“Who cares?” 

- Don Valentine, founder Sequoia Capital, who passed away October 25, 2019

This was Don’s favorite question for founders pitching Sequoia. It’s remarkably simple, but it’s at the heart of a portfolio now worth over $3.3 trillion. 

Don’s public comments emphasize the importance of market, competitors and potential customers. This perspective is backed up in a public investment memo from Sequoia’s current managing partner, Roelof Both. Most of the document is focused on competitors and the potential size and value of users. It might be tech investing, but the main concerns are about how people might respond. 

At Urban Us, “Can you scale to 100 cities in 5 years?” is our less elegant attempt to get to, “Who cares?” We decided to publish the Urban Us startup selection framework so you can see what else matters to us when selecting companies to work with.

#goodreading

The most uncomfortable silence is asking investors how they might adjust their real estate portfolio risk in the coming years. The vast majority of investors we talked to in the past believed climate change adaptation was going to happen beyond the 10 year horizon of a seed fund. That’s changing. At the time of writing, a large number of investors sit without power in SF, while others have been forced to evacuate because of fires in LA. 

Our infrastructure was designed for a world that no longer exists and we've been preparing by investing in resilience modeling, remote sensing, first responders, resilient infrastructure and distributed energy. 

2020 is gearing up to be the year of climate action focused on adaptation. Investors and startups and society as a whole are switching from prevention to adaptation. The new narrative is about economic gains, risk reduction and long-term savings, if we act fast/smart. The complexity and cost of adaptation is even harder to ignore. 

At the same time, we’ve never been more optimistic about the opportunities. A recent report explores ways machine learning can be trained to help with specific issues like forecasting disasters and ecosystem monitoring. We’re certain this is going to inspire more founders (and investors too). Here's a summary. 

Meanwhile, the battle to reduce emissions wages on in the transportation sector. The falling price and increased adoption of EVs has created an alliance between automakers, utilities and environmentalists against oil companies, dealerships and lobbyists. The oil companies can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube this time around.

For startup founders, profitability is back in fashion. “We’re no longer the biggest micro mobility company from a top-line growth standpoint but best on unit economics,” said Bird’s founder only a few weeks ago. The conversation shift is not just about unit economics either. 

Employees are likely to start pushing back on the types of terms, specifically liquidation preferences, which has often helped inflate valuations and allowed for unicorn club status. As this great post points out, common stock holders can get nothing, even when a deal is good for other shareholders.  Preference stacks, overhangs, waterfalls-- we suspect as founders begin to decline these terms (we know some already have), fewer companies will be claiming unicorn status. Those that do, should expect to discuss preference structures with job candidates. 

One Urban Us portfolio co founder put together the notes on what it took to close their round over the summer. A few choice bits: 

• Final stats: 103 pitches, 3 investors participated, 127 days from start to close.
• Best investors were prepared because they were actually interested in us and had reviewed material in advance. Others who started cold were almost always nearly worthless meetings.
• NYC = fear of making a mistake; SF = fear of missing upside

The last point is something we notice a lot. As a founder you want to be able to walk investors through how you avoid risks but also how you give them exposure to upside. Here’s the rest. 

#jobs_and_talent

We’re accepting applications for two sessions of our Urban Us Fellowship.

The [recently launched] Urbantech Hub at Cornell Tech is looking for its first executive director. If you are interested or if you know people who are, please visit this job description. 

The Miles team is looking for a Marketing Manager to help change urban commutes. Radiator Labs is already saving up to 45% of heating fuel in buildings - they’re looking for a VP of Sales. Starcity is leading the way in coliving on the west coast and they are hiring in engineering and talent management. OneConcern helps communities understand realtime and future risk from flood fire and earthquakes and they have multiple engineering and ML roles open. 

Blokable is a leader in multifamily home construction, often 2x faster and cheaper than conventional construction and their open roles include VP of Manufacturing, Director of Real Estate Finance, Sr Design Architect, and more. Bowery Farming is bringing the purest produce to more people - they have 14 positions open just in farm operations. 

Here are 13 more Urban Us portfolio companies hiring on angel.co. 

#opportunities

“Hi, remote workers! We'll pay you to work from Tulsa. You're going to love it here.” We get that folks are skeptical about the, “You’re going to love it here” part. We had the chance to visit and it’s the real thing - feels like Austin in the late 90s. Worst case, it seems like this program will build deep relationships into major startup hubs. Anyway, check out Tulsa Remote.

Cornell Tech’s Master in Urban Tech is now open for business. Citymart's Q3 City Procurement & Innovation survey is out, now also providing an overview of what cities buy when they innovate. The Lee Kuan Yew Global Startup Challenge is recruiting cutting edge early technology startups working on smart city/sustainable urban innovations. 

A number of Urban Us startups have shared positive feedback on getting contracts after participating in STiR. Governments from across the country just published 60+ startup-friendly contract opportunities through the STIR Digital Platform. Deadline to apply is November 20th. More at: www.cityinnovate.com/challenge

#Urban Us

Congrats to Ian and Dan at Toggle (URBAN-X Cohort 4) for raising their $3M seed round led by Point72 Ventures. To the folks not yet ready to share your fundraising, congrats to you too. 

Coord's Digital Curb is now available in 15 cities in North America. The digital curb service is being used for better routing, reducing congestion and improving safety for drivers and passengers. It’s also enabling cities to plan and understand new revenue options beyond parking. 

It’s now easier to get veggies from Bowery Farming. They’ve greatly expanded around NYC. In NYC and Boston you can avoid food waste and get discounted access to prepared meals from FoodforAll (rated 4.8 by thousands of users in both apps stores). 

Onewheel community continues to grow. They’re super quiet about revenues, but they’re now 10k strong on Reddit.  Although we hadn’t considered it, it turns out you can ride a Onewheel 300 miles from Paris to Neuchâtel, Switzerland. 

Seamlessdocs has quietly been making local governments more beautiful. Here’s the story for Sacramento where they’ve moved over 600 forms online! 

Finally, Stonly chatted with Jason Calacanis about the teams graduating from URBAN-X Cohort 6. 

Best,

Shaun, Stonly, Liz, Mark & Anthony. 

What’s up with the #hashtags? This content comes from our slack channels where we review contributions from people like you. So you can wait for this newsletter or join us on Slack.