HG Ventures

Every founder raising venture capital will be asked to walk an investor through a financial model. But what is the investor actually looking for? Erin C. breaks down how an investor evaluates the assumptions, the output, and the capital ask, and why the founders who can explain the logic connecting all three earn the most confidence. Read Erin’s rundown at the link in the comments.

Colorado just made critical mineral recovery from EV batteries a legal requirement, not a nice-to-have. We're backing the full system behind that shift, through our investments in Titan Advanced Energy Solutions (manufacturing inspection), R3 Robotics (disassembly), and our partnerships with The Heritage Group companies, Envita Solutions Solutions (compliance and handling) and Cirba Solutions (materials processing). No single technology solves battery circularity, it takes a whole ecosystem. Read our analysis at the link in the comments.

The EU's sustainable aviation fuel mandate came into effect this year, meaning that two percent of the fuel available at EU airports now has to be Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Germany added its own sub-mandate specifically for power-to-liquid fuel. When INERATEC CEO Tim Boeltken sat down with John Glushik, he put it simply: "People want to see plants running, not slides." That mindset is what got INERATEC's ERA ONE plant up and running within just over two years of breaking ground, and it positions the company well now that regulation is forcing the fuel to actually get made. Read Tim's conversation with John here: https://lnkd.in/guT-B-zY

One thing we see consistently make a difference in venture capital is what happens after the round closes. Our Platform Manager, Sarah Schlifke wrote about some of the ways we have made a tangible difference beyond the capital we invest: deploying a chemist from The Heritage Group as interim Chief Scientific Officer for a portfolio company's water research, opening supplier relationships that resolved a bottleneck, helping one team scale production 100x. None of that shows up on a cap table, but it makes a huge difference to the companies concerned. Read more about how we invest more than capital: https://lnkd.in/gknxqfCt

The EU Battery Regulation's "battery passport" is now a live requirement, tracking material origin, carbon footprint, and battery health across the supply chain, with recycling efficiency targets kicking in from 2027. The US is following the same arc: Colorado enacted one of the first EPR frameworks for large-format EV batteries this year, with federal standardization likely to follow, in due course. The chemistry of recycling has largely kept pace, but disassembly hasn't: A single EV battery pack takes four to six hours to dismantle manually, representing 30–40% of recycling operating costs. R3 Robotics is addressing this bottleneck by automating the time-intensive, costly and dangerous disassembly of EV batteries and other complex electronic components. Erin C. unpacks why we invested: https://lnkd.in/gWaWcvRx

David Lloyd, CEO of FREDsense Technologies, recently sat down with HG Ventures Managing Director Ginger Rothrock to talk about why real-time PFAS detection is the missing piece of the contamination puzzle — and what it takes to build a company in a market where regulation, corporate liability, and industrial-scale risk are all in motion. They cover how FREDsense found its focus after ten years as a water technology platform, why Ginger sees the PFAS market driven more by fear and liability than by regulation alone, and why the water industry, more than any other, requires a full ecosystem to make progress. Read the conversation and watch the video here: https://lnkd.in/g-JEWz6p