Participated · Equity · Feb 2024

Climate Policy Radar builds an open-source knowledge base that converts complex policy documents into structured information to track global climate change policies. The company applies data science and AI to organize and analyze laws and regulations, providing concise, accurate data to support decision-making. Led by founder Dr. Michal Nachmany, the platform is accessible to a broad audience and is used by nearly 350,000 users across over 100 countries. The recent funding will be used to accelerate the company’s work mapping and analyzing the global climate law and policy landscape. The startup is focused on improving its data infrastructure and analytic capabilities to expand coverage and usability. Financially, it secured over €6.8M in new funding in February 2024 to support those efforts. Founded and led by Dr. Michal Nachmany, Climate Policy Radar has spent roughly 1.5 years developing an open-data and open-source search platform that uses machine learning and natural language processing to collect and analyse massive amounts of policy data at scale. The platform is designed to equip decision-makers with high-quality data to replicate successful policies, avoid failed ones, and increase accountability. The startup has welcomed over 250 civil servants, academics, members of international organisations, and civil society users in its first group and today launched an alpha release. A full commercial launch of services is planned later this year. The team plans to add data on climate litigation cases later this year to track court actions against governments and corporates. Climate Policy Radar has raised £2.1 million to date, primarily via Quadrature Climate Foundation, and is preparing for a new funding round.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2023

Introbot is an AI-powered platform founded in 2021 that helps attendees, sponsors, speakers, organisers and community admins discover and build professional relationships at events and in closed communities. Its core product combines an AI engine that understands over 10,000 keywords and creates network graphs with a WhatsApp AI chatbot that curates recommendations and enables direct connections; organisers get a web dashboard with admin controls and analytics. The platform prioritises privacy and mutual consent for connections and also delivers event communications such as reminders and speaker details over WhatsApp. Introbot has been deployed across more than 300 B2B communities and 30,000 decision-makers, and at TechSparks 2023 it helped over 3,000 individuals discover more than 5,000 relevant peer attendees; it was named to YourStory’s Tech30 list. The startup reports a positive revenue flow but faces operational bandwidth constraints and scalability limits in its current architecture, causing slower response rates. The team plans a US expansion, a focus on B2B events and diverse business communities, integration of Gen AI and improved NLP/data processing, and is hiring AI/LLM engineers, data engineers and operations personnel.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2023

Cloudline develops autonomous, carbon‑emissions‑free airships that use helium for lift and solar power with battery backup, offering over 400 km range, a 40 kg payload capacity and roughly 10 hours of endurance for mapping, monitoring and public-safety missions. The platform integrates multi-sensor payloads (visual, infrared, lidar) to deliver long‑distance real‑time data across large regions, aiming to replace or complement drones, helicopters and satellites. The company launched commercial operations in South Africa after completing regulatory approvals, has performed proving flights in Kenya, and employs 14 people. Cloudline says revenue grew 4x in 2023 and projects substantial growth in 2024 driven by several new multi‑million‑dollar enterprise contracts. Founded in 2019 and based in Cape Town, the startup pursues a beachhead strategy of developing use cases in Africa before expanding to neighboring countries (Namibia and Mozambique) and global markets. Its stated competitive advantages are longer range, endurance, lower operating costs and IP in software‑hardware integration and autonomy.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2023

Common Trust helps small-business owners design, finance and execute employee ownership buyouts so owners or investors can access liquidity by exiting to employees. The company uses a customized perpetual purpose trust—an employee ownership trust—to enable businesses to become employee-owned and remain independent. Founded in 2022 by Zoe Schlag and Derek Razo, the team drew on experience in the shared-ownership space at Schmidt Futures and Purpose Foundation. In its first year Common Trust has worked with dozens of business owners, management teams and investors. One customer, family-owned Clegg Auto, doubled profits, recorded its highest customer service ratings and shared record profit-sharing with employees in the first year after transition. Common Trust positions employee ownership as a scalable, lower-cost alternative to brokered or private-equity sales for the large cohort of small businesses expected to seek buyers over the next decade; it raised a seed round to support that work.

Led · Equity · Nov 2022

inCitu builds mobile augmented-reality (AR) visualizations that let anyone see and explore proposed and upcoming development projects in situ, at real scale, with no headsets or special devices required. The company turns large datasets into accurate, informative visualizations of future skylines, individual buildings, affordable housing, mixed-use developments, parks, bridges, neighborhood rezoning and regional infrastructure. Its customers across the U.S. include cities, real estate developers, technology companies and other urban-development stakeholders. Led by Founder & CEO Dana Chermesh-Reshef, inCitu also licenses its data to technology partners. In 2022 the company signed partnerships with Snap Inc. and Esri after concluding a two-year program. The company plans to use the newly raised capital to accelerate growth and expand operations.