Silence needs to shake issues up relating 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 crew is led by Borja Moreno de los Rios who acts as a solo common accomplice for Silence’s authentic 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 crew of tech specialists who’ve all carried out the work to turn out to be local weather specialists as nicely.

“I’ve been very related to nature and the atmosphere ever since I used to be a toddler. I grew up water-skiing competitively from a really younger age. Since I used to be 5 – 6 years outdated, I spent each weekend and all my holidays by lakes and within the countryside,” Borja advised me.

“However as I used to be rising by way of my tech profession, I all the time had a watch on making an attempt to study as a lot as attainable so I might actually have an effect on the local weather tech degree. So after my final firm acquired acquired, I knew that I wished to do one thing in local weather,” 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 totally different firms. They apply the identical funding technique (with a couple of exceptions). Silence doesn’t lead rounds and doesn’t take board seats.

This fashion, they imagine they’ll stay impartial and unbiased over the long term — similar to an angel investor, however with a bigger ticket dimension. “The common ticket dimension is round $300k. We make investments from pre-seed to Collection A and we make investments something from $100k as much as $700k,” Borja mentioned. There might be some follow-on investments for essentially the most promising investments.

Additionally they don’t compete with high tier VC funds, which means that they’ll get invited to take part in very aggressive offers. “We wished to discover a means in order that we weren’t competing with the present VCs,” Borja mentioned. As an illustration, Silence already participated in a number of rounds with well-known VC companies, similar to Level 9, FJ Labs, FifthWall, Firstmark Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.

I’m not going to checklist all portfolio firms (examine the portfolio web 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 which simply grew actually quick. And we’re very proud as a result of we invested in pre-seed and we by no means lead offers. However on this case, the corporate was struggling to shut a spherical as a result of everybody was saying ‘we’ll put cash provided that you discover a lead.’ And nobody wished to be the lead. So we advised them ‘we’ll be your lead,’” Borja mentioned.

“It is a firm referred to as Cardino, which is a used EV market. So we invested with simply the deck, they usually’re doing like €72 million in GMV in 9 months. And now they raised a seed spherical with Level 9 main the seed. So clearly, it’s tremendous early, however up to now so good.”

Along with Borja, Sara Ramos Colmenarejo left the Hummingbird crew to hitch Silence. Guilherme Penna, who beforehand labored at International 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 companies, similar to Firstmark Capital, DST International, FJ Labs, Level 9 and Hummingbird, in addition to household workplaces, profitable founders, and so on. General, Borja appeared like an enthusiastic investor. Though Silence needs to stay a small angel-style investor, he couldn’t cease itemizing a few of his portfolio firms.

“There’s an organization referred to as Electryone that’s actually early that’s constructing a digital energy plant software program that we’ve invested in and we actually like,” he mentioned. “We additionally invested in an organization referred to as Runwise within the U.S., which mainly has constructed a expertise that integrates with the heating system in a constructing after which has sensors across the constructing and is continually optimizing the temperature.”

Apparently, 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.

“Ultimately — I do know that is form of controversial — however, in the long run, I believe we’re going to be creating extra worth in the direction of local weather by way of these safer investments than if we spend money on ten moonshots and all of them fail,” he mentioned.