Silence wants to shake things up when it comes to investing in climate technology. This new angel VC firm has already raised $35 million and plans to make dozens of small investments in climate startups to help them implement the tech startup playbook.
The Silence team is run by Borja Moreno de los Rios, who is acting as the solo general partner for Silence’s seed fund. Before starting Silence, he was a venture partner FJ Labs. He also founded Merlin, an hourly job marketplace in the US
With Silence, Borja wants to apply his experience in climate investing. He is surrounded by a team of tech experts who have it all did the job to become climate experts as well.
“I have been very connected to nature and the environment since I was a child. I grew up competitively waterskiing from a very young age. From the age of five or six I spent every weekend and all my holidays by lakes and in the countryside,” Borja told me.
“But as I’ve grown in my career in technology, I’ve always tried to learn as much as possible so I can really make an impact at the climate technology level. So after my last company was acquired, I knew I wanted to do something about the climate,” he added later in the conversation.
A silent partner
Since the first fund close in June 2022, Silence has already invested 22 different companies. They apply the same investment strategy (with few exceptions). Silence doesn’t drive laps or get board seats.
This way, they believe they can remain neutral and unbiased in the long run – just like an angel investor, but with a larger ticket size. “The average ticket size is about $300,000. We invest from pre-seed to Series A and we invest anything from $100,000 to $700,000,” said Borja. There will be some follow-on investments for the most promising investments.
They also don’t compete with top VC funds, meaning they can be invited to participate in very competitive deals. “We wanted to find a way to not compete with the current VCs,” Borja said. For example, Silence has already participated in several rounds with well-known VC firms such as Point Nine, FJ Labs, FifthWall, FirstMark Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.
I’m not going to list all the holding companies (check it out portfolio page), but Silence’s portfolio companies build virtual power plants, energy management systems, home energy management systems, financing platforms for solar equipment and markets focused on circularity.
“There is one that grew very quickly. And we are very proud because we invested in pre-seed and never lead to deals. But in this case, the company was struggling to close a round because everyone was saying, “We’ll only put money in if you find a lead.” And no one wanted to be the leader. We told them, ‘We’ll be your leader,'” Borja said.
“This is a company called Cardino, which is a used EV marketplace. So we invested with just the deck, and they do about 72 million euros in GMV in nine months. And now they raised a seed with the Point Nine leading the seed. So obviously, it’s too early, but so far so good.”
In addition to Borja, Sara Ramos Colmenarejo also left hummingbird team to join Silence. Guilherme Pennawho previously worked at Global Founders Capital, is also an investor in Silence. After all, Brendan Hayes acts as CFO and COO for the fund.
Silence’s limited partners include general partners at other VC firms such as FirstMark Capital, DST Global, FJ Labs, Point Nine and Hummingbird, as well as family offices, successful founders, and more. All in all, Borja seemed an enthusiastic investor. Although Silence wants to remain a small angel investor, he couldn’t stop himself from mentioning some of his portfolio companies.
“There is a company called Electronics it’s too early to build a virtual power plant software that we’ve invested in and really like,” he said. “We also invested in a company called Runwise in the US, which has basically built a technology that integrates with the heating system in a building and then has sensors around the building and constantly optimizes the temperature.”
Interestingly, unlike many climate funds, Silence does not want to engage in deep-tech investments with a very long-term timeline. Borja believes Silence’s expertise lies in SaaS and marketplaces.
“In the end — I know this is somewhat controversial — but, ultimately, I think we will create more climate value through these safer investments than if we invest in ten moons and they all fail,” he said. he said.
