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Reflections on 2020: Aaron Fyke, Thin Line Capital

Every year, we feature the year end reflections of founders, CEOs, investors, and others in Southern California's high tech community. We'll be posting these throughout the next two weeks. Today, we have Aaron Fyke, Founder and Managing Partner of Thin Line Capital (www.thinlinecapital.com). You will be able to get to all of these posts on our 2020 reflections here. Are you a founder, CEO, or investor who would like to participate? Contact our editors for details.

What was the biggest news for you/your company this year?

Thin Line Capital successfully reached the final close of its first fund. As a fund manager, showing the credibility of being able to execute on an investment thesis while garnering the support from the larger investment community that that thesis makes sense is a tremendous milestone.

It's been a tough year for many due to the pandemic; how have you or your company adapted to the business environment?

While the pandemic has destroyed our ability to personally interact, it has opened up a whole new set of possibilities for virtual meetings - which has been of tremendous value to Thin Line. A significant percent of Thin Line’s investors are overseas. I have been able to work closely with these investors on strategic issues for the Thin Line fund in ways that wouldn’t have been possible with prior business norms. Furthermore, while a small fund, we invest across the country, and Thin Line has relationships in every time zone. I have been able to work closer with my entrepreneurs, as well as closer with other incubators and accelerators than would have been the case. Caltech and UCLA are now equidistant from CU Boulder and MIT, and that has been a surprising benefit.

What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?

The lessons of climate change have tremendous parallels with the lessons of Covid-19. In both cases a significant security risk to the human population has presented itself. In both cases scientists have been belittled, the response has been politicized, and millions of people have chosen a path of ignorance and destruction because of convenience and political expediency. While the vaccine is finally showing itself and we see the light at the end of the tunnel (a long tunnel ahead of us, mind you), we are not at this point with regards to climate change. I hadn’t fully grasped the scale of how isolated our society now is, in self-serving information bubbles Problems that face our entire populace, with solutions which need our entire populace to support, need to be solved with this understanding.

What are you most looking forward to in the technology/startup world in 2021?

I expect we’re going to see another “Roaring 20s”. We have a lot of rebuilding to do. There is a lot to invest in (both for Thin Line, and for the world at large), and it is when we build things that we are at our best.

Aaron Fyke has spent over twenty years as an investor, engineer, and entrepreneur, having cofounded six companies in a number of technology areas including fuel cell, ocean power, concentrating solar, and energy storage. He is currently Founder and Managing Partner of Thin Line Capital, bringing investment capital to bear on some of the world's toughest problems in energy, water and food sustainability.