"Hi Charlie,
I've requested a meeting with you during the first week of March. Here are ten reasons why you should take the meeting..."
This is an e-mail I got from Amanda Weeks in February 2014, and the beginning of a two and a half year journey that culminated with Brooklyn Bridge Ventures leading a pre-seed round for Industrial Organic that kicked off about a year ago. The round, which was raised in two tranches, was recently announced by Inc Magazine.
Amanda and her co-founder Brett Van Aalsburg researched for two years and developed an anaerobic fermentatio process that quickly breaks down food waste in a matter of days. Byproducts of the process can be turned into other goods like organic fertilizer and natural surface cleaners. When I funded the company, it was little more than a science project in a garage in Brooklyn and soon, they'll open up a waste processing facility in Newark--one that didn't require tens of millions of dollars to setup and also won't pollute the local neighborhood with odor. It won't throw off dangerous gases, and yes, the process will make a profit.
I was once asked by a potential investor what I thought the exit of this company will be. The conversation went like this...
"Well, acquisition or IPO."
"You think this company will IPO??"
"Can you prove to me that a company serving a market where every last human being on the face of the earth creates organic waste, which they get paid to process and then paid again for what they turn it into, *won't* IPO?"
That's how I think of this company--a huge problem, bet on early, with a solution exponentially cheaper, faster, safer and more urban friendly than the competition, built by scrappy founders knowledgeable enough to be dangerous but not so experienced as to get held up by old paradigms.
You give me 30 opportunities to make that bet at pre-seed valuations and I'll give you a winning portfolio, and a very very interesting set of companies to work with and be proud of.
Also, very excited to once again be investing with Nisha and Susan at BBG Ventures in our fourth investment together (goTenna, The Wing, Ringly being the others), as well as Newark Venture Partners, 3G Investments, and several angel investors who are LPs in Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.