Capital Factory

FoodLabs is an early-stage venture capital fund and venture studio based in Berlin, backing bold entrepreneurs committed to planetary and human health. The firm focuses on FoodTech, Climate Tech, Health, and Agriculture sectors, investing from pre-seed to Series A stages. FoodLabs partners with founders to build companies that address systemic challenges in the food system, from alternative proteins and sustainable agriculture to digital health and climate solutions. With €105 million in Fund III, the team provides both capital and hands-on operational support through their venture studio model, helping founders transform breakthrough ideas into category-defining businesses. Founded by serial entrepreneur and investor Christophe Maire, FoodLabs has built a portfolio of 30+ companies across Europe since 2016. The firm operates at the intersection of venture capital and venture creation, offering founders catalytic financing, strategic guidance, and access to a powerful ecosystem of industry experts, scientists, and operators. Portfolio companies like Formo, Infinite Roots, Microharvest, and InPlanet are pioneering new approaches to protein production, mycelium-based foods, carbon removal, and sustainable nutrition. FoodLabs believes entrepreneurship holds the key to solving the world's most pressing challenges in food and climate.

Capital Factory’s mission is to be the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas, the number one startup state in the U.S. Thousands of entrepreneurs, programmers and designers gather day and night, in-person and online for meetups, classes and coworking. With boots on the ground in Austin, Dallas and Houston, we meet the best entrepreneurs in Texas and introduce them to their first investors, employees, mentors and customers. According to Pitchbook, Capital Factory has been the most active investor in Texas since 2010. You should come to Capital Factory to: Hone your skills at meetups and hackathons Find your co-founder Build a Minimum Viable Product Meet your first angel investors and VCs Find lighthouse customers Keep your costs low Grow your team Quit your job and become an entrepreneur The Capital Factory team is proud to announce that in 2017 we officially became a Certified B Corporation®. This was no easy task. Capital Factory was measured against the “highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.” According to the nonprofit, B Labs, we met those standards and were thus invited to join the movement. Think of it as a Fair Trade certification for the business as a whole, and not just for the coffee. We’re overjoyed about this and encourage others to join us in leading the movement to use our businesses as a force for good™. Check out these other amazing B Corps in Austin: data.world, fitppl, Raven + Lily, KAMMOK, and more!

Launch Factory is an early-stage investment firm that provides capital at company formation in carefully selected founders. Our leadership team is comprised of accomplished entrepreneurs and Venture investors, allowing us to provide portfolio companies with comprehensive support and guidance.

We're by your side from founding to the finish line, following a blueprint for success to take you further. De-risked ideas: We spend 3-4 months vetting each business idea upfront to vastly increase the likelihood of success. Operational Backbone: We streamline the back-end operational processes so our startup leaders can focus on building team, product, and a customer base. This enables our companies to have a best-in-class operations stack with vetted vendors and built for scale. Accelerate funding: The first fundraising round is often the hardest. We provide a multi-year funding runway without the need for outside capital. Network: We are with our executive teams at every step of the journey. Along with our experienced internal teams, we maintain relationships with contractors and consultants to support our leaders where they need it the most. Talent: A company is only as strong as its people. Our in-house talent acquisition function supports leaders in building out their teams as they grow. Mentorship: Even the most accomplished leaders are on constant journeys of betterment and recognize weaknesses can become strengths with practice and attention. We work to further cultivate great leadership talent in our CEO ranks. Community: Our CEOs and portfolio company executives are in frequent contact with one another, serving as sounding boards and thought partners when they have confronted similar challenges. We ideate, validate, create & scaleIdeate: We study industries and niches to discern where they are going next and what white space that creates. We then sketch out the business models, innovations, and technologies that are poised for success. Validate: We only launch businesses in our highest conviction ideas, developed through extensive discussions with potential customers and intensive study of competitors and incumbents to affirm the business idea. Create: Misguided early product decisions can prove disastrous even with a great idea and experienced management team. We work closely with management teams to leverage our industry research and startup experience in MVP and strategy development. Scale: Sifting through stacks of vendor proposals and implementing back-end processes is not the best use of a founding management team’s limited time. We streamline these processes so that the founding team can focus on growing its business. What we do Catalyzing creativity: equipping our leaders to actualize their visions People: The quality of the team ultimately determines whether a new business succeeds or fails. Our experienced in-house talent acquisition function helps structure founding teams, devise talent strategies, and execute on searches. Technology: We have relationships with experienced CTOs, software engineers, and technical recruiters to enable portfolio companies to develop products at a lower cost and to help overcome technical challenges that arise. Funding: Founders often turn to friends and family to pull together the capital needed to get a business off the ground. We provide portfolio companies with a multi-year funding runway. Strategy: Our idea validation process involves customer and competitor interviews, analysis of unit economics, evaluation of ancillary business models, and assessment of go-to-market strategies. We work with management teams to leverage this research in developing an MVP and go-to-market strategy for their company.

Beta Boom is led by two general partners, Kimmy and Sergio Paluch. Yes, they share a last name because they are married and have been partners in life and business for over twenty years. They are both passionate about making the world a better place through technological innovation and giving overlooked founders a fair shot at fulfilling their visions. Kimmy and Sergio have two boys, Rafael and Adrian, who were Beta Boomers from the beginning, hanging out with founders in Beta Boom’s office over the summer of 2018. Rafael wants to work for Beta Boom one day and Adrian wants to be a professional footballer (soccer player). We'll work alongside you from day one. A lot of VCs say that they’ll be there for you, but few are as involved as us and most give generic startup advice. Depending on what you need, we support you on getting things done across product development, sales, marketing, and fundraising. We meet you where you are. Not literally, but figuratively. We work with you and your team to figure out where our support can be most impactful. If your team is strong on engineering and marketing, but need help with sales, that’s what we’ll help with. If your team is great at sales but needs help with engineering and marketing, that’s what we’ll focus on. If all you need is fundraising support, that’s all we’ll do. Focus on the "how" not "what." We don’t like telling founders what to do or spouting useless startup advice. You know your business and customers better than we ever will, and you should make decisions for your company. Plus, you don’t need dark overlords. What we try to help with is the “how.” How do you set up your CRM for fundraising? How do you test marketing channels? How do you generate sales leads? How do you reach out to investors or get introductions? Collaboration sessions rather than lectures. We do collaboration sessions to work through challenges or get stuff done. We don’t lecture you. For example, in a collaboration session we might work on your positioning, review usability testing plans, improve your investor tracker, edit your cold sales emails, etc. When we say we work alongside you, we mean it. Vetted experts at your fingertips. Beta Boom has an extended network of vetted experts that we’ve worked with or our portfolio companies have worked with and loved. We do this so you don’t have to waste time searching for effective support, and can get things done while you build your permanent team. Here are examples of the kinds of experts that you’ll have access to, among others: Growth marketers that can help with setting up and running Google, Instagram, and Facebook ads; Lead generation experts that can get you qualified sales leads via email campaigns; Sales coaches that can help you set up your CRM and walk you through sales conversations; A near-shore engineering firm that specializes in APIs and securely handling large data sets.

Volt Capital is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm focused on elevating crypto founders who are reimagining our systems. Since its founding in 2019 by General Partner Soona Amhaz, Volt Capital has made 35+ investments in early-stage crypto companies and protocols like Nansen, Magic Eden, LayerZero, Magic, and Coinshift. We roll up our sleeves. We’re former founders and engineers with the ability and willingness to build alongside our founders, road test the tech and offer guidance. We support networks. Volt Labs supports projects by staking and validating, liquidity provisioning, collaborating on product architecture and more. We scale ecosystems. We are expert community builders here to share our growth insights and facilitate integrations + partnerships with our deep network. We help founders navigate market cycles. With years of experience operating in crypto, we guide our founders through the inevitable ups and downs of the market.