New Industrials: An Investment Strategy for the Reindustrial Age (Part 2)

Part Two: What We Are Building

I. Our Vision

A diversified investment platform purpose-built to scale transformative technology companies as they provide the tools and platforms for market economies to reindustrialize and sustainably meet the demands of a disrupted, contested, and evolving world.

In Part One, we laid out our perspective on the shift that is occurring as the Information Age moves to the Reindustrial Age. However, it is one thing to identify a trend or an opportunity. It is another to do something about it. Our vision for the “doing something about it” begins with a single question. Given all of this, how then shall we operate? 

Of the many challenges facing our planet, climate change is one of the most urgent and most defining.  We are by no means the only investors to recognize this.  A main indicator of this shift underway has also been the growing number of our peers who have set out to focus their future investments exclusively in climate technologies.  Naturally, we applaud this development and will be partners to many of them.  However, Acequia New Industrials intends to take a more expansive view. 

New Industrials is explicit in its focus to enable the acceleration of decarbonization.  However, in so doing, we expect that the long-term value of decarbonization solutions and the economics of reindustrialization will be inextricably aligned.  Mission-driven technology solutions must meet economic efficiency.  We hold the deep conviction that the actual sustainability of this era hinges on getting this right. 

New Industrials are convergent by design.  They encompass not only multiple technology verticals simultaneously but in doing so impact different layers of society.  For example, a new approach to fusion or battery chemistry may start in a university laboratory or R&D department, but it doesn’t stay there very long.  A promising New Industrial must navigate various government agencies, peer-reviewed scientific scrutiny, public perception, wary corporate customers, and a dynamic regulatory environment.  If the company’s technology has any commercial viability, its roadmap will be much different than that of, say, a software-enabled workforce management tool. And why? The impact potential of New Industrials grows quickly beyond the technology stack and takes root in multiple layers of the economy.

Consider the battery factories currently envisaged for the now hollowed-out hubs of the last Industrial Revolution, like Northern France and the American South / Midwest.  The technology being built there is critical to decarbonize industries such as mobility or energy storage.  However, the benefits of that worthy goal will be short-lived if the ecosystem around it does not share in the transformation.  Who will work in the factories?  Who will drive innovation in the supply chain?  What good is saving the world if, in doing so, it disenfranchises the coming generations it seeks to sustain? 

Or consider the global push for fusion energy and quantum computing.  What good is an inexhaustible energy source if it is controlled by those who would ultimately seek humanity’s harm?

Ours is not a political enterprise.  However, we do believe that if fundamental advancements in science are to save and perpetuate this planet and its people, then the conditions for continued curiosity, expression, and hopefully, discovery must be nurtured just the same.  In the beginning of this New Age, the development of the infrastructure and ecosystem are just as critical as the technology itself.  We intend to build our firm to be the engine by which both are realized and thereby answering the fundamental question that we ask ourselves at this crucial moment in the long history of our species and planet.

So, how then shall we operate?

We seek to invest in companies that perpetuate

An abundant planet for the next generations,

Realized by regenerative technologies that inspire further innovation,

Created and controlled by human beings that value freedom, self-expression, and curiosity.

We are In Service of this Mission.

II. The Acequia Capital New Industrial Mission

We exist to invest in mission-driven founders and teams who build technologies and companies that are:

1. Reindustrializing market economies to meet the demands of a disrupted, contested, and evolving world

2. Accelerating decarbonization as a principle of sustainability and long-term economic viability

3. Strengthening market economies as the foundation for how open societies can operate with strategic autonomy, diversified capacities, and a balanced national interest 

In doing so, we expect to help mission-driven founders and teams:

1. Get off the ground (Company formation and early-stage product market fit/business proof)

2. Solve the Valley of Death challenge (ensure a systematic capacity for enabling industrial scale) 

3. Unlock “GDP-scale” capital flows to accelerate their path to leadership (challenging incumbents for pricing power and market share)

We believe mission success helps reestablish a revitalized global framework for how Nation State actors can constructively align and engage to address global, generational problems.

III. How We Will Invest

Company journey through the New Industrials Center of Gravity