2023 BV Impact Report

At Blackhorn, our mission is to transform how we build, power, and move our world. Investing to decarbonize our industrial economy and empower our workforce addresses critical global challenges while unlocking tremendous economic opportunity. The solutions we’re investing in are essential to mitigate climate change and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But reducing emissions is not enough; we must also empower workers with the skills and tools needed for the clean energy transition, driving greater productivity, safety, and satisfaction.

Our Limited Partners recognize that this multi-dimensional investment approach drives business resilience, high-quality jobs, and economic upside. To us, it’s simply smart investing. When done right, pairing people with technology has always transformed society. We believe digital solutions hold the key to industrial transformation; Blackhorn portfolio companies are capturing, processing, and leveraging data that enable greater resource efficiency and reduce costs at scale.

As sector specialists, we understand the rapid changes occurring across the industrial economy. Our team and extended network help our startups anticipate and tap into future economic value creation. This is evident in the recent convergence of AI and Manufacturing Supercycles, rising energy demand, and structural labor shortages, which create ripe conditions for transformative companies. In the pages that follow, you’ll see direct impact examples; of companies improving resource efficiency in manufacturing facilities, reducing source emissions from vehicles, and enabling the workers that manufacture, operate, maintain, and repair the grid infrastructure critical for the energy transition.

Calculating impact is hard–especially early in a company’s lifecycle and for software-oriented solutions. Over this past year, we refined our impact methodology to create a simple, data-driven approach to assess impact that scales as company commercial success scales. In this year’s report, our portfolio companies identified the most relevant metric (e.g., units deployed) and impact metric (e.g., energy saved/unit) for their business. While some companies have modest metrics today, our report provides a clear vision for their future impact through 2028, which is often 100x what it is today. Despite a number of near-term uncertainties, a challenging fundraising environment, and pushback against DEI and ESG mandates, we remain optimistic for the future. The best is yet to come.