Monday, December 23, 2019
Reflections on 2019: Aaron Fyke, Thin Line Capital
Every year, at the end of the year, we share some reflections on the past year from our readers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, sponsors, and others in the local technology community. Today, we share the thoughts of Aaron Fyke, the founder and Managing Director of Thin Line Capital (www.thinlinecapital.com), a venture capital firm in the energy and sustainability space. We'll be featuring contributions all through the holiday season.
What was the biggest news for you/your company this year?
Thin Line Capital launched its first fund, closed its first three investments, and brought a dedicated energy/sustainability venture capital firm to southern California. This was the cumulation of several years as an entrepreneur based in Pasadena growing clean energy technology companies. While I have had experience as an investor with a VC firm ten years ago (during “Cleantech 1.0”), I noticed a change a couple of years ago where opportunities in this space didn’t require the capital-intensive types of investments of before, allowing a smaller fund to excel. With support from prior backers of mine, Thin Line Capital was launched.
What new technology area, startup, service, or app did you find most interesting or useful this year, and why?
While it is starting to sound overblown (and by the number of pitches I receive, it certainly seems that way), but Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning is really stretching its wings. So many industries run by “heuristics” (a fancy word for guessing) have not embraced any kind of sophisticated optimization. I’ve seen opportunities in managing the grid, predicting plant growth, running power plants, scheduling traffic, and a thousand other things (to say nothing of self driving cars and other world-changing applications) which will be fundamentally changed with the adoption of AI/ML and this is something that startups are particular adept at implementing.
What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?
This isn’t a lesson I learned, but rather one that continues to be reinforced. Entrepreneurs (and I view Thin Line Capital as my 7th startup) have to understand the time required for fund raising. It’s a big world out there, and there are many investors. The challenge is finding the right investor with the right match for any given company - stage, sector, investment thesis, check size, etc. This requires patience, tenacity, and the ability to respect people’s time (and the flip side - investors needing to respect entrepreneur’s time is something I’ve heavily embraced with Thin Line). I’ve built a brilliant group of advisors and supporters, and a great core group of investors for Thin Line, including Wavemaker Partners in Santa Monica, but it took patience and ambition to get there - which is true for any startup.
What are you most looking forward to in the technology/startup world in 2020?
2020 will see the final close of Thin Line’s first fund. This is as much of a significant milestone as my first close. I plan on working with other industry luminaries in southern California, and nationwide, who are moving the needle forward on clean energy. This is the biggest opportunity since the first industrial revolution and I’m excited to be part of it.
Mi>Aaron Fyke has spent over twenty years as an entrepreneur, having cofounded six companies in a number of technology areas including fuel cell, ocean power, concentrating solar, and energy storage technologies. 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.