BIV Monthly Update XXXIV
BIV Monthly Update – 6th August 2023
A slightly interrupted but positive month, with good fundraising milestones in place for Aclarity, Daupler, Irrigreen, SwiftComply and Beagle Services. Good commercial progress across the group. It was a huge pleasure to finally publish this post that Marissa and I have been working on for a wee while - What we mean when we say Water. As always, do reach out if you think you can be of help to (or use the services of) the Burnt Islanders. We appreciate it.
“Well, here we go again” Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio
Highlights
The portfolio is in a position of real strength going into the rest of this year and 2024. Cautious optimism abounds.
The team is starting to hum, with Christine and Jennie taking on the pipeline and portfolio support roles very smoothly.
Publishing What we mean when we say Water. It’s a great explanation of how we think about the parameters of our investing.
Sharing the driving with Mum to get Dad up to Scotland. I haven’t driven that road with them for twenty years. It was lovely. So were the snacks.
Six swims in seven days in Scotland, when the weather wasn’t necessarily Mediterranean. Kiyan is very intrepid.
August Asks
Sign up here for forthcoming Founder Sessions.
Point the smartest people you know to the BIV Jobs Board
BIV Portfolio Updates
Irrigreen – Exceptional unit economics on their Q2 sales. It’s asking to be scaled. Shane continues to impress, as does his team. Sizeable extension (single investor) completed.
LAIIER – Inbound jumped in Q2, due to skilled ad buys and filling a product performance gap in leak detection. Now closing it all. We will process an extension shortly.
NLine Energy – Solid progress, various possibilities to close out the funding round in September.
SewerAI – More solid progress. A very interesting company being built.
Shower Stream – Solid execution on their pilots - big month ahead of potentially major steps in September. Need to think about increasing the pace.
Spout – 950 units pre-sold since end of May. Online traction good, CAC even better.
SwiftComply – First close of over-subscribed interim round complete. Executing a flip.
Ziptility – Delivering lead service line services in Indiana. Good, opportunistic value for their small systems customers, which could be significant over time.
ZwitterCo – Promising progress on their partnership strategy, as well as technical progress towards their first mass-market product. Many reasons for excitement.
2S Water – Mixed results in two pilots. Analyzing data from the successful pilot, while figuring out the root cause for the one that was trickier. $1.3m grant confirmed.
Aclarity – First close of $12.5M Series A round complete. Excellent data from a recent mobile deployment with a waste management major, with proposal submitted.
Aquafortus – Pilot plant now on-site in Midland. Hard work in progress on upgrading the process engineering.
Beagle Services - Growing well across their markets, breakeven in sight. Service product (Watchdog) taking first steps. Completed extension.
CivilGrid – Closed 12 new trials through strong lead gen and capture process. Maturing the sales funnel management & sales process to accelerate conversion.
Daupler – Sales functioning excellently. Amtrak reached out cold! There is a wild amount of opportunity for the business. Coming months are key for future scale.
Floodbase – Deepening understanding of the sales process with insurance carriers and brokers. New head of commercial in place. Partnership with parametric broker in development with “powered by Floodbase” branding and structure.
Work with the Burnt Islanders
All open roles with the Burnt Islanders are advertised through the BIV Jobs Board which is accessible here
Company Pipeline
Overall Pipeline: 666 - yikes (+42)
Christine and Jennie working excellently together. The pipeline remains very strong. We are working towards a couple of potentially exciting deals.
We are now clear on our final deployments out of Fund I.
Team
Christine Pu has had an excellent Summer with us thus far, and particularly impressed with her deep dive on PFAS. Excited for future primary research with our widened bandwidth!
My appreciation to the whole team for their patience as I lumbered off to the UK for a little while. Amazing how things work alarmingly well in my absence.
BIV Insight/Visibility
Check out our latest blog from Marissa, What we mean when we say Water. We hope it helps understand how we think through the parameters of our investing.
Nice to have the Reuters article reprinted by the World Economic Forum - Is water tech the next frontier for investment? (Spoiler: we hope so, though under rather specific circumstances. But basically “Yes”)
Very kind of W12+ Programs to have us for a conversation alongside the excellent Mohannad Abouelrouse, co-founder and CEO of WaterWill. Poor bloke, sharing the stage with the likes of me when his work is rather more impressive.
We’re Reading/Listening/Watching
This deep dive from the The New York Times on CA’s dam infrastructure is eye-opening. The Trillion-Gallon Question - What if California’s Dams Fail?
First BIV Book Group (need a better name?!) book is Creativity Inc. - great to revisit it.
Things to Work On
Never flying United again. The journey home from Scotland was 49.5 hrs door to door.
Thanks so much as ever. Email tom@burntislandventures.com if I can help in any way.
