Deep tech investment model

Should generalists invest in deep-tech?

Author

Michael Morgenstern
February 27, 2024

Happy Tuesday Brex community,

This week has been significant for those leading American innovation, especially in deep tech. Investors are now focusing more on materials and hardware, understanding their future impact across different assets. Venture capitalists face challenges in assessing unit economics in new markets, determining the feasibility of early-stage deep tech investments, and competing with established VC firms. Additionally, the involvement of sovereign wealth funds complicates the funding environment, requiring founders to think strategically about partnerships.

Founders also need to consider the role of corporate venture capital and underwriting in achieving significant returns. They must weigh the advantages of corporate collaborations, like resource access and market knowledge, against potential downsides like vision dilution and loss of control. These topics will be central in our upcoming events.

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern

Upcoming Events:

  • Black in Tech Mixer NYC 2/27

    ​We invite you to join us in recognizing and celebrating the incredible contributions and perseverance of the Black community in NYC

    Apply Here Brex Host: Shadavia Jones

  • Brexfast Club Boca Raton 2/29

    Designed as a private breakfast for GPs and LPs attending the StepStone 2024 Venture Capital AGM

    Apply Here Brex Host: Michael Morgenstern

  • Brex Supper Club NYC - Female Founders 3/6

    Designed as a private breakfast for female founders in NYC

    Apply Here Brex Host: Erica Wenger

  • Brexfast Club SXSW 3/10

    Designed as a private breakfast for early stage B2B SaaS founders at SXSW

    Apply Here Brex Host: Gaby Levey

  • Brexfast Club SXSW 3/11

    Get up close and personal with the visionary teams behind a16z Talent x Opportunity, HubSpot for Startups and Brex

    Apply Here Brex Host: Gaby Levey

Startup of the Week 🤩 

Or Weis Co-Founder and CEO of Permit.io 

Permit.io offers a platform designed to eliminate the need for developers to create permissions from scratch. They provide a plug-and-play, full-stack framework that allows developers to implement a secure and flexible authorization layer within minutes, allowing them to focus more on building their applications rather than getting bogged down with the complexities of authorization mechanisms.

Ambassadors Perspective: removing the need for dedicated headcount, maintenance and compute power for setting up authorization across applications is table stakes. Especially as cloud native apps have become the norm, speed matters. Expect Permit.io to grow w/ PLG and referrals from a strong investor base.

Emerging Manager Spotlight 🤩 

NOEMIS Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund investing in Financial Technology (payments, consumer finance, credit/lending and capital markets), Marketplaces, and AI/ML (applied) at the pre-seed and seed stage. The firm is currently investing out of its $25.8 million Fund I (2021 vintage). Current investments include Squire, PetalCard, Prism Data, Mai, EMTECH, Pivt, AlgoPear, GrailPay and Hopscotch.

Simeon Iheagwam is the Founder and Managing Partner of NOEMIS Ventures, where he leads all aspects of investment strategy and fund management.

Connect with us

The financial stack that scales with you. 🤩 Trusted by 1 in 3 US startups, Brex allows you to manage your spend from MVP to IPO. Interested? Sign up here using the referral code NEWSLETTER and get 25,000 bonus points, $5K AWS credits, $2.5K OpenAI credits and up to $150K in SaaS discounts.

Don’t hesitate to reach out,🦾!

Startups Team @ Brex