Silence wants to shake things up when it comes to investing in climate change technology. This new angel-style VC firm has already raised $35 million and plans to make dozens of small investments in climate-related startups to help tech startups apply their strategies.
The Silence team is led by Borja Moreno de los Rios, who acts as the sole general partner of Silence's original fund. Before starting Silence, he was a venture partner at FJ Labs. He also founded Merlin, a U.S. hourly job marketplace.
At Silence, Borja hopes to apply his experience to climate change investing. He surrounds himself with a team of technical experts who have worked hard to become climate change experts.
“I have been deeply connected to nature and the environment since I was a child. I grew up passionate about water skiing from an early age. From the age of 5 or 6, I spent every weekend and vacation by the lake or in the countryside. ,” Borja said.
“But as I grew through my career in technology, I was always trying to learn as much as I could so that I could really make an impact at the level of climate technology. “After we got acquired, I wanted to do something about climate change,” he added later in the conversation.
silent partner
Since the fund's initial close in June 2022, Silence has already invested in 22 companies. They apply the same investment strategy (with some exceptions). Silence does not lead a round or occupy a seat on the board.
By doing so, we believe we can remain neutral and impartial in the long run, similar to angel investors, but with a larger ticket size. “The average ticket price is about $300,000. We invest from pre-seed to Series A, and we invest from $100,000 to $700,000,” Borja said. Several follow-on investments will be made for the most promising investments.
They also don't compete with top tier VC funds, so they can be invited to participate in highly competitive deals. “We wanted to find a way to not compete with current VCs,” Borja said. For example, Silence has already participated in several rounds with his well-known VC firms such as Point Nine, FJ Labs, FifthWall, Firstmark Capital, and Lowercarbon Capital.
While we do not intend to list all portfolio companies (please check our portfolio page), Silence's portfolio companies include virtual power plants, energy management systems, home energy management systems, solar equipment financing platforms, We are building a market that emphasizes circularity.
“We have individuals that have grown very quickly. And we're very proud of it because we invest in pre-seeds and we never lead the deal. But in this case, everyone wants to 'take the lead'.” “We'll only put money in if we find something,” and the company struggled to close rounds. And no one wanted to be the leader. So we told them, 'We'll be your guide,''' Borja said.
“This is a company in the used EV market called Cardino. So we invested only in the deck and in 9 months we generated about 72 million euros in GMV. And now they are leading with Point Nine as a seed. We raised a seed round. Obviously, it's very early stages, but so far it's been very good.”
In addition to Borja, Sara Ramos Colmenarejo left the Hummingbird team and joined Silence. Guilherme Penna, formerly of Global Founders Capital, is also an investor in Silence. Finally, Brendan Hayes serves as his CFO and COO of the Fund.
Silence's limited partners include general partners from other VC firms such as Firstmark Capital, DST Global, FJ Labs, Point Nine, and Hummingbird, as well as family offices, successful founders, and more. All in all, Borja seemed like a keen investor. Silence wants to remain a small angel-style investor, but he couldn't resist taking some of his portfolio companies public.
“There's a company called Electricone that's building virtual power plant software very early on. We're investing in it and we really like it,” he said. “We have also invested in a company in the US called Runwise, which basically has technology that integrates with heating systems in buildings and puts sensors around the building to constantly optimize the temperature. I built it.”
Interestingly, unlike many climate change funds, Silence does not want to participate in deep tech investments with very long term horizons. Borja attributes Silence's expertise to his SaaS and marketplaces.
“Ultimately, and I know this is a bit controversial, but ultimately it's better to invest in climate change through these safe investments than to invest in 10 moonshots and have them all fail. “I think we can create more value for them,” he said. He said.