HVF I - Monthly Update

Holocene Ventures Fund I is a $3,000,000 pre-seed fund based in Cape Town backing African climate tech capitalising on the team’s experience accelerating 200+ early-stage startups, securing $250+M of blended climate capital and realising 3 exits. 

Our monthly newsletter is a great way for our HVF I investors and close group of partners to stay in the know, support the portfolio and help us all do good while doing well. Feedback is a gift!

HVF I - portfolio update 

These are the metrics we are tracking to ensure we’re finding, analysing, investing and growing the most exciting early-stage African climate tech opportunities. We’ll continue to build out this section over the next few months.

Stoked about these wins 

The Awareness Company - Holocene was first dollar in ($50k cash, $100k services) with this diverse team featuring numerous female founders. TACo is about to close $1.4M of total seed stage funding with rockstar investors such as Next176, Catalyst Fund, Aions and one more to be announced. Now the team has 24+ months of runway to 5x sales before raising series A funding. Huge.

Asoba - B2G is hard. Enter B2B. Since working with Holocene to pivot from SA municipalities to private energy actors, Asoba has signed 14 customers to its energy optimisation API. The team is close to being 2x oversubscribed on the $300k pre-seed fundraise with some of Africa’s best climate investors in diligence. Props to Asoba for navigating the tricky and fascinating SA energy liberalisation with style. Learn more about their model and SA energy here.

EEP grant - blended capital (aka a mix of grants, equity, debt, carbon, etc) is an absolute must for climate tech. Stoked that three of our portfolio companies have won grants from EEP ranging from $300,000 - 450,000. That’s a huge amount of runway in a market that is still short of pre-seed equity capital. Now we put that capital to use de-risking the commercial model to ensure future follow-on investment.

Didn’t go as planned…aka lessons learned  

We’re doing great winning grants for our portfolio companies. However, grants for Holocene continue to allude us. We’ve secured $150,000 (thanks FSD Africa) but have been either shortlisted or declined for an additional $2,000,000 in 2024. Huge amount of effort with not much feedback. African climate tech still seems stuck between numerous forms of impact & commercial viability. It’ll likely sort itself out but feels very noisy at the moment. 

We’re currently working with two awesome DFI partners to structure a working capital facility for Holocene. This product is very necessary for African fund managers. We’re always looking to be front of the wave in designing ecosystem support vehicles with collaborative partners.

If you have any grant writing superpower please, please ping me. If you’re am impact investor looking for a thoughtful grant partner - we got ‘ya.

Support our portfolio

TACo is hiring a Head of Sales - huge hire for this team. Looking for an experienced B2B salesperson with a track record of executing complex sales in an enterprise environment. Push awesome candidates our way. 

Asoba will kick off their search for a Sales / Customer Success Lead to be based in Cape Town. More to come in the December edition. 

Climate Exploration small group dinners

Last night we hosted our inaugural ‘Climate Exploration small group dinner’ featuring incredible HVF I founders Priaash (TACo), Shingai (Asoba) and Andrew (Switch) in Cape Town. We were oversubscribed with 30+ rockstar attendees from various backgrounds (entrepreneurs, investors, CVC, climate curious) from four continents.

The golden thread for us all is finding the best way to “do good while doing well.” We believe African climate tech is the ideal nexus of those incredibly important themes.

We’ll be hosting similar curated events in 2025 each featuring a unique climate exploration topic such as blue economy, conservation, carbon, mobility and gender investing in CPT, Jozi and a few other spots.

Ask: if you or someone in your close network is super passionate about conservation / nature tech or e-mobility please ping Josh. You can help us do good and do well alongside our epic community.

Hustle for Holocene 

$2,000,000. That is the fundraising goal for the next 6 months. Not a lot of money - huge amount of impact. Are you interested in growing your investment with Holocene? Anyone in your network keen to do good while doing well? Referrals are always welcome and appreciated. Email [email protected].

Our Portfolio 

🔌Switch Energy 

🦏The Awareness Company

⚡Asoba 

🚗Zimi Charge

🐃WildBio

🏍️Mazi Mobility

📡Mavuno

✈️Integrated Aerial Systems

Together we can build inspiring climate solutions for our incredible epoch