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XElevation Ventures Is Raising $50M for a Climate-Focused Tech Fund in SoCal
Deirdre Newman
Deirdre Newman is an Orange County-based journalist, editor and author and the founder of Inter-TECH-ion, an independent media site that reports on tech at the intersection of diversity and social justice.
Interest in electric cars is spiking as gas prices rise to their highest prices in years, but supply chain headaches and the lack of infrastructure such as charging stations are keeping the demand pent up. And, the longer-term effects on power grids will mean there will be lots to upgrade, even after the transition to cleaner technology, like electric vehicles, comes online.
Elevation Ventures, a new climate-focused venture firm in Orange County, is raising a $50 million fund to focus on technology that can provide new products and services. The fund will target seed-stage companies in SoCal, though it might also invest in a few Series A funding rounds. Check sizes will range from $500,000 to $3 million.
Elevation has partnered with two local organizations with deep roots in O.C.: business incubator Octane and Sustain SoCal, a network of professionals focused on clean tech development.
A VC Built By Consortium
Elevation Ventures Managing Partner Neal Rickner is an Orange County native who recently moved back to the area from Silicon Valley, where he was the COO of Makani Technologies, a company that developed airborne wind turbines. It was acquired by Google in 2013, and then eventually shut down by Alphabet, Google's parent company.
Elevation Ventures Managing Partner Neal Rickner.
Image courtesy of Neal Rickner
He also worked with what’s known as “X,” (formerly Google X), a research and development facility founded by Google, which now operates as a subsidiary of Alphabet.
”I’ve been through the ringer...up there,” he said. “I learned the best I could from the best innovators in the world."
But it wasn’t until Rickner did some serious reflection in 2020, that he decided to move back to Orange County. He had some informal conversations with members from Aliso Viejo-based Octane’s team in 2017, but it didn’t coalesce until 2020. Octane acted as the catalyst and facilitator, bringing in Sustain Socal. Elevation Ventures was formed.
Octane already has a track record in investing. In 2016, it partnered with Visionary Ventures, a VC firm that backs ophthalmology and aesthetic startups, which have a strong presence in Orange County.
The organization has both for-profit and nonprofit branches and serves SoCal’s general technology and medical technology ecosystems—connecting people, resources and capital. One of its initiatives is a four-month accelerator program called LaunchPad that gives local founders access to a slew of advisors and resources.
Sustain SoCal is a hub of climate, sustainability and environmental experts, with a presence at UC Irvine’s innovation center, The Cove. The network comprises thousands of experts; most have been involved with clean tech and/or climate tech for 20 years or more.
Elevation expects to make 15 to 20 investments from this first fund, over the next two to three years, Rickner said. Even before the first close of the first fund, expected this summer, Elevation is already writing checks through a type of investing known as a special purpose vehicle. Typically set up as an LLC or limited partnership company, SPVs make a single investment into just one company.
Rickner, Octane CEO Bill Carpou and Sustain SoCal CEO Scott Kitcher put together a mission statement for their new venture firm in the fall.
”The three of us bring together the core ingredients for a VC fund to succeed,” he said. “And, we complement each other well. We have different networks and skill sets, but we’re mission-aligned and collectively-aligned.”
The team hopes to raise around $20 million by the summer. It’s raised just over $10 million so far, Rickner said.
“The first commitments are all from SoCal and know Octane or SoCal well,” Rickner said, adding that they’re targeting high net-worth individuals and family offices.
Elevation recently also brought on longtime climate technology investor Rachel Payne and former Seeder Clean Energy co-founder Alex Shoer.
Early Investments
Elevation’s first investment, for which it raised more than $1 million, was in Los Angeles-based Veloce Energy. The startup runs a software platform and installation system to enhance the move to a decentralized, distributed energy grid that enables anyone to trade electricity on its networks.
Rickner said companies like Veloce can accelerate the shift to these decentralized power systems “faster and cheaper” than enormous electricity providers.
In late April, the firm made its second investment (also through an SPV) in Carbon Collective.
The Alameda-based startup enables employees to use their retirement funds to fight climate change by divesting from companies that contribute to climate change and to re-invest in companies working to combat the climate crisis.
“Venture deals move quickly,” Rickner said, in explaining why he opted to raise money quickly via SPV rather than waiting for the fund to close. “These first two deals were great opportunities. We had special access, and we didn't want to pass them up.”
Rickner declined to disclose the amount of either investment.
Photo by Tyler Casey on Unsplash
Next Industrial Revolution
It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Silicon Valley.
“Part of the allure for me was [the opportunity to] work on something I’ve been passionate about for a long time,” Rickner said.
He credits the pandemic and lockdowns that followed with inspiring him, like many others, to reflect on what was important.
“A lot of people woke up and decided we had to take better care of our environment, that climate change was happening,” he added. ”When you take time, you realize there are more floods and fires and extreme events, and it became personal to a lot of folks."
Elevation will have plenty of opportunities to invest close to home, Rickner noted. Orange County is home to some of the biggest names in electric vehicles, including electric pickup truck maker Rivian Automotive, which is headquartered in Irvine.
But it will also have local competition. Laguna Beach-based Keiki Capital launched in 2017 to invest in climate tech startups at the pre-seed and seed level.
Rickner sees the time we’re living in as a transition into the next industrial revolution—and he sees opportunities.
“90% of the world economy, as measured by country GDP, has committed to net zero,” he said, referring to several nations’ pledges to move to power sources that are carbon neutral.
More than half of the world’s corporate and financial institutions, as measured by revenue and assets under management, have committed to a net-zero approach, he added.
“The previous industrial revolutions produced many billionaires,” Rickner said. “And this one will do the same.”
Deirdre Newman
Deirdre Newman is an Orange County-based journalist, editor and author and the founder of Inter-TECH-ion, an independent media site that reports on tech at the intersection of diversity and social justice.
LA Has Enough Parking Spots for All of Manhattan. This Startup Wants to Make Them Easier to Find.
08:00 AM | December 18, 2021
Photo by Patryk Sikora on Unsplash
Though Los Angeles drivers might spend hours per week searching for parking, the truth is that the city actually has an abundance of parking spaces. In fact, according to one study, L.A. has enough parking spaces to cover all of Manhattan.
Alex Israel, CEO of Venice-based Metropolis Technologies, decided it was time to make use of more of that space for purposes other than storage of inactive vehicles. It’s perhaps a surprising point of view, considering Metropolis is the developer of an automated payment platform for parking facilities.
However, Israel said the technology offered by Metropolis will make parking more efficient, eliminating the need for excess spaces that go unused for most of the day.
“[Parking] is never the highest and best use for land,” said Israel. “Lots of that land can be repatriated by the community, for parks and for community centers.”
Israel said space that remains in use for parking could in the future become much more actively utilized, as more electric and autonomous vehicles and micromobility devices hit the market.
“Think about the cleaning, servicing, charging and deployment [of vehicles],” he said. “Someone will need to convert the infrastructure to empower all future modes of mobility.”
Rethinking Parking's Use of Space
How does Metropolis fit in with all this? The company’s technology allows drivers to access parking facilities without obtaining a ticket or paying at a booth or kiosk. Vehicles registered in the company’s database can simply go in and out; the owner’s credit card is charged automatically.
For most users, the system’s appeal will mainly be its convenience. But Israel said the real-time information gathering necessary to make the payment platform usable will be a tremendous asset to parking lot owners and operators, who can get a better sense of how to maximize the value of a given parking facility.
“We look at a [parking] facility and we say, ‘it’s only occupied 35% of the time; how do we fill it?’” said Israel. “Maybe we can deploy vehicle charging [stations] or micrologistics or the staging of vehicles for a delivery service.”
Israel said that parking lots and garages are ideal locations for such uses. A major obstacle to that vision is property owners, who currently have no way of knowing the capacity of specific lots in real time. With a database of parking structures constantly being updated with information about available space, Israel said Metropolis is in a position to facilitate more efficient uses of these facilities by sharing occupancy information with a wide range of potential users.
To that end, the company last month announced a partnership with Uber Technologies which will allow users of the Uber app to enter their license plate information in order to park at garages that employ Metropolis' platform.
Israel said Metropolis is pursuing similar arrangements with a wide range of partners—from scooter companies to delivery services—in order to ensure facilities are being used to maximum potential.
Pointing to studies showing that drivers cruising for parking constitute as many as one-third of all drivers on the road in urban areas, Israel said that making parking facilities more efficient and visible to car owners could also alleviate traffic congestion by making it easier and more convenient to pull into a lot or garage rather than circling around looking for street parking.
Democratizing Parking Data
Juan Matute, deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, said the most straightforward way to cut down on congestion is by ensuring fewer cars are on the road in the first place. Still, he notes that new technology like that offered by Metropolis has a role to play in eliminating some of the most obvious and wasteful impracticalities associated with parking.
“These apps are addressing the issue where you only know about parking you can see,” said Matute.
In dense areas like downtown Los Angeles, a parking spot can feel impossible to locate. In fact, Matute said, parking in the area is abundant, but much of it is concealed in garages where pricing varies considerably.
“From the street you can’t see onto level five of a parking structure,” said Matute. “This contributes to a perception of scarcity. Even if 70% of spaces in a district were available, if all the on-street parking and the first floors of lots were full, it could make someone think ‘oh, there can’t be any parking'.”
If real-time occupancy data and pricing information from parking facilities was widely available, it could make drivers more likely to fill spots that are now underutilized due simply to the fact that drivers don’t know about them.
Matute said making parking facilities more convenient for drivers to access could also make it possible to convert more on-street parking to other uses, like outdoor dining, curbside pickup and delivery and bike and scooter storage.
“Those are great uses for on-street spaces,” said Matute. “The urban planner’s dream is to have all that in the curb zone, and put any car that’s staying more than 15 minutes off-street.”
In order for this to work in practice, however, parking and transportation apps must be able to offer a wealth of information to drivers, Matute said. For Metropolis, that means ensuring its platform is used in as many parking facilities as possible.
Israel said the company’s technology is already being used in close to 300 locations, and agreements are in place for it to be adopted at 600 facilities nationwide.
That’s far from ubiquitous, but the company only publicly launched in February, after spending a little over three years in stealth mode. With more than $60 million raised to date, Israel said the focus for the company is now on scaling up and expanding to new locations.
There may be some growing pains along the way. In November, Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus criticized the company’s user data collection policies outlined in its app and speculated that the startup’s eventual aim could be to sell valuable user location and browsing data to advertisers.
Israel said Metropolis collects user data necessary for the functionality of its service and that drivers do not have to download the app in order to park at facilities using its payment platform. The company does not sell user data to advertisers and has no plans to do so, he added.
Instead, said Israel, Metropolis generates revenue through contracts with parking lot owners and through collection of service fees charged at some facilities.
Israel said this will continue to be the company’s business model for the foreseeable future, as it looks to continue bringing new facilities into its system in the year ahead.
“This has been a massive year for growth,” said Israel. “It’s really such an exciting time to be part of the mobility landscape.”
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Salt AI’s $3M Bet, Snapchat’s Creator Cash, Rivian’s EV Tech, and ŌURA’s $200M Win
11:01 AM | December 20, 2024
🔦 Spotlight
Happy Friday, LA - let’s dive right in to this week’s highlights:
Salt AI, a forward-thinking AI startup based in Los Angeles, has secured a $3 million seed funding round led by Morpheus Ventures with participation from Struck Capital, among others, to tackle the complexity of managing workflows.Salt AI's blog details how its platform centralizes tools like CRM systems, project management software, and data trackers into one interface, eliminating inefficiencies and freeing up teams to focus on meaningful work. With new funding in hand, Salt plans to scale its platform and expand its reach, a move that underscores how AI can solve everyday business challenges.
Image Source: Salt AI - Aber Whitcomb
While Salt AI focuses on the workplace, Snapchat is doubling down on creators, with its latest updates introducing revenue-sharing opportunities and direct monetization features. The company’snewsroom update outlines how enhanced analytics will help creators better understand their audiences and sustain their work. The platform's latest updates introduce revenue-sharing opportunities and direct monetization features, along with analytics that give creators deeper insights into their audience. By making it easier for creators to grow and sustain their work, Snapchat positions itself as a key player in the creator economy, offering features that rival platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
Image Source: Snap
On the roads, Rivian is redefining what it means to drive an electric vehicle. The company’s latest software update includes advanced route planning, energy management tools, and customization options that make every trip more intuitive and efficient. Additionally, Rivian has introduced new entertainment features, including Google Cast, YouTube, and SiriusXM, as featured in Rivian’ssoftware spotlight, enhancing the in-cabin experience for drivers and passengers alike. This isn’t just about convenience; Rivian is showing how thoughtful software design can elevate the entire EV experience, blending practicality with sophistication.
Image Source: Rivian
ŌURA is making headlines with a fresh $200 million Series D funding round, with participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company and Dexcom, which now values the company at $2.55 billion. This investment, as reported byBusiness Wire, highlights the growing demand for wearable health technology and positions ŌURA as a leader in the space. With its sleek design and emphasis on actionable health insights, the funding will enable ŌURA to expand its reach and further integrate wearables into daily health management, strengthening its position in the competitive health tech market. With this funding, ŌURA aims to reach more users and expand its capabilities, further embedding wearables into daily health management.
Image Source: ŌURA
Stay tuned as Salt AI, Snapchat, Rivian, and ŌURA continue to evolve, offering us new ways to work, connect, and live better.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Venture Funds
- Undeterred Capital participated in a $7M Seed funding round for Portal, a Watertown, Mass.-based biotech company specializing in advanced intracellular delivery technology to drive innovations in biological research and cellular therapeutics. - learn more
- Vamos Ventures participated in a $7.9M Series A funding round for Culina Health, a Hoboken, NJ-based company that provides personalized, science-based virtual nutrition care by connecting patients with registered dietitians, with plans to use the funds to expand its offerings for dietitians and patients, implement AI-driven tools to enhance care efficiency, and strengthen its leadership team through key hires. - learn more
- Humans Ventures participated in a $3.8M Seed funding round for Hamming.ai, a San Francisco-based company specializing in automated tools for testing and optimizing voice agents, with plans to expand its platform, enhance reliability and perform, and accelerate product development. - learn more
- Fifth Wall led, with participation from Starshot Capital and others, in a $9.5M Series A funding round for Mojave, a Sunnyvale, CA-based company developing energy-efficient commercial air conditioning technology. The funds will be used to accelerate the adoption of its innovative systems and reduce energy consumption in the cooling industry. - learn more
- ReMY Investors participated in a $17M Series B funding round for Scripta Insights, a company that leverages data analytics to help employers and healthy plans reduce prescription drug costs, with the funds aimed at expanding its platform and scaling operations. - learn more
- Mantis VC participated in a $16.5M funding round for Nuon, a company specializing in Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) solutions that streamline AI, data, and infrastructure software deployment. The funds will support product development, readiness for general availability in 2025, and efforts to expand customer acquisition. - learn more
- B Capital participated in a $102M Series C funding round for Precision, a company developing minimally invasive brain-computer interfaces to treat neurological disorders, with plans to use the funds to expand its team, advance clinical research, and refine its AI-powered brain implant for helping users with severe paralysis operate digital devices using their thoughts. - learn more
- The Games Fund led a $3M Seed funding round for Dark Passenger, a Poland-based game studio founded by veterans of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, to create an unannounced, innovative, first-person multiplayer PvPvE stealth-action game set in a distinctive universe inspired by feudal Japan and martial arts cinema. - learn more
LA Exits
- Calliope Networks, a generative AI company providing licensed media content like movies, TV shows, and news, has been acquired by Protege to strengthen its platform’s capabilities in advancing AI development. - learn more
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