Activate Updates: March 2023

This Month's Features

Announcing Activate Houston
Celebrating Women in Science Entrepreneurship
Dispatch from ARPA-E Summit

Plus

Activate Fellow wins
Ecosystem news
Job opportunities

Ready for Launch: Announcing the Activate Houston Community

Drum roll, please… We are excited to announce that Activate is expanding to Houston, the emerging capital of the global clean energy transition. The new Activate Houston Community joins a growing ecosystem for clean energy innovation that builds upon the region’s deep legacy in energy with an important new focus on enabling a low-carbon future.

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Celebrating Women in Science Entrepreneurship

Marissa Beatty (Cohort 2022, Turnover Labs), Yajing Zhao (Cohort 2022, Mesophase), and Allyson McKinney (Cohort 2022, SoloPulse) have each pursued the highest degrees possible in engineering, developed groundbreaking technologies, and founded potentially world-changing startups. For Women’s History Month, we asked them to share their advice for other women in science entrepreneurship.

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Celebrating Activate Houston at the ARPA-E Innovation Summit

After a day of presentations at the ARPA-E Innovation Summit on topics including grid storage and federal policy for energy startups, along with a collection of tech demos, Activate welcomed approximately 120 old and new friends to a local pub for a reception, our Houston expansion announcement, and a panel talk, followed by two hours of networking, food, and conversation.

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Co-founded by Timothy Wannier (Cohort 2022), Wild Microbes has raised $3.3M in a pre-seed round. This funding will enable the company to continue to hone its gene-editing approach to create superior production hosts for a wide range of ingredients produced in fermentation tanks.

Earlier this month, CERAWeek in Houston brought together several Activate Fellows and alumni: Francesco Benedetti (Cohort 2021, Osmoses), Raj Bhakta (Cohort 2019, Reveel), Leah Ellis (Cohort 2020, Sublime Systems), Josué López (Cohort 2021), and Daniel Stack (Cohort 2021, Electrified Thermal Solutions). Fervo Energy, co-founded by Jack Norbeck and Tim Latimer (Cohort 2019), hosted an Activate Community meet-up during the conference.

IN OUR ECOSYSTEM
Upcoming events, relevant opportunities, and what we're reading.

Upcoming Events

The MIT Energy Conference, taking place April 11-12 in Boston, unites innovative industry professionals to create and deploy solutions to the world’s energy crisis. With exciting keynotes and panels, access to formal and informal networking, and an energy and climate-tech showcase, the conference will bring together experts from across the globe.
The IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech 2023), in Portland, OR from April 19-22, will bring together scientists, engineers, technologists, and scholars to explore development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
San Francisco Climate Week runs from April 17-23. Register for a variety of events gathering diverse climate organizations, leaders, and the broader community working at the intersection of climate action and innovation.
The Carbon Unbound Summit will take place in New York City on May 11-12. Access unrivaled networking opportunities with like-minded leaders and scaling partners from across the world, and discover the latest market insights through panels, presentations, pitching, and breakout sessions.

Relevant Opportunities

Evergreen Climate Innovations’ 501vc® Investment Fund invests up to $300K in early-stage climate tech startups in the Greater Midwest region of the United States. Evergreen looks for early-stage climate-tech companies that are developing innovations to solve environmental challenges. Applications are considered on a rolling basis.
The Carbon to Value (C2V) Initiative—a unique partnership among Urban Future Lab at New York University-Tandon, Greentown Labs, and Fraunhofer USA, and supported by NYSERDA—is a world-class partnership accelerator program, bringing exclusive access to industry leaders and nonprofit experts who are shaping the carbon-tech marketplace of tomorrow. Apply by March 31.
Apply to receive up to $1M in funding and in-depth support to deploy a transformational commercial project in any global market from Elemental Excelerator. Applications will be accepted through May 31 with priority applications due April 14.
Cleantech Open is looking for the world's most promising startups in the clean-tech industry! Apply by April 16 to the 2023 accelerator to gain access to a full business development program that includes expert mentors, investor networking opportunities, industry connections, and a chance to compete regionally and nationally for cash prizes and in-kind services.
Urban Future Prize Competition seeks to award the world’s most revolutionary climate-tech innovations by bringing the brightest entrepreneurs together to compete for two cash prizes of $50K. This year, the Urban Future Lab at NYU Tandon is excited to offer a Future Vision Prize and a Climate Finance Prize, through the generous support of the New York Community Trust, NYSERDA, and MUFG. Promising early-stage climate-tech startups with an interest in entering the New York market are encouraged to apply. Applications close April 24.
The Ray of Hope Prize identifies the top nature-inspired startups in the world and fosters their growth by providing sustainable business training, communications support, and opportunities for non-dilutive funding—the top being a $100K equity-free prize. Apply by April 28.
C2M is now accepting climate-tech applications for its 2023 cohort. Focus areas are low-carbon energy, green chemistry, food, and water technologies covering both mitigation and adaptation. For those technologies selected, C2M will hand-pick interdisciplinary teams of UC Berkeley grad students to help entrepreneurs identify the most viable initial markets, prospective customers and partners, funding sources, and related strategies. Applications are due April 30 at 6pm PT.
Climate Vine is a membership community meant to accelerate individual and collective climate impact. Each curated group of experts has diverse backgrounds, ranging from policy, investment, corporate, non-profit, entrepreneurship, and tech & science. The annual membership starts with a three-month themed cohort, during which members spend about one to three hours a week in curated small groups, socials, and off-the-record conversations with climate leaders. Applications are rolling.
The U.S. National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) program assists researchers and innovators from academia, non-profit, and public organizations in accelerating the development of breakthrough technologies and speeding solutions forward. Researchers can now receive up to $1M for translational research, technology scale-up, and demonstration. The first proposal deadline is May 2.
The Direct Air Capture (DAC) Pre-Commercial Technology Prize awards up to $3.2M in cash prizes and $800K in technical assistance vouchers to teams that identify a critical need in the DAC industry, develop a solution to address this gap, and test the idea to a degree of scale. Submissions are due September 26.

Activate Voices

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank impacted founders and friends in Activate’s ecosystem. “They understood startups, they understood venture capital. They were woven into the fabric of the startup community that I’m part of, so banking with SVB was a no brainer,” said Leah Ellis (Cohort 2020, Sublime Systems). “All of our allies in venture, in startups, in climate, were also heavily working with Silicon Valley Bank in one way or another,” said Todd Johnson, interim CEO of Activate. Before the FDIC gained control of the bank, Andrew Hsieh (Cohort 2016) shared how Liminal was impacted by the crisis “to reinforce the needs of the broader climate tech industry and the many employees, local suppliers, and service providers who are impacted by this crisis, through no fault of their own.” Beyond the headlines, Activate Fellows and alumni rallied together during the challenge, sharing information and resources and weathering the storm as a supportive community.
Osmoses co-founder Francesco Benedetti (Cohort 2021) took the stage as a finalist at the Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge, joining some of the most exciting early-stage startups in the world and competing for a €100K grand prize.

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