SVRGN Weekly Digest #26 💫
Space, near space, materials and philosophy of mathematics
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🤼 People
Intel Ignite cohort Spring ‘24
I (Jonatan) got the honour to give initial feedback to two of the final pitches of the European Intel Ignite cohort - Pathway and Zeropoint. Both Zuzanna and Iliam did a great job at pitching their companies. Intel Ignite continue to do great work coaching founders.
Neil Buchanan, Thomas Santini and Jakub Jecuminek - Co-founders and VP at Lodestar Space
We spent a lot of time with the Lodestar team these past weeks! Working together on the pre-seed investment, followed by strategy work has been a real pleasure. Neil and Thomas are impressive founders who’ve built a culture of getting shit done, fast. They’re going to space for sure. To learn more, check out our memo.
💼 Portfolio jobs board
This weeks selection of opportunities from the portfolio:
Senior Space Systems Engineer at Lodestar Space (New portfolio company!)
🚀 Companies
[REDACTED] - Autonomous underwater drones
Status: Deployed in war zone
Source: dms
Founders: [REDACTED]
Why it’s cool:
Protecting the maritime domain is difficult because of the physical properties of water (it’s wet and dark). But the capability is important. Check out the latest Russian demo’s of Zubr-class LCAC, and submarine cable surveying for recent examples. US-based Saronic recently raised $175M Series B for Unmanned Surface Vessels.
Intrepid AI - Robotic Operating System
Status: Pre-seed raised
Source: CAVI
Founders: Francisco Gadaleta
Why it’s cool:
They run a productive blog on AI, but are also building a platform for managing and building for robots. As we all agree, robots are the future, in various shapes and forms, giving AI a physical form makes sense. But to get there we need to make it easier for hardware developers to build and deploy fleets of embodied AI.
Holy Technologies - Composite manufacturing optimization
Status: Pre-seed
Source: CAVI
Founders: Moritz Reiners, Bosse Rothe
Why it’s cool:
We’re still limited in using carbon fiber because of manual labor and latent know-how. Holy can open new markets for light-weight materials and potentially replace steel or aluminium. CAD-to-Product is a whole category nowadays.
💡 Ideas & Science
Alex Patow’s Guest Post at Data-driven VC
Alex summarized his learnings from the past years of “data in VC” first with EQT Motherbrain and since last year with us at inflection.xyz. The tl;dr is: data is not only sourcing, and the methodology is the same as for any startup. Start small and test what works in a product-engineering hybrid. Thanks Alex for this!
Some Proposals for Reviving the Philosophy of Mathematics by Reuben Hersh
A great, accessible piece for anyone who’s ever thought “why am I doing this” in math class. Or in preparation for the inevitable post-3 beer pub question of “was mathematics invented or discovered”.
US “Army taking wide-open approach to high-altitude platforms”: SMDC chief
As investors into Radical Aero, we’re glad to see more public support of HAPS!
Minuteman Missile Communications
A very nerdy deep-dive into how communications of the Minuteman missile facilities was/is done. Hyper-critical of course.