🍾Anniversary celebration: Funding data for ~400 startups
Vol 59
This newsletter aims to separate the signal from the noise for making money in all things sustainable transportation: Electrification, mode shift, active and public transit, and mobility aggregation, across both people and goods movement.
I was honored to be named by Venture Forward as one of 11 LGBTQ+ VC investors to watch. Also, I’ll be speaking at Move America in Austin, Texas (Sept 26-27). Let me know if you’ll be there.
In this issue’s Deep Dive, we’re celebrating the second anniversary of this newsletter. With now over 400 startups in the Startup Watch database, it’s a great time for what’s now a semi-annual tradition: sift through the data and see what lessons emerge. So this issue’s deep dive is a portfolio analysis of funding for startups at the intersection of cleantech and mobility. Submit startups & ideas for the newsletter here.
🌱STARTUP WATCH: Sustainable mobility startups (pre-seed or seed) to keep an eye on
Aerodymax (Austria): Aerodynamic skirt for trucks to reduce fuel consumption
Bovlabs (California, USA): Smart charging and V2G software
Hullbot (Australia): Autonomous robots for cleaning ship hulls, reducing fuel consumption
Realize (Tennessee, USA): Flex-space national network of truck parking and EV charging
Volteras (United Kingdom): EV fleet performance reporting software
WattWorker (Norway): EV fast battery swap for heavy-duty trucks
💰FUNDING: Capital raises from startups previously featured in Startup Watch
Tandem (Vol 13) raised a 2.3M GBP Seed round from 1818 Venture Capital, Ascension, and others
Biped (Vol 17) won an additional 40K Swiss franc grant from Biopôle
GoEve (Vol 28) raised a 3M GBP seed round from Automotive Ventures, Kero Development Partners, Cur8 Capital, and others
Rybit (Vol 35) raised a $10M Series A from AVA Angels, Cherubic Ventures, and others
Seachange (Vol 43) won a $500K grant from the New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA)
📰QUICK HITS: Notable news from the last two weeks
👩🏽⚖️Government, Policies & Cities
🪶 Paris is moving towards charging for parking based on vehicle weight. First a neighborhood in Montreal, then Lyon; the concept is spreading quickly in the French-speaking world.
📦 New York City is piloting 15 publicly-available package lockers to reduce truck delivery traffic. Look for LA to also pilot the concept via LA’s mobility hubs.
🗣️ California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a raft of bills to overhaul CEQA, the environmental permitting process. This is unsexy political reform, but should significantly increase California’s speed in deploying new green infrastructure projects.
🚛 Heavy-duty truck manufacturers bought into California’s plan to ban the sale of internal combustion engine trucks by 2036. This clears a path for the dozen or so states that follow California plans to consider adopting as well.
🇪🇺 Not to be outdone by California on the heavy-duty front, the European Union approved increased weight limits for zero-emissions heavy-duty trucks. The new limits ensure that trucking operators don’t have to reduce their cargo load to accommodate the heavier weight of battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell powertrains.
🤖 The US National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) is getting increasingly frustrated with Tesla on so-called “Autopilot” safety. Tesla’s “beta test on the public” approach continues to raise eyebrows.
✈️ The Dutch government won a court battle to limit flights at Amsterdam Schiphol airport to meet climate objectives. France and the Netherlands are taking an early lead in limiting flight activity to meet environmental goals.
🇰🇪 Kenya has doubled down on support for low-cost financing solutions for e-motorbike drivers. Kenya is quickly cementing its role as one of the major e-mobility hubs in Africa.
🇨🇦 Canada claims it will be the first in the G20 with concrete measures to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. How to define what qualifies as an existing subsidy will be the name of the game.
⛴️ The International Maritime Organization, a UN agency, reached a new agreement on global shipping emissions. It’s a compromise, with the industry avoiding an explicit commitment to the Paris climate accord’s 2050 deadline and lacking any market mechanisms to make the targets possible.
🔬Markets & Research
🛴 Transport for London (TfL) revealed a fascinating study on shared scooter usage. 93.5% of scooter trips would have otherwise been taken by walking, cycling, or public transport…
🚌 A new research study looks at whether low-income individuals are moving away from public transit in disproportionate numbers. In short, as low-income families move to suburban areas, they end up getting penalized by the lack of transit service. On the same topic, Vox looked at how lower-income Americans are both liberated and burdened by car ownership.
🔌 Consultancy PWC shared research on the number of chargers needed in the US to support our EV goals. The report underscores the need to ramp up workplace charging options.
🏭 Corporates & Later Stage
🚐 American Airlines got permission to run its Philadelphia bus route extensions inside security. The US doesn’t do a ton of multi-modal innovation like this, so it’s cool to see passengers be able to deplane in Philadelphia and jump directly on a chartered coach bus.
🏳️ Mercedes is the latest to join the Tesla North American Charging Standard. See Vol 57 for why BMW, VW, and Hyundai will likely be next.
👨🏾💻 Is Tesla about to launch a fleet telemetry solution that will also become a de facto industry standard? An interesting example of Tesla opening up for free.
🚗 In China, Tesla and Chinese electric OEMs pledged to limit their brutal price war. Tesla was allegedly the only foreign firm on this list, a far cry from when GM and VW were top dogs in China.
🗺️ Google Maps may be finally serious about being a mobility player (article in German). There’s no big revelation in this article, but a good overview of how Google has invested in making Maps more serious as a mobility tool over the last few years.
🐣 Startups & Early Stage
☠️ EV truck maker Arrival’s second SPAC is dead on arrival. SPAC me once, shame on you, SPAC me twice, shame on all of us.
⚠️ Dutch E-bike darling VanMoof looks to be in a lot of trouble and Belgian e-bike maker Cowboy may reap the benefits. The emerging consensus is that VanMoof’s anti-theft approach was a jewel but the avoidance of industry-common parts was a major burden.
🚁 Blade Urban Air Mobility began its first commute offering, taking New Jersey commuters into NYC by helicopter in 45 seconds. A good preview of eVTOL (air taxi) use cases to come.
DEEP DIVE: PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS ON THE SU$TAINABLE MOBILITY STARTUP DATABASE
In each issue’s Startup Watch section, I share a handful of startups that have come across my radar screen. To celebrate the second anniversary of the newsletter, I’m sharing a bit of portfolio analysis of what has been learned so far.
When we look at where these startups are based, several things jump out. First, there’s no startup from China. The country is a hotbed of startup innovation, so the lack of data reflects my own language barrier, as well as increasing trade and capital flow barriers between China and the West. Note some surprising startup counts between geographies: Kenya outdoes Canada, and Florida outranks Texas and Illinois, and the UK beats Germany and France. Finally, this newsletter is read in 63 countries, so if there’s not at least a small dot on the map in your country, send me an email with a startup suggestion.
Of the 420 startups, their aggregate funds raised at the time of publishing in the newsletter was $162M (Note: If no reliable funding information is found at the start, $25K is used as a placeholder.) This implies an average company funding of $387K across equity, debt, and grants by the day they were published in Startup Watch.
Since then, those 420 startups have brought in an additional $917M in capital for a total of $1.1B. (We’ve also seen six exits so far.) So how does a billion dollars in funding get allocated across sub-sectors?
Over the last few years, startups focused on goods movement have been winning a disproportionately high percentage of funding. And on the tech side, it’s not the software-only companies that are getting funded but instead those that combine hardware and software.
As far as what I’m looking forward to in the next year or so, I’m expecting more funding for the decarbonization of maritime and aviation, both for new engineering advances around zero-emissions propulsion as well as in the application of tools like AI/ML to drive further carbon efficiencies of out existing operations. Here’s to the next billion in funding.
As a reminder to the newcomers: The startup data set is currently open, for free. If you’re a subscriber interested in accessing the Airtable with all the raw data about the 400+ companies, please let me know below. Who doesn’t love free data? Thanks for joining along so far on the journey!
Also, I’m toying with future iterations of the database (e.g., who is approaching a capital raise, some external validation of readiness for funding). So drop me a line with any ideas. And if you’ve read this far, please share it with someone!