Summer Recap from BV’s 2024 Intern Class

Genesia Tang: Summer Internship Reflection

This summer, I had the privilege of joining Blackhorn Ventures as an MBA Summer Associate through the Impact Capital Managers’ Mosaic Fellowship program, which aims to place underrepresented graduate school students into leading impact investing funds. I had an incredible experience at Blackhorn with my first foray into the world of investing, having previously held advising and operating roles in public sector consulting and at a late-stage, venture-backed mobility startup. As my internship concludes, I would like to share some reflections from my 10 weeks here:

The commercialization of a startup is paramount – a viable product must not only solve a problem, but do so at scale. This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in and lead 15+ company due diligence calls across our four Blackhorn verticals – energy, transportation, supply chain, and the built environment. Through that experience, I quickly came to realize that while many startups have a compelling product or solution, they underestimate the criticality of go-to-market and capital efficiency. “What would it take for you to get to [x] revenue target?” “What would it take for you to get to the next fundraising round?” As my Blackhorn team members posed pointed and insightful questions at company founders, I too was learning in that process.

 Blackhorn prides itself in going above and beyond to support its portfolio companies

One of my key projects this summer was helping a Blackhorn portfolio company define their market opportunity and identify a number of market expansion strategies. This analysis was prompted by investor feedback in their most recent fundraising efforts, and I could clearly see the impact of my work in equipping the team with more robust analysis and additional data points going into their future investor meetings. Beyond this project, I feel lucky that Blackhorn is a fund that prides itself in going above and beyond to support its portfolio companies. As a result, I had the chance to witness and participate in a number of platform activities, including syndicate-building, partnerships management, financial modeling, and operations support.

In venture, not only do we invest in early-stage startups, we operate like one, too.

I was pleasantly surprised this summer at the degree of autonomy and ownership in my role, as well as the culture of entrepreneurial spirit, flexibility, and agility across the broader team. Even in my initial interview at Blackhorn, one of our Managing Partners, Melissa, emphasized that the most successful investors at the fund are the “utility players” – self-reliant and proactive. This had proven to be true this summer, where my willingness to dive into new projects was rewarded with significant learning and growth. I had the opportunity to spearhead a follow-on investment deal, lead company diligence calls, formulate an investment thesis on a sector that was entirely new to me, and support internal fundraising efforts. An important skill in venture lies in determining what to do, where to dig, and who to talk to.

The drive towards achieving net zero is palpable in this space, and we cannot lose momentum.

More than anything, I am walking away from my internship experience feeling newly energized and motivated about working in climate. This summer, I had the chance to meet so many talented and passionate founders, both within and outside the Blackhorn portfolio, who are committed to driving progress towards global net zero targets. The entire Blackhorn team as well, of course, is aligned around our mission of enhancing industrial resource efficiency and accelerating decarbonization. Whether as an innovator, operator, investor, or advisor, there is so much work to be done in this space, and I am eager to see where our collective efforts will take us.

I can’t thank the entire Blackhorn team enough for an incredible summer of learning. I will be returning to my MBA at Harvard Business School in the fall, but will continue to cheer the Blackhorn team on from the sidelines.

Yahli Einav: Summer Internship Reflection

This summer I had the unique opportunity to Intern at Blackhorn Ventures for 10 weeks. Through my internship I was exposed to Blackhorn as a whole, from investing, internal operations, assisting portfolio companies, and reporting to limited partners. Building on two years of my Management Science & Engineering degree at Stanford, as well as a previous internship at a smaller early-stage fund, my experiences with the Blackhorn team, and focusing on climate and the industrial world, was incredibly interesting and rewarding. As my summer comes to a close, below are some of my primary takeaways and lessons.

1. There is an enormous under-water iceberg of infrastructure that operates as the backbone of consumer facing technology. Working within a climate fund, focused on the industrial world between the Built Environment, Energy, Supply Chain, and Transportation, I was exposed to many areas of technology that an average consumer rarely considers. Learning about the infrastructure that supports our everyday lifestyles – cloud technology, phones, internet, delivery services, among an infinite number of other outputs – I’ve gained a new outlook on the world and the opportunities below the surface.

2. The tech and VC landscape is trending towards the inherent point of technology: making existing systems more efficient. Every single one of the 10+ deals I had exposure to this summer focused on solutions that made an industrial process more efficient, whether expediting construction processes, eliminating bottlenecks in the supply chain, or expediting the energy transition by accelerating the deployment of infrastructure.

3. As an early stage investor, you can learn about a market after learning about a company, however, a more productive strategy is becoming an expert on a vertical, and then deciding what companies to search for. As a thesis driven fund, Blackhorn is able to have a calculated and concentrated investment pool driven by vertical expertise. During my summer, I worked on an extensive Data Center research project. Becoming knowledgeable about the area, prior to meeting with founders, allowed me to have a clearer understanding of where the best opportunities lie.

4. There is much more to the role than investing. While seeking out companies and doing diligence is still the core of the work, the early-stage investor is also a regular consultant to its existing portfolios, an internal entrepreneurial operator, and a client facing operator with regard to limited partners, which offers a wide range of experience in working on with number of largely different people, teams, and companies.

Overall, my experience and extensive learning this summer would not have been possible without the fantastic team and mentors at Blackhorn. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity I had this summer, and am excited for what the future holds for Blackhorn and industrial climate investing globally.