You probably saw this in the WSJ Exclusive last evening:
Concentrated Solar Power Firm Heliogen to Go Public in $2 Billion SPAC Merger
Heliogen is combining with the SPAC Athena Technology, one of the few so-called blank-check companies led by women
Guess who is one of the early Series A investors? Yes:
Neotribe Ventures.
I remember attending the 2019 Annual Investor Meeting (in person, the pre-COVID days) in San Francisco, and Bill T. Gross (not the bond investor with middle intital H, but the Idealab incubator founder) gave a wonderful presentation.
This is really wonderful:
Athena Technology Acquisition Corp. is led by company founders, operators, venture capitalists and investment bankers. Together as a group we currently generate over $9 billion in revenues created from scratch as founders. Our sectors of expertise expand across areas of technology, with a particular focus on FinTech, cybersecurity and technology enabled DTC. In aggregate, we have been on a number of public boards, including Oracle, American Airlines, NBC, BNY Mellon, GroupOn, Draft Kings, Citi, Comcast among others and over 30 private company boards.
Our SPAC is led by FinTech founder and venture capitalist Isabelle Freidheim and cybersecurity founder and CEO of Xtreme Solutions Phyllis Newhouse. Ms. Newhouse, an EY Entrepreneur of the year award winner, previously established the cyber espionage task force and worked for Colin Powell while in the US Army. Ms Freidheim co-founded FinTech company Magnifi and has a private equity and venture capital background.
Former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is one of our advisers.
The 2020 Investor Meeting was online (see my post: Making Possible). Keep a lookout for one of the companies: BillionToOne.
I have previously discussed another exciting company, in Serverless Blockchain, Vendia that is doing very well. I have my regularly scheduled zoom strategy session with the two co-founders (one of them is a woman) later this week.
Earlier in the summer, the 2021 Investor Meeting (online) took place, again featuring presentations from many exciting companies. I would like to highlight one:
They are bringing AI for supply chain risk management to market. More crisply:
Accelerating climate resilience in mission-critical supply chains.