LA Venture Podcast: Thin Line Capital's Founder on the Opportunity in Clean Tech

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
LA Venture Podcast: Thin Line Capital's Founder on the Opportunity in Clean Tech

On this week's episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, hear from serial entrepreneur Aaron Fyke, founder and managing partner of Thin Line Capital, a firm tackling the world's toughest problems in energy, water and food sustainability. We'll hear about the state of global warming, renewables and discuss the promise of clean tech investment. Frankly, Aaron truly makes me think we should devote all our energies to work on climate change — due to the exponential growth curve of the technology built to improve it.


For example, he said that 10 years ago, globally there were seven gigawatts of solar installed, and now there's well over 500. He said the same goes for wind at over 500 gigawatts, and that there's "a trillion watts of capacity installed in renewables. Renewables are now flat-out cheaper than traditional fossil generation."

He said you can buy a wind farm or a solar field for far cheaper than you could build a new coal plant, and that the "expectation is that electric vehicles will reach cost parity with internal combustion engines literally in the next three years."

To those that criticize renewable energy because the sun doesn't always shine and wind doesn't always blow, he says, we need storage, which these days is much more affordable than it once was. To those that worry about loss of jobs because coal facilities are no longer being built, he says, "One of the fastest growing positions is wind farm maintenance technician. And that's just going to be the growth jobs of the future."

We dug into the why behind the intensity of California fires, East Coast hurricanes and other disasters. And, while I was feeling pretty scared listening to Aaron explain the direness of the climate change situation, Aaron prefers to see the seriousness as inspiration for motivation. He says he focuses Fine Line Ventures on software companies or CapEx light hardware, like printed circuit board, assembly, some sensors and some analytics. He also looks closely at storage opportunities because he sees grid scale storage as the "next wave that's that's going to see huge growth."

Aaron Fyke is currently founder and managing partner of Thin Line Capital, bringing investment capital to bear on some of the world's toughest problems in energy, water and food sustainability. While CEO of Heliogen, he was committed to lowering the costs of solar thermal power. Prior to Heliogen, Aaron was the founder and CEO of Energy Cache, a low-cost, grid-scale energy storage technology company serving a multi-billion dollar energy market that was backed by Idealab, Bill Gates, NRG, and others. Aaron continued his work with gravity storage with Energy Vault, which received a significant investment from SoftBank. Previously he headed up the development of a $10M X PRIZE in Energy for the X PRIZE Foundation. Prior to that he was a Partner at Starfish Ventures, Australia's largest venture capital firm, where Aaron led the investment into the fund's biggest investment and exit.

dot.LA Sr. Podcast Producer & Editor Laurel Moglen contributed to this post.

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Relativity Space Launches World’s First 3D-Printed Rocket, But Falls Short of Orbit

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

Relativity Space Launches World’s First 3D-Printed Rocket, But Falls Short of Orbit
Photo: Relativity Space

The largest 3D-printed object to ever fly had liftoff yesterday as Long Beach-based Relativity Space launched its Terran 1 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Terran 1 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at around 7 p.m. PST March 22. It was Relativity’s third attempt at sending Terran 1 to the cosmos and the nighttime launch was quite a sight to behold. The clarity of the night sky was perfect to see the blue jets of flame cascading out of Terran 1’s nine Aeon 1 engines, all 3D-printed, as the rocket took off.

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Sports Stadiums Are Turning to Immersive Sound to Keep Fans Engaged

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

Sports Stadiums Are Turning to Immersive Sound to Keep Fans Engaged
Photo: Edge Sound Research

In 2020, the Minnesota Twins experimented with a new technology that brought fans the ability to physically feel the sounds they were hearing in the stadium in the back of their seats as part of a new immersive way to experience baseball.

The tech was made by Riverside-based startup Edge Sound Research, which built a mobile lounge – basically, a small seating section equipped with its technology and on wheels to travel around the stadium – for Twins fans to experience what it calls “embodied audio” around Target field. It was a bid on the Twins’ part to keep fans more engaged during the game, and Edge Sound Research CEO Valtteri Salomaki said the Twins were impressed.

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B Capital’s Howard Morgan On The Key To Early Stage Investing

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

B Capital’s Howard Morgan On The Key To Early Stage Investing
Provided by LAV

On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, B Capital Group General Partner and Chair Howard Morgan discusses his thoughts on early stage investing and the importance of company ownership.


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