be a surprise; the fire alarm has been going off for the past 12 months

📊 I'm excited to release our 2024 report - diving into the world of Corporate Venture Capital. 🚀 With 1 in 4 deals now including a CVC, there is surprisingly very little information for founders on what CVCs look for, the benefits & disadvantages and typical deal terms of receiving investment from corporates. ✅ I hope that our freely downloadable report, with insights from 100+ global CVC investors with over £20 billion in AUM, can change that. Some of the headline findings: 1️⃣ CVCs are continuing to invest in tech, with the majority (90%) investing the same amount or more in early-stage companies over the next three years. Investing directly into startups was the most common type of investment in tech (95%), Series A (90%) the most common stage and B2B & AI the most common sectors (c. 40%). 2️⃣ Founders should consider raising from a CVC for market validation, building a strategic partner, accessing resources, and identifying exit opportunities. However, they should be aware of interest misalignment, a longer investment timeframe, culture incompatibility and be mindful of the terms requested by CVCs. 3️⃣ For CVCs, investing in startups can provide a competitive edge, improve culture, provide market insights and generate returns. 4️⃣ A CVC’s appetite to invest in startups is driven by, first and foremost, alignment with the investment thesis, followed by the alignment with their parent company’s focus, returns, traction and market intelligence. Market intelligence and financial returns are the most important criteria when selecting funds to invest in. In return, internal business opportunities is the most important value-add to founders. 5️⃣  There has been a notable increase in CVCs participating in deals, from 1 in 10 in 2010 to 1 in 4 in 2024, driven by the maturity of the market and the increased appetite from corporates to innovate. 6️⃣ When it comes to investing in venture capital funds, 1 in 3 CVCs invest in VCs or VC FoFs, most prefer specialist over agnostic funds and half are interested in emerging managers. Thank you to our partners Love Ventures, and to the input from Sheridans, FieldHouse Associates and Dealroom.co. You can find the full report attached below and on the Mountside Ventures Medium page.

12 Deep Tech VCs You Should Know (US-Based): If you’re building robotics, advanced materials, autonomy, aerospace, synthetic bio, energy, dual-use systems, or frontier AI, these are the firms writing real checks into physics-level innovation. 1. Boost VC — San Mateo, CA Pre-seed ($500k + $50k Fellowship). Deep tech hardware and software across aerospace, robotics, biotech, AI, defense, climate, oceans, AR/VR. Run Deep Tech Demo Days twice a year. 2. Lux Capital — NY + Silicon Valley Early to late stage ($100k to $100M). Hardware, materials, electronics, aerospace, biochem, and frontier sectors. 3. SOSV — Princeton, NJ Pre-seed to Series B+. Up to $550k at pre-seed through HAX and IndieBio. Capital plus hands-on lab, hardware, and engineering support. 4. DCVC — Palo Alto, CA Early and later-stage deep tech. AI, exascale computing, climate, materials, robotics, space, water, biology, defense. Dedicated DCVC Bio for synthetic biology and life sciences. 5. Type One Ventures — Malibu, CA Seed to late. Space tech, robotics, nanotech, longevity, and infrastructure for transitioning toward a Type I civilization. 6. Draper Associates — NY + CA Pre-seed to Series A ($100k–$500k+). Robotics, automation, healthcare, biotech, dual-use, aerospace. 7. Alumni Ventures Deep Tech Fund — Manchester, NH Seed to Series A+. Quantum computing, robotics, space systems, advanced materials. 8. BOLD Capital Partners — Santa Monica, CA Early and growth stage. Deep tech, life sciences, healthcare, and frontier tech with strong biotech-hardware crossover. 9. Cottonwood Technology Fund — Santa Fe, NM Pre-seed to Series A ($1M–$3M). Patent-based hard science and deep-tech hardware. 10. ff Venture Capital — New York, NY Early-stage deep tech across AI, manufacturing, energy, robotics, and security. 11. Ocean Azul Partners — Coral Gables, FL Seed and Series A ($500k–$2M). Focus on North America and Israel. Deep tech and core B2B technologies. 12. BOKA Capital — New York, NY Growth and late-stage. Dual-use deep tech, aerospace, security, defense, and space. 👋 If you’re building in deep tech, drop a comment with what you’re working on or tag other deep tech VC funds that are actively investing today.

It’s been a rough time for the U.S. residential #solar industry with high borrowing costs, high tariffs and lower state incentives. Now, the industry is confronting a dire threat from the GOP House tax and spending bill that will end tax credits for companies that lease panels or customers who buy them. The fate of this $20 billion market now rests in the hands of a few GOP Senators who’ve expressed support for the incentives. I got into the details with my weekend story for Bloomberg Green.

Alastair Marsh's recent thought-provoking piece in @Bloomberg highlights critical challenges with the current climate tech investing landscape Climate tech projects are capital-intensive with long timelines. Unlike software, much of climate tech requires massive upfront capital for R&D, pilot plants, and manufacturing before significant revenue. This demands longer development and deployment cycles (often 7+ years to scale) that exceed typical 5-7 year VC exit horizons. The classic VC model - built for rapid, asset-light scale-ups - often misaligns with the realities of many climate tech solutions, especially "hard tech." While there’s an abundance of early-stage VC capital for entrepreneurs, later-stage growth that bridges these projects from venture to infrastructure stage is basically absent—that’s called the missing middle. We need to adapt and supplement that approach by layering in other types of capital and bridge the "missing middle." A broader array of financing instruments is essential for climate tech to scale, including patient equity and growth capital, project finance, blended finance, and specialized debt models. Marsh’s piece lays out how family offices are uniquely positioned to be catalyzing players in this space. Their flexibility allows them to deploy capital across diverse segments, filling the gap and driving significant financial returns alongside impact. https://lnkd.in/gUf85Bwy

In 66 months, I helped grow Gong from $200k ARR to $7.2B in valuation and worked alongside some of the planet's best sales leaders. Here's the 6 biggest lessons I learned: 1. Overinvest in great marketing early on. I’m still shocked at how few startups do this. Sales with no (effective) marketing early on to pave demand and provide air-cover is a brute-force way to build. 2. Measure twice, cut once when hiring leaders. Your first leadership hires will have cascading effects on your company that ripple through many years. Their fingerprints will weigh heavy on everything from your sales motion, to company culture, to the people they hire, whether you want it to or not. Even after they’re gone. Recruit and hire accordingly. 3. Beat the hell out of what’s working. Finding what works in growing a startup is like drilling for oil. You’re going to drill a number of "wells" and come up dry. But soon, you’ll find one to go DEEP with. Drill it for all it’s worth. Don’t screw around trying to find too many other oil wells when you haven’t even maxed out your best one. 4. Hire salespeople who thrive on ambiguity. Not just those who CAN do that, but those who LOVE to do it (because they'll be doing this for a while as your market evolves). Do this, and you’ll accelerate your learning curve to a repeatable sales motion. Hire entrepreneurial reps. 5. Inject risk into the business as you scale. As you scale, your “portfolio” of growth initiatives should contain more and more risk. It's as if you're a fund manager. Early on, find what works and cling to it. But as you grow and you’re able to rely on several well-established growth vectors, start to introduce risk into your portfolio. Examples: Experimenting with channel partnerships, international, new segments of the market or use cases. 6. Realize the "growth at scale" playbook is different than the "scale up" and "startup" playbooks. What got you to $50M or $100M will not get you to the next level by itself. The path to $100M, and going beyond that (“growth-at-scale”) are two very different situations demanding different means of growing. Early on, nothing matters but (the right) customer acquisition, controlling churn, and making your product absolutely amazing. But if you’re going to continue growing at a fast rate, several other methods have to start firing: high net dollar retention (NDR), multi-product and multiple streams of ARR, going hard and fast on international expansion, and crossing the chasm into “low tech” industries. This list is non-exhaustive. For those of you who have ridden that tornado, what would you add? P.S. Turn "open opps" into paying customers at any phase of growth with these 10 closing motion scripts: https://lnkd.in/gtxYd9Vs

Your Web3 project isn’t getting funded because you're focused on the wrong metrics. Here is how to fix it 👇 🧪 Build a prototype, not a pitch Your MVP should solve a real problem. Ship something users can test and give feedback on. Execution > ideas. 💬 Build your community before raising capital Investors look for signals. An engaged, loyal community is the strongest one. NEVER buy fake followers - they’re a red flag, not an asset. 🔍 Focus on metrics that matter Investors want hard numbers, not promises. Data showing active user retention is far more valuable than metrics that don’t demonstrate user engagement or loyalty. Retention metrics > vanity metrics. 🎯 Apply for funding strategically Not all funding paths are created equal. Choose wisely: - Ecosystem Grants: Perfect for chain integrations. - Protocol Grants: Ideal for improving existing protocols. - Hackathons: Great for networking and testing ideas. - VCs: Focus on teams with strong technical execution, clear roadmaps, and scalable potential. Don’t shotgun your pitch - tailor it to fit the funding source. 📈 Build momentum before talking to VCs VCs back progress, not just ideas. Before pitching: - Highlight adoption curves, early community growth, and technical achievements. - Build relationships with early users - they’re your first advocates. - Launch an MVP, iterate fast, and showcase how feedback has improved your product. 🔥 Don't burn cash on hype Focus on: - Token utility: Depending on the project, you can show a strong strategy for generating yield, TVL, or transaction growth. - Treasury management: Keep 12+ months of runway in stablecoins or diversified assets. - Community engagement: Highlight governance votes, staking rates, and active participation. Keep it lean, measurable, and sustainable. 💲 Want to raise capital? Build first and show progress. The money is out there. The question is: Are you fundable?

🌍 In both 2023 and 2024, #EastAfrica and #Kenya 🇰🇪 have respectively been the region and the market attracting the most start-up funding on the continent. Start-ups in East Africa have raised just over $4b in funding since 2019, $3.3b of which (84%) went to #Kenya alone. This represents 25% of the total raised on the continent. Since the beginning of the funding winter in mid-2022, Kenya has consistently been the country attracting the most funding on the continent, a spot previously held by #Nigeria. As such, it is by far the ‘Big Four’ punching above its weight the most: in 2024 for instance, Kenya represented roughly 4% of the continent’s nominal GDP and population but attracted as much as 29% of the continent’s start-up funding! Who is raising all that funding? The top 3 is made of the historical pay-as-you-go off-grid-electric triad - Sun King, M-Kopa & d.light - who raised nearly $1.5b (44% of the total) since 2019; followed by retail/supply chain disruptors - Twiga Foods, Wasoko, Copia Global - who raised $400m in total in the same period, but have been facing a lot of difficulties recently... What to find out more? Check out 'The rise of East Africa 🚀', my latest post for our Africa: The Big Deal newsletter below 👇👇👇 --- #funding #fundingnews #fundingdata #venturefunding #venturecapital #Africa

There are 5 overlooked factors all New VCs need to consider when assembling their team of employees or partners:   🔹 Preserve Equity: Do not hand out shares of your Management Company (ManCo) too easily. Ideally, only share ManCo equity with Managing or General Partners. Other hires and partners can receive carry from the individual funds they contribute to.   🔹 Test Fit: Evaluate senior hires in more junior roles such as Principal, before General Partners or Associates before Principals, and so on. CVs can look great but rarely translate to performance and culture fit.    🔹 Hire with Scale: You can get a firm off the ground as a Solo GP in Fund I. Bring on a couple of associates and principals in Fund II and start growing the team at Fund III. Generally, it doesn't take many people to manage large sums of money.    🔹 Prioritize Compliance: Build institutional-grade compliance measures from the start to avoid big, big headaches in the future. Work with specialized back-office and fund admin vendors who can help here.   🔧 Partner with Specialized Vendors: For tax, accounting, legal, and compliance needs, work with vendors who specialize in venture capital. Non-VC accountants, lawyers etc. will typically make costly mistakes and overcharge you.   There are big repercussions in getting team wrong in this sector, so I’m linking a blog post in the comments if you want to dive deeper into building the right team for your VC firm.   🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹   Follow for weekly tips and resources on launching a VC firm.

🚀 $7.8 Billion. 620 Investors. 1 Planet looking up. The new BryceTech Start-Up Space 2025 report shows the global space economy is stabilizing & quietly evolving. In 2024 alone: 💰 $7.8B invested across 220 deals 🌍 198 companies raised capital China tripled investment to $1.9B (24% of global share) U.S. funding dipped to $4B, but still leads in innovation Europe (all countries combined) — ~$1.1B (≈14%) 🌏 Rest of World (including Japan, India, South Korea, etc.) — remaining ≈11% 💼 92% of all funds came from venture capital !!! 2024 was also record year for non-US & non-European entrants driven by sovereign & private programs. India captured 5% of global space VC flows (~$300–400 million), mostly in launch, smallsat manufacturing & downstream analytics platforms. Over the past decade, private investment in space tech has crossed $65B but the real story is where it’s going #Next. The data shows an emerging shift: Commercial #humanspaceflight now makes up ~10% of deal activity. That’s more than some traditional sectors like remote sensing or ground systems. Why? Because the next big opportunity isn’t just about rockets, satellites or data it’s about humans as the payload. From EVA systems and orbital habitats to biotech and space operations, a new generation of startups is designing for sustained human presence beyond Earth. The 36 page report below shows that investors are believing in: The real ROI is Return on Inspiration that is creating platforms, hardware, and life support for people to live and work in space. The 2020s is building the infrastructure. The 2030s will be about occupying it. Human spaceflight isn’t just the romance of exploration it’s the next growth vector for deep tech, advanced manufacturing & biotech convergence. As public markets adjust and defense budgets shift, one thing is clear: The next frontier of value creation will be #HUMAN. #SpaceTech #HumanSpaceflight #Investment #DeepTech #VentureCapital #NewSpace #CommercialSpace #Innovation #SpaceEconomy