Hey subscribers,
Thanks for tuning in this month! In this edition of our newsletter we will cover a range of exciting updates including:
1) Our Peerless Pitch Winner: Halo Braid
2) Portfolio announcements
3) Recent events at AlleyCorp
4) Abe and Brannon’s July Deep Tech Book Recommendations
Don't hesitate to email, message, or comment with any thoughts, questions, or feedback.
Enjoy!
Peerless Pitch Competition Winner
In case you missed it - last month we crowned Yinka Ogunbiyi, founder of Halo Braid, as our PEERLESS winner! She's a second-time founder, and Harvard Business School MBA graduate, who also clinched the top spot at the HBS New Venture Competition. Halo Braid will receive a $1M investment from us, officially making her part of the AlleyCorp family.
What stood out to us about the Halo Braid team was their intense focus on customer needs and their robust hardware which is designed to maximize robot performance where it matters most to end users. Their combination of customer obsession, precise automation, and software-like development cycles (with over 250 iterations in a year) has led to incredible ROI for their customers. This impressive blend of technical robotics expertise, go-to-market acumen, and sheer drive is special among early-stage companies. We knew that this team was doing something remarkable.
Halo Braid’s revolutionary solution is particularly impactful for the tens of millions of women in the U.S. who spend large amounts of time and money getting their hair braided. By significantly reducing the time and money required for braiding, and the physical energy required by stylists, Halo Braid is poised to transform the industry.
Here's to Halo Braid and their journey ahead – we're excited to see the amazing things they will achieve with this investment!
AlleyCorp CEO Kevin Ryan with Halo Braid CEO, Yinka Ogunbiyi
Aescape’s massage robots break the internet
Aescape has seriously been going viral across every channel! Here were Eric Litman’s ( Aescape CEO) words below as it unfolded in real time:
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First up, you know you’ve made it when late night TV hosts make jokes about you. Well, here’s Stephen Colbert trying to figure out how to pronounce our name on The Late Show. (click the GIF to watch the clip)
The NY Post featured us in print today, July 26th, on page 22, in our second Post print appearance. There was a great video interview behind this in digital as well, with a great title, Aescape’s massage robot is poised to totally change the spa industry. (This is also linked behind the image)
…and we were the feature of an extended segment on NBC’s NY Live, aired on Thursday at 11:30AM ET. (click the GIF to for the link)
A bunch of other folks wrote about us as well. We saw absolutely glowing coverage from Bloomberg and Vogue, Elite Traveler, The Robb Report and Marie Claire:
And there's more to come -- CNBC, Travel Weekly and the NYT are all working on Aescape stories. We expect coverage to ramp considerably once we commercially launch next month.
On social media…
This is unexpected, but really cool. We’re seeing famous Twitch streamers live-streaming their Aescape experiences, with one recent stream reaching 13k simultaneous viewers.
Our experience was designed to be highly shareable, and our customers are proving that hypothesis everyday. Aescape videos trend and go viral across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube daily as more users experience our massage.
Adding to this, influencers with a combined reach of hundreds of millions of followers eagerly spread the word in exchange for a free massage. And that list just continues to grow.
And on a final note, we won one of the most coveted design awards in the industry: Fast Company's Most Innovative by Design.
Introducing - Spaero Bio!
We are excited to publicly announce our prior investment into Spaero Bio as they exit stealth this summer. Mitch Adler and the Spaero Bio team are building the infrastructure that will pull lab automation into the future and are driving 10x-100x faster liquid handling automation in biotech labs 🤖 👩🔬.
We could not be more proud to join them for this journey and have been incredibly impressed by the sophistication of their technology, the immense value creation, and the speed with which they operate.
Be sure to follow along, and reach out to us if you are interested in their solution!
Fireside Chat w/ New York’s Mayor Eric Adams
For those who missed it, earlier this month we had the distinct honor of hosting Mayor Eric Adams for a New York Tech Town Hall moderated by our CEO Kevin Ryan!
It was inspiring to hear from our city’s leader about the ways our tech ecosystem can help grow and improve NYC. Looking forward to the many ways we can work together to solidify NYC as the global hub for tech startups - especially deep tech! 🤖
Thanks to all 200+ founders, VCs and execs that were able to represent the amazing startup community in New York.
Abe on Smart Venture Podcast
Check out Abe talking about Deep Tech & Advanced Manufacturing this month on Grace Gong’s Smart Venture Podcast. Click the image to watch the episode, and check out the Smart Venture Podcast episodes to hear Host Grace Gong talk to some of the most influential people in business, venture capital, and tech. It is a key part of a healthy information diet for future CEOs.
Touring Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study
One of my favorite parts about the venture job is the chance to visit and meet with some of the leading deep tech researchers in the world! This month we were invited to tour Princeton’s IAS (Institute of Advanced Study) and it was incredible!
Earlier this year I (and millions of other movie goers) caught a glimpse of the pristine campus in Chritopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, yet being there in person was no less idyllic… No kidding, we even saw a deer drinking from the lake while researchers lounged on the lawn nearby writing in their notebooks. It was not hard to understand how the serenity of the environment catalyzed some of the most world changing innovations, including research by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and George F. Kennan.
For those unfamiliar with the institute, this snippet is from their website: “Founded in 1930 by Louis Bamberger and his sister, Mrs. Felix Fuld, this is a center for special research and study for advanced scholars and scientists. IAS offers Schools of Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. The Institute has been home to some of the world's most noted thinkers ”
Thank you to Professor, and world class mathematician, William Massey for the warm reception!
Our July Deep Tech Book Recs
This month we are trying something new and ending our newsletter by sharing some of our summer reading! Reach out If you are interested in talking about either of these, or would recommend books to check out this summer!
Abe’s pick of the month
How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
Why I recommend: “I’m a huge fan of books that bring numeracy and facts to questions (as opposed to a feelings and vibes approach) and Vaclav Smil’s latest delivers an excellent dose of the same. Similar to other books I love and recommend such as Tupy’s Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know, Rosling’s Factfulness, and Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox - with a fresh ‘how does it all fit together’ take.”
~Abe
Brannon’s pick of the month
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Why I recommend: “This was a detailed glimpse into one of the most impactful and transformative deep tech incubators in the history of the world. I marveled at the caliber of researchers and the profundity of the innovations straight through to the end. Beyond the technology, this books incites the reader to consider how the role of private industry, federal regulation, geopolitical conflict, and consumer interests drive technological change.”
~Brannon
And that’s a wrap!
So that's what we have for you this time around! I hope you enjoyed it, and if you’ve made it this far, you may as well subscribe. Please feel free to reach out to me with any follow up thoughts, comments, or suggestions, and of course, we are always interested in meeting Deep Tech founders. Thanks for reading and keep building!
Cheers,
AlleyCorp | Deep Tech team (Abe & Brannon)
~🤖🤙🏾