Phase 2: Intercalation Collective
Sharing a personal journey and what’s next for Intercalation.
Entering the next phase. If you have enjoyed this newsletter and are excited about what’s coming next, give us a share and subscribe! 💚
Phase 2: Intercalation Collective
I’m stoked to share what’s been running through my mind for the last year.
Intercalation Station has been growing for the last 3 years with all your good feedback. To date, we published 94(!) issues and counting with 4,000+ readers (with 97% of you working in the battery industry) on our platform. Our content has reached 1.5+ million across 1300 unique organizations and institutions in 80 countries. We’re passionately obsessed with the battery industry, digesting all the content, connecting dots and trends, and sharing our learnings with you in bitesize pieces. We’ve seen founders before they become founders, learned about investment deals before they are announced to the public, spoken with investors to see how everyone is thinking and observed young companies spin out of universities and come out of stealth mode. It’s ridiculously exciting, and the battery industry will only get more thrilling yearly. However, sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’ve been on the sidelines.
When I first started Intercalation Station with Andrew back in April 2020, I had a conversation with an advisor who said “If you want to have a significant impact, you need to work with the people with money”. While there are many other ways to create impact in the industry, I agree that capital (in combination with a strong network) is key, especially in the first year of a company’s life. So it got me thinking… what more can I do with Intercalation to help companies in the battery space?
I started exploring the opportunities and gave myself the summer of 2022 to talk to as many people as possible about this. I spoke to people from all sorts of companies - consulting firms, venture capital funds, corporate VCs, hedge funds, battery manufacturers, startup founders, angel investors, and content creators. Most of these were my first calls with people I now consider informal advisors and friends. Some, in particular, were so incredibly helpful and went above and beyond to share their advice with me. The conversations opened my eyes to how many angel investors were out there who were all optimistic about the battery industry and I wanted to get further involved.
I recently personally invested in a London battery company earlier this year as my first-ever angel investment. When the news was announced, I had many individuals in my network tell me they were eager to get involved in the next deal I was interested in. Shortly after, another company approached me and I put together a syndicate and arrived at an investment decision with a group of 5 investors within a week. The power of the network amazed me and I realized many others in our subscribers would be interested too.
From these experiences, a vision emerged.
Introducing the Intercalation Collective
An angel investment network built from the community of readers of Intercalation Station.
The idea comprises several features:
A network where we can share companies we believe are game-changers from a technical + investment perspective. We will back impact-driven founders in the battery and energy space. Investing through the Intercalation network will allow for accessibility to deals and allocation in funding rounds.
A playbook to remove barriers to angel investing and create accessibility by allowing check sizes as small as £1,000.
A platform on this Substack newsletter for us to share what we’ve learned. Since day one, I’ve supported learning in public and intend to continue doing that with our subscribers with Intercalation Collective.
The Team
Over the last three years, Andrew and I have built this newsletter and will continue to build this new phase of Intercalation. Alongside us, we have a stellar team of advisors who are experts in the battery tech and investment space. We’re not hiring at the moment, but I’m constantly meeting people who could add something new to the team.
How will this change Intercalation Station?
It won’t! Our newsletter will continue to deliver objective reporting on the industry as we have been for the last 2.5 years. In stories where we mention companies we have personally invested in (either as individuals or on the Intercalation angel network), we will include a note either in the paragraph body or as a footnote. Either way, you won’t miss it.
What now?
🚀 For startups
If you’re a startup and fundraising, fill out this application and we’ll take your details. If it’s a fit for our network, we’ll be forwarding the information to our accredited investors in our network.
💰 For investors
I am opening this up to our Intercalation Collective paid tier members before expanding to the rest of our readers. If this is something that you want to get involved in, please consider signing up for a paid membership, or reach out directly at contact@intercalation.co.
I am excited to build this with our community of subscribers. Together we can invest and build game-changing companies in the battery space. 💚