Rainbows Solving Frozen Bank Accounts, an Energy Storage Startup, and an HIV Cure

Just another week in the innovation age

Feb 20, 2022

Hi Growers 🌱,

Sometimes as a reader, I find it hard to get through lengthy newsletters.

This week was a fun one so I thought I’d share it in a few sentence chunks for you to enjoy.

Hopefully this is manageable. :)

My last post was on 2/13. Don’t miss my weekly updates and join 96 ambitious and self-motivated champions by subscribing here:

Rainbow Series A

Our fourth investment at HyperGuap was into Rainbow, a friendly and fun cryptocurrency wallet. If you’d like to learn more about HyperGuap, I’ve wrote about it previously here.

HyperGuap participated in Rainbow’s Series A round which was led by Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit.

Lucas Matney @lucasmtny

Ethereum’s most eccentric mobile wallet app @rainbowdotme scores some funding from @alexisohanian’s Seven Seven Six

techcrunch.comEthereum’s hippest wallet app Rainbow banks funding from Alexis Ohanian – TechCrunchWhile a world of internet users skeptically grapples with the rise of multimillion-dollar JPGs and crypto exchanges bankrolling celebrity-packed Super Bowl spots, a network of blockchain startups is trying to build friendlier consumer onramps into its vision of the crypto internet. Investors are be…

Out of the 9 investments HyperGuap did in 2021, Rainbow was by far our most oversubscribed deal.

Rainbow is building an elite team of hackers, designers, and community builders to create the digital wallet of the future.

7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣ @sevensevensix

Meet @mikedemarais, Co-Founder of @rainbowdotme 🌈

But viewing Rainbow as simply a digital wallet lacks imagination.

While Rainbow is a crypto wallet, it will function more like a digital passport to everything connected to the internet.

I’m excited to watch the team build and recommend following them on Twitter for live updates.

Canada Freezing Bank Accounts

Truckers across Canada have been protesting a vaccine mandate by the Canadian government.

These protests have been going on for weeks, disrupting supply chains and causing social unrest.

But the Canadian government started to go down a slippery authoritarian slope when it said it will freeze the bank accounts of all truck drivers protesting.

The fact that a western democracy can freeze bank accounts of thousands of citizens for protesting is scary.

This represents a lack of control by our centralized government if they have to result to these measures and growing case for a decentralized financial system (i.e. cryptocurrency).

Hey, maybe these truck drivers need a Rainbow Wallet?!

Bloom Technology Interview for HyperChange

Bloom Technology is one of my favorite startups in the world that I want to invest in.

They are a software engineering school where students don’t have to pay until they get a job. If they don’t get a job, they don’t have to pay. With a ~95% job placement rate, the incentives are aligned. I love this model.

The CEO, Austen Allred recently was looking for some more PR.

Austen Allred @Austen

Can someone write another hit piece about @bloomtech? Trying to hit some admissions targets this quarter, need a few more applications; that usually does the trick. I can even leak you some numbers that you can completely misunderstand and refuse to correct. Whatever it takes.

So I responded back for Austen to go on HyperChange, my friend Gali’s YouTube channel.

Aidan Gold 🌱 @MrGoldBro

@Austen @bloomtech Yo @Gfilche - this could be an epic company to cover on @HyperChangeTV if @Austen is down to go on for a convo! Future of education!!

Sure enough - he was down!

Austen Allred @Austen

@Gfilche @MrGoldBro @bloomtech @HyperChangeTV Ha! Let’s do it! austen@bloomtech.com

I will share the video once it goes live!

Conversation with Justin Gordon

I saw Justin Gordon pop up on my Twitter feed. He is a content creator and VC so I decided to direct message him. We had a great conversation!

He’s created lots of content with founders and is a true hustler working on two different podcasts, blogging, and being a full-time VC.

We connected over the importance of working out while managing it all.

Presentation from Deena Shakir

I had the pleasure to hear a presentation from Deena Shakir about how she got into venture capital. Deena is a Partner at Lux Capital (a multi-stage venture capital firm with $4B under management), where she invests in transformative technologies improving lives and livelihoods.

I won’t cover her extensive resume because it will take up this whole newsletter, but you can read more about her here. She’s a force of a nature who is the daughter of Iraqi immigrants and paid her own way through Harvard while working several jobs.

She was incredibly well spoken, had an inspiring story, and I left feeling motivated to push myself harder.

Antora Energy Financing

A really awesome new clean energy startup called Antora Energy just raised a $50M Series A round led by Bill Gates and Chris Sacca.

NBC4 Washington @nbcwashington

Bill Gates and Chris Sacca Invest in Energy Storage Start-Up Antora to Help Heavy Industry Go Green

nbc4dc.comBill Gates and Chris Sacca Invest in Energy Storage Start-Up Antora to Help Heavy Industry Go GreenFounded in 2018, Antora Energy takes zero emissions energy from wind and solar farms and converts it to heat, which it stores in solid carbon blocks.

They are using their technology to transfer energy from renewables to heat as a way to support the heavy industrials industry which accounts for 33% of carbon emissions in the U.S.

Their process is cheaper and better than the natural gas boiler.

With their world record setting technology that can scale, they will convert all industrialists to hippies in no time (h/t Clay Dumas).

HIV Cure

Groundbreaking science is common place in our daily life that we don’t often stop and realize how much innovation is happening all around us.

This week, the third person, and the first woman, was cured of HIV. Cured! This is massive.

The New York Times @nytimes

A woman of mixed race appears to be the third person ever to be cured of HIV, using a new transplant method involving umbilical cord blood that could make a cure available to more people of diverse racial backgrounds, scientists announced on Tuesday. nyti.ms/3BpK1CF

I am constantly amazed by the amount of truly life changing science that happens everyday.

This is what it’s like to be alive in the innovation age.

That’s all for now friends.

Thank you for reading! 🌱

Aidan

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