Activate Updates: March 2024

This Month's Features

Fellow Companies' Follow-On Funding Soars to $2B Milestone with Boost from DOE Awards
Assembling an All-Star Team of Advisors
Breaking Ground: Lessons from a Failed Juicer Startup

Plus

Activate Fellow wins
Ecosystem news
Job opportunities

Activate's Rising Stars: Fellow Companies' Follow-On Funding Soars to $2B Milestone with Boost from DOE Awards

This week saw an announcement from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) that the administration was awarding $6B to transform America's industrial sector, strengthen domestic manufacturing, and slash planet-warming emissions. It’s a big win for early-stage science entrepreneurship, and as a result of these new awards, Activate marks a significant milestone by announcing that the 147 companies founded by its fellows were on their way to securing over $2B in follow-on funding collectively.

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“Surround yourself with people who you trust, who are there to support you and shape your success,” says Rok Sitar (Blaze Energy Technologies, Cohort 2023). This is universally sound advice, and chances are you already have a select cadre of mentors or advisors to whom you’ve turned for guidance during your education and career. For up-and-coming entrepreneurs, this advice takes on new significance as you assemble a board of advisors to bolster your success.

Lessons from a Failed Juicer Startup on the Power of Entrepreneurial Community

By Dan Recht, Activate Boston Managing Director

When Juicero shut down on September 1, 2017, the news spread quickly through San Francisco’s Mission District, then ground zero for hardware startups in the city. It was easy to imagine an alternate timeline where Juicero had shipped a genuinely better juicer and become a household name. It was also easy to see how pressure from investors and suppliers (along with management’s failure to navigate that pressure) had prevented that outcome.

Juicero may have been making juicers and not hydrogen tanks like my startup, but the success of both our companies relied on one thing: entrepreneurial community support.

Keep Reading

Matt Price, Activate Co-Founder, President, and CFO, shared a special look into the origin story of Activate during a recent fireside chat with prospective fellows. He explained the question that drove Activate’s co-founders: “For people with a scientific background who want to transform society, how do we keep them in the game? They need funding, lab space, and most importantly, to be in control of their own destiny.” Watch the full conversation.

At SXSW, Activate hosted a podcast takeover and recorded live sessions with experts on the roles of philanthropy, venture capital, and entrepreneurs in developing and deploying the climate solutions we need. Stay tuned for the full podcast episodes!

Tierra Biosciences (Zach Sun, Cohort 2016) announced its $11M Series A funding round, led by Material Impact, to help commercialize the company’s AI-guided, custom protein synthesis platform that will enable customers in the pharmaceutical, industrial, and agricultural industries to rapidly develop custom proteins.

Umaro (Amanda Stiles, Cohort 2020) raised $3.8M in a Seed 2 round supported by Alexandria Ventures Investments, Climate Capital Bio, Ponderosa Ventures, and NBA all-star Chris Paul. This funding will help Umaro bring its plant-based bacon into the retail market and scale production to the point that Umaro’s “bacon” will be half the price of bacon from conventional retailers like Hormel and Smithfield.

Allium Engineering (Steve Jepeal, Cohort 2023) announced a $3.25M Seed round to enable the production of the company’s steel-coated rebar, which can extend the lifespan of crucial infrastructure and eliminate emissions caused by routine repairs and reconstruction.

Soctera (Austin Hickman, Cohort 2022) was awarded a $1M SBIR Phase II grant from the National Science Foundation. This funding will enable the company to advance its power amplifiers on the aluminum nitride platform, which will improve area coverage for radar and telecom networks.

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

Upcoming Events

Activate will be at SF Climate Week! Preview our events and let us know if we’ll see you there.
Connect with Nernwon Kargou, Activate Houston’s Fellowship Manager, at the annual American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE) conference on April 22-25. AABE has nearly 1,600 members who are professionals representing all energy industry sectors (oil/gas, electric, and gas utilities; nuclear; and renewables). This national conference showcases energy thought leaders who are diverse in ethnicity, gender, and expertise.
The Industry Growth Forum, hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, will take place in Denver from May 1-3. The conference will convene over 200 industry experts, investors, and startups working to advance clean-tech innovation. Use code CP10 to get 10 percent off registration.
The Global Synthetic Biology Conference (SynBioBeta) brings together engineers, investors, innovators, and entrepreneurs across a broad base of industries and company sizes, who are committed to using biology to build a better world. The conference will take place May 6-9 in San Jose, CA.
Activate is excited to be an official partner of CarbonUnbound USA, a leadership summit happening May 21-23 in New York City. Our partnership and the summit will focus on achieving a collective mission: one gigaton of carbon removed from Earth's atmosphere. Tickets are available now.

Relevant Opportunities

Applications for the 2024 Cleantech Open Accelerator are now open and will be accepted on a rolling basis through April 14. The accelerator provides expert mentors, investor networking opportunities, industry connections, and a chance to compete regionally and nationally for cash prizes and in-kind services.
Funded by the California Energy Commission's EPIC program, CalSEED works to advance clean-energy concepts to commercial readiness by providing funding and professional development assistance. CalSEED seeks applications from individuals, businesses, and nonprofits that are working on early-stage innovations—from concept to basic prototype. Applications will be open from April 15-28.
The Biomimicry Institute’s Ray of Hope Accelerator provides $15K in non-dilutive funding and over $50K in in-kind services, including tailored coaching, investor introductions, a four-day nature retreat, and comprehensive training materials. Applications close May 3.
The Urban Future Prize Competition aims to find the brightest climate-tech startups with the most promising solutions to climate change. They will award two winners with $50K cash prizes and bring them into the coveted ACRE Incubator. Applications are open now through May 1.

Activate Voices

Leah Ellis (Sublime Systems, Cohort 2020) spoke at a Senate Climate Solutions Caucus event to discuss opportunities for innovation and decarbonization in the concrete and asphalt sectors. She spoke about Sublime Systems’ decarbonized cement technology and highlighted federal initiatives, like the Concrete and Asphalt Innovation Act, that would further enable the federal government's purchasing power for low-carbon building materials.
Bilen Akuzum (Aepnus Technology, Cohort 2022) was named to Drexel University’s 40 Under 40 list, recognizing his path from being the first in his family to pursue higher education to founding Aepnus Technology, which recycles battery chemical waste into valuable reagents.
Following the Geothermal Rising conference, the Sierra Club penned a feature on geothermal energy’s potential—and the entrepreneurs like Tim Latimer and Jack Norbeck (Fervo Energy, Cohort 2018) who are working to deploy it.
A pilot project by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) worked to install window-mounted heat pumps, including Gradient’s (Vince Romanin, Cohort 2017), to reduce emissions and cut energy costs. Initial findings indicate that residents enjoy their heat pumps, and the NYCHA expects to save money on operating and maintenance costs.
Grayson Zulauf (Resonant Link, Cohort 2020) appeared on the Start Here podcast to discuss what it takes to start and scale a company that crosses multiple industries, revolutionizing how some of the world’s most important technologies power up.
Scientific American featured advances in rotating detonation engine (RDE) technology, exploring progress in the field, and highlighting companies like Juno Propulsion (Alexis Harroun, Cohort 2023) that are working to bring RDEs to market.
Following more than a century of the Haber-Bosch process to make synthetic ammonia for fertilizer, several companies are working to decarbonize the high-emitting process, as reported on by BBC. Nitricity (Josh McEnaney and Jay Schwalbe, Cohort 2020) produces nitrates using solar-powered plasma cells to fix nitrogen from the air, which can then be applied directly to crops as fertilizer without the carbon emissions.
In his annual chairman’s letter to investors, Blackrock's Larry Fink described how the power of capital markets can support impactful emerging companies like Antora Energy (David Bierman, Cohort 2017, Justin Briggs and Andrew Ponec, Cohort 2018).

Want us to highlight an upcoming event or relevant opportunity in next month's newsletter? Let us know.

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