Venture capital has a diversity problem . BLCK VC , a new organization founded by Storm Ventures associate Frederik Groce and NEA associate Sydney Sykes to connect, engage and advance black venture capitalists, is ready for a new era in the industry. Their mission: Turn 200 black investors into 400 black investors by 2024. “We think of ourselves as an organization formed by black VCs for blacks VCs to increase the representation of black investors,” Sykes told TechCrunch. “You can look around and say well ‘I know five black VCs,’ but you can also say this firm does not have a single black VC, they may not even have a single underrepresented minority … We want to make firms reckon with the fact that there is a racial diversity problem; there is a lack of black VCs and every firm should really care about it.” BLCK VC has been at work since the beginning of 2018, building and expanding a network of black investors in the San Francisco area, Los Angeles and New York. They seek to provide a...
Because solar and wind power are now cheaper to produce than energy from fossil fuels , the only obstacle that remains to the mass adoption of renewable power is the amount of money utilities need to spend to store the energy those systems produce. Right now, storing 100 megawatts of renewable energy (enough to power roughly 600,000 homes) means spending roughly $65.6 million on massive batteries like the kind made by Tesla, or relying on huge pumped hydro-electric storage projects that essentially create man-made dams where the release of water spins turbines to generate energy (those projects are typically far larger than 100 megawatts). A new company called Energy Vault , launched from Bill Gross’ Idealab incubator in Pasadena, Calif., has developed a technology, based on the principles of pumped hydro storage, that it claims can slash the cost of energy storage to a fraction of the current price and make renewable energy cost-effective all day, every day. As climate change worr...