Sansa Stark: “What exactly do dragons eat?”
    Daenerys Targaryen: “Whatever they want”

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While there is some speculation about who loses at Game of Thrones, we already know a lot about who loses from climate change. The Uninhabitable Earth could be a good GOT episode title, but the book describes our likely reality as we continue to do too little to act on climate.

Non-fiction work like Chubb’s annual report on climate’s existential threat described 2018 disasters as being in an “almost biblical range”. The Bank of England and the Bank of France shared goals for climate-related financial risk reporting in an open letter to the financial community.

#Startup Introductions

This week, we graduated seven companies from URBAN-X -

Borrow - Short-term, flexible leasing for electric vehicles. Very strong demand growth and CAC at 10% of the industry average. 

Circuit - Free, electric shuttle transportation already working in 17 cities around the US with another 80 cities in their pipeline.

Buildstream - Mission control for heavy construction equipment operations with live customers and over a $40m immediate pipeline.

Toggle - Construction robotics for rebar and reinforced concrete. Built their first production facility and competing with current market price points.

Thrilling - The first dedicated e-commerce platform for vintage and second hand stores. Supply side including exclusive with Goodwill and high demand side growth metrics including conversion rates and CAC.

Treau - Advanced climate control for sustainable, comfortable, and efficient cooling and heating. Enough runway to get to market with their game changing (IP protected) tech and a waitlist of customers.

GreenQ - Automated system integrates easily into waste pickup trucks, enabling monitoring and comprehensive reports optimizing the waste collection process. Currently live in Israel.

#Startups

As startups get traction, it’s tempting to focus on optimization for growth, but great teams manage to both explore and exploit opportunities without prioritizing one over the other. It’s easy to leave this to chance, but Andy Johns describes how to build your startup to do both.

The most common question we get at seed stage is how to think about valuations. Jason Calacanis has a great perspective on the relationship between traction and valuation. There is also certainly a demand and supply issue - more money, means rounds and valuations have ballooned over the last few years.

More money and larger deals doesn’t mean there are more deals. Fundraising remains hard. Following Zoom’s IPO, one of their earliest investors shared how hard it was for them to raise along with his notes on why he liked their chances.

It would have been easy to dismiss Zoom in a space that seemed super competitive. Often our definition of moat is tool limited, so it’s refreshing to hear a well articulated range of definitions on what might constitute a moat from Brian Singerman’s interview with Patrick O’Shaughnessy.

#Cities

AOC’s GND may have seemed DOA, but it has a new champions in NYC and LA. As part of one of the most aggressive city climate action plans, NYC will fine larger building owners if they do not reduce GHG emissions. LA will ban gas powered cars by 2050 and both cities are also exploring congestion pricing.

Interestingly, NYCs largest office tenant, WeWork, wants to create the future of cities. They’re starting from a very different point to most city building efforts, because they already create spaces on a very large scale.

#Opportunities

Avvir is hiring for a senior full stack developer.Buildstream is also looking for full-stack engineers to help them transforming heavy construction equipment operations.

The team at Social Construct is looking for multiple roles in Digital Fabrication Specialist, Robotics Engineer, Head of Engineering & Technology, Logistics Manager and a Real Estate.

Sapient is hiring across engineering, operations and sales.

Here are another 19 portfolio companies with 73 open positions.  

#Urban Us

Sapient set a record, with help from Republic, for most raised as well as most investors.

Miles gives you air miles for walking, biking, busing, training, ride sharing, ride hailing or Onewheeling. Available now in the app stores (Fast Company). The Startups Tracking How Cities Use Curb Space (Citylab) features Coord’s work on digitizing rules for how we use the curb and laying the groundwork for new types of city policy and revenue. 5 European companies that are (really) advancing AI (The Next Web) features Qucit’s work using machine learning to optimize bikeshare, parking, roadside emergency response and comfort of public spaces.

Elgin Sweeper and RoadBotics announced their partnership to automate pavement assessment for Florida municipalities. They’re using cameras mounted on street sweepers to acquire the data and deliver ongoing pavement assessments. Urbint discusses how they are using machine learning to transform the safety of gas infrastructure in cities.

Finally, you may be wondering Who Comes to the Rescue of Stranded Robots? (WSJ) which features Kiwi Campus as they lead the way on human-robot relations. They also make cheap, fast, zero emissions deliveries.

Best,

Liz, Mark, Anthony, Stonly & Shaun