Silence is an early stage local weather tech VC fund with $35 million

Silence needs to shake issues up in relation to local weather tech funding. This new angel-style VC agency has already raised $35 million and plans to make dozens of small investments in local weather startups to assist them apply the tech startup playbook.

The Silence staff is led by Borja Moreno de los Rios who acts as a solo common accomplice for Silence’s unique fund. Earlier than beginning Silence, he was a enterprise accomplice at FJ Labs. He additionally based Merlin, an hourly jobs market within the U.S.

With Silence, Borja needs to use his expertise to local weather funding. He has surrounded himself with a staff of tech specialists who’ve all done the work to grow to be local weather specialists as nicely.

“I have been very connected to nature and the environment ever since I was a child. I grew up water-skiing competitively from a very young age. Since I was five or six years old, I spent every weekend and all my vacations by lakes and in the countryside,” Borja advised me.

“But as I was growing through my tech career, I always had an eye on trying to learn as much as possible so I could really have an impact at the climate tech level. So after my last company got acquired, I knew that I wanted to do something in climate,” he added later within the dialog.

A silent accomplice

For the reason that first shut of the fund in June 2022, Silence has already invested in 22 different companies. They apply the identical funding technique (with a number of exceptions). Silence doesn’t lead rounds and doesn’t take board seats.

This manner, they imagine they will stay impartial and unbiased over the long term — similar to an angel investor, however with a bigger ticket measurement. “The average ticket size is around $300k. We invest from pre-seed to Series A and we invest anything from $100k up to $700k,” Borja stated. There shall be some follow-on investments for probably the most promising investments.

In addition they don’t compete with high tier VC funds, which means that they will get invited to take part in very aggressive offers. “We wanted to find a way so that we were not competing with the current VCs,” Borja stated. For example, Silence already participated in a number of rounds with well-known VC corporations, corresponding to Level 9, FJ Labs, FifthWall, Firstmark Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.

I’m not going to listing all portfolio firms (examine the portfolio page), however Silence’s portfolio firms are constructing digital energy vegetation, vitality administration programs, dwelling vitality administration programs, financing platforms for photo voltaic tools and circularity-focused marketplaces.

“There’s one that just grew really fast. And we’re very proud because we invested in pre-seed and we never lead deals. But in this case, the company was struggling to close a round because everyone was saying ‘we’ll put money only if you find a lead.’ And no one wanted to be the lead. So we told them ‘we’ll be your lead,’” Borja stated.

“This is a company called Cardino, which is a used EV marketplace. So we invested with just the deck, and they’re doing like €72 million in GMV in nine months. And now they raised a seed round with Point Nine leading the seed. So obviously, it’s super early, but so far so good.”

Along with Borja, Sara Ramos Colmenarejo left the Hummingbird staff to hitch Silence. Guilherme Penna, who beforehand labored at Global Founders Capital, can be an investor at Silence. Lastly, Brendan Hayes acts because the CFO and COO for the fund.

Silence’s restricted companions embrace common companions at different VC corporations, corresponding to Firstmark Capital, DST World, FJ Labs, Level 9 and Hummingbird, in addition to household places of work, profitable founders, and many others. Total, Borja appeared like an enthusiastic investor. Regardless that Silence needs to stay a small angel-style investor, he couldn’t cease itemizing a few of his portfolio firms.

“There’s a company called Electryone that’s really early that’s building a virtual power plant software that we’ve invested in and we really like,” he stated. “We also invested in a company called Runwise in the U.S., which basically has built a technology that integrates with the heating system in a building and then has sensors around the building and is constantly optimizing the temperature.”

Curiously, in contrast to many local weather funds, Silence doesn’t wish to take part in deep tech investments with a really long-term timeframe. Borja believes Silence’s experience is in SaaS and marketplaces.

“In the end — I know this is kind of controversial — but, in the end, I think we are going to be creating more value towards climate through these safer investments than if we invest in ten moonshots and all of them fail,” he stated.