Inside a Unique Chicago VC Firm: TechNexus' Bespoke Approach

Every VC firm is a bit different, today I want to focus on one that is looking to pair institutional investments with specifically targeted companies. Best of all, they are based here in Chicago, which I love.

Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt, here with another FUTR podcast.

Today I have with us Kaitlyn Doyle Vice President of TechNexus. TechNexus has a unique approach to the market directly aligning Investors to companies that are valuable to their business.

So let's talk with Kaitlyn about what they look for and how their model works. Hopefully, we can learn a little about what it takes to start up a VC firm.

Welcome Kaitlyn

TechNexus: https://technexus.com/

Portfolio Companies Mentioned:
Deep How: https://www.deephow.com/
Haven Energy: https://havenenergy.com/
Respeecher: https://www.respeecher.com/

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Transcript

Chris Brandt: 0:00

Every VC firm is built a bit different. And today I want to focus on one that is looking to pair institutional investments with specifically targeted companies. And best of all, they are based here in Chicago, which I love. Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt here with another Future Podcast. Today I have with us Caitlin Doyle, Vice President of TechNexus. TechNexus has a unique approach to the market, directly aligning investors to companies that are valuable to their business. So let's talk with Caitlin about what they look for and how their model works, and hopefully we can learn a little bit about what it takes to start up a VC firm. Welcome, Caitlin.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 0:45

Thanks, Chris. I'm happy to be here. And I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Chris Brandt: 0:49

Yeah, me too. I'm excited about this because I just think, you know, the way you're approaching this space is interesting because it's it's I think it's fairly novel for, you know, what I've seen in the VC space. Um, and, and subsequently, some of the The companies that you have in your portfolio to me are very cool. I mean, you obviously have a lot of, you know, podcast centric kind of things, you know, all the way from audio to the hosting and networks and things like that. Uh, but you have a lot of other stuff in there too, which is also very cool. Um, so why don't we start with, you know, like what is tech nexus and, and, you know, like sort of what's the founder story there and, and, you know, like how, how you found your niche.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 1:32

What is TechNexus now versus what it was when it started is a very different story, as I think is true of a lot of, um, businesses. Uh, TechNexus originally started about 15 years ago in Chicago, and when it first started, it was truly a co working space. Um, one of the first, it was before the WeWorks of the world, before 1871 in Chicago. Um, But our two founders were entrepreneurs and they wanted to basically have a clubhouse where they could work side by side with other entrepreneurs, you know, learn from them, learn from things that went well, that didn't go so well, commiserate on the entrepreneur experience, as we all know, can be a roller coaster. Um, so they started just that they started the clubhouse and kind of tech nexus was, um, the home base, um, over the years it evolved. You know, they realized as they built this ecosystem of entrepreneurs and startups, that a lot of people were interested in that. And one of the types of people that were interested in that is corporations. And so our two founders, you know, we're getting a lot of interest from big companies of, Hey, what's this innovation going on here? How can we work with these early stage companies that are in your space? How do we, you know, Train our teams to think like that and to work like that. So over the years, and I'm flashing forward quite a bit, we evolved into what we are now, which is actually a venture capital firm. And we're a venture capital for firm that takes on corporations as our limited partners. We partner with those corporations and help them devise investment theses. And then we ultimately form bespoke, we call them joint ventures with those corporations to invest in early stage companies that are devising products, technologies, new ways of doing business that are relevant to the corporate world. Um, business and the way that they are continuing to grow. So our hope is that by partnering these startups and corporations, we can have mutual benefit and they can work together after the investment such that, you know, everybody wins.

Chris Brandt: 3:33

You guys are kind of coming in as a venture arm of a company, sort of an outsourced venture arm of a company, which is cool because I think I just want to sort of like, hone in on that distinction that you guys are creating. The fund is the, the corporation that is investing. It's not like there's a fund with 50, you know, a hundred people in it or a hundred limited partners in it. It's, it's that, that company. So it's like a kind of custom built venture fund for that company to pursue technologies. That'll line with their interests.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 4:07

Yeah, that's absolutely right. It's we, we almost say like, instead of having one fund, we, we have seven different funds that all have unique investment theses that all have, you know, the unique LP in every case one LP. And our corporates really love that because they get a bespoke. Yeah. Tailored portfolio that's very actionable and they give me they get to be involved in the process, right? Like they're giving us feedback on a very regular basis about their strategic initiatives how they're changing how they're shifting Um how they could or couldn't work with some of these portfolio companies. So it's a very it's very much a partnership Um, whereas more traditional funds are kind of, you know An LP relationship will, they'll take your money and then, you know, hopefully you hear back from them in a couple of years with a check. Um, but this, this is very much an ongoing partnership, ongoing relationship.

Chris Brandt: 4:58

Necessarily with that sort of, you know, relationship and that sort of focus, you're dealing with early stage companies, right?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 5:04

We are. Yes. We are. Typical entry point for investment is seed or series a. So what does that mean? It's normally companies that have a product, they're ready to go. They're probably early commercializing, so maybe they have some initial sales, initial revenue, um, but they're at the point where they really want to scale. You know, a corporate customer could be a game changer to their business that could literally be the hockey stick that sends them up into the right fingers crossed. Um, so they're really trying to get some of that credibility. Some of that validation, some of that repeatability when it comes to go to market

Chris Brandt: 5:39

in there is a little bit of an assumed exit as well, too, because if that company does well, you know, they may, you know, be bought by by the company that's, you know, funding them. Right.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 5:52

You know, that doesn't happen as often as you would think. It's a common question of like, is acquisition the end goal? And in some cases, it's definitely an option. And I think that optionality is really valuable for both sides of the table, the corporate and the startup. But we also at this early stage at series A or seed, we don't want to limit the startups growth potential. And if they already met their acquire at seed, we don't want to, um, have that be the only option. We want the startups to be able to grow and have that financial return potential. Um, so it doesn't happen as often as you think, although it's certainly an option. That's interesting. That we considered and that we pursued. Yeah.

Chris Brandt: 6:28

Well, I mean, I could see that, you know, from a, from a company's, you know, a corporation's perspective, at least if the ecosystem that they needed gets built, it doesn't matter necessarily whether they own it or buy from it, it's, you know, it, it, it's something they needed and they got it, right?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 6:43

Yeah, absolutely. If it's benefiting the industry, if it's, you know, improving their supply chain or improving the end technology that they're using, uh, they can accomplish their goals with sometimes a much smaller check than having to acquire an entire company.

Chris Brandt: 6:55

What are, what do your limited partners look like? Your LPs are, you know, like what's, what is, what does that look like and where do you get them from?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 7:04

It's a big sales process and it's a long sales process, right? Like we're talking to these corporates and building out relationships, building out credibility and kind of helping assess. The desire internally that they have to invest in innovation, um, what they look like, they are large corporations that have, you know, multi billion dollars of revenue, and they certainly have free cashflow that's available to invest. Uh, several of them are public companies. Um, a couple of them are private, but they all have In common that they are aware that their industries are innovating and changing, and they are there's some amount of fear, right? There's some amount of fear that if they're not innovating, and they're not consistently changing and investing in those technologies that they're going to be left behind, you know, in many cases, and actually all of the cases, they're the leaders in their industry, but they see innovation coming up on their heels, and they see some early stage startups that Are threatening their customer base or some big problems in their industry or their workflow, um, or the supply chain, as I already mentioned, that could have the ability to discredit their business. Um, so they're, they're forward thinkers, certainly, and in all of these situations, it's really important that there's executive, um, and board support right in most situations. Our partnership with these corporations is not going to be successful unless the folks at the very top of the company are supporting it and are behind the vision here.

Chris Brandt: 8:33

A lot of the VCs have, you know, these, the platform groups, which are designed to sort of. supply the, the, the company they're investing in with talent and resources and things like that, right? You know, you kind of have another piece of that, which is where you're really sitting down with the L, the LP and, and advising them of how to build a strategy for themselves, right? So that's, that's a, that's a little bit of a different, relationship than a, you know, traditional VC. I mean, you know, outside of a VC holding a couple workshops here and there, I would imagine, but you know, really getting in and digging into the LP business is, is a unique piece, I would imagine.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 9:13

It is. And it's, it's really fascinating because, you know, we always tell our corporate partners, we're never going to know their business better than they do. So they are an integral part of this. We need to know their business units. We are. The technology we need to understand how things work, how things flow, you know, sometimes the inner politics, um, and they can bring that knowledge and they can kind of advise on the types of technologies that we're looking at. Where tech nexus comes in where we can be really valuable is we know the venture landscape and we know early stage startups. We know the common hiccups that corporations have when they work with early stage startups and when they invest in early stage startups. So we can get ahead of some of those. Um, and the other benefit that we have from being a third party and not being in the corporate is that we can kind of help push some of that collaboration along. You know, every time we invest in a company, we have what we call a collaboration thesis. Which is why should company X invest in startup Y, you know, what is the, the way that they can work together? Is it a proof of concept? Is it a technology co development? You know, is it a path to acquisition? And then post investment, we have an entire team in house at TechNexus that kind of looks at that thesis and says, Okay, you said you were going to have a proof of concept with this company within the first six months. What's the first step? Let's go do that. Um, so corporates really like that because rather than just saying you're going to collaborate with startups, you know, technoxis is a way to actually make that happen and see, you pretty near term results.

Chris Brandt: 10:45

Are you still providing that sort of incubator space that you kind of started off with as well? Or is that kind of, that model kind of left the picture?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 10:53

We still do have an incubator space. We call it Teamworking by TechNexus. It's in the Civic Opera Building. Um, we have the entire 12th floor there. So a lot of companies work out of there, several of our portfolio companies work out of there. Um, and like you mentioned, we do have a team. We call it our venture impact team that is very active with our portfolio, helping them hire, helping them fundraise, you know, helping them think about what problems they're facing and how to scale those. So, uh, we're very active with our portfolio companies. Um, and that's been a, a very fun experience. Fun and rewarding part of the job as well.

Chris Brandt: 11:27

And it's very like, um, bespoke in some, in some regards, right? Cause the, the kinds of connections and the things that you have to do, it's, it's, it's an interesting model and the Civic Opera House is a beautiful place to do it too. That's a, that's gotta be a great view.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 11:44

You know, if anybody is in Chicago, we have several happy hours in the summer because we have a 15 floor rooftop. Um, so that's a good spot to, to hang out and, and work from the summer. Definitely.

Chris Brandt: 11:54

I have to find out about that. I gotta get myself to one of those. That sounds amazing.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 11:58

We'll get you on the invite list.

Chris Brandt: 12:00

Perfect. I love it. I love it. I love those kinds of things. Obviously it sounds like where you start when you're doing this, um, is with the LP. And I guess, you know, every VC kind of does that, right? They, they've got a. Collect money for the fund and then find the investments. Right. But, um, so like, what do you look for when you're going out to find companies? What do you look for?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 12:24

Mm hmm.

Chris Brandt: 12:25

Not companies that you're investing in, but companies you're getting to be LPs.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 12:28

Yeah. Our investors, our partners. Um, you know, we, we look pretty broadly. We're looking at companies that have expressed an interest in innovation. Mm hmm. Um, that have the balance sheet to support this, have a little bit of free cash flow, as I mentioned, to be able to spend on this. Um, but they're typically in industries that are getting disrupted. You know, if I look at our core industries that we have partners in, a lot of them are industrial, a lot of them are like old school technologies, hardware. Um, they're companies that are getting super competitive and margins are getting thinner and thinner. So they're feeling the pressure. to continue to innovate. Um, and most importantly, like they have either public claims or public support, um, maybe in their earnings calls, maybe in, you know, CEO or C suite, um, lectures or talks about how they need to further invest in innovation. So we'll normally have an intro call with, um, a lot of times our intro contact to C suite. The head of corporate, corporate development or M and a, we'll have a conversation with them and understand what are they doing now about investing in early stage companies or partnering with early stage companies? You know, what are they hoping to accomplish? Um, where's that gap? What support do they have? You know, how could they see, um, some of their business units partnering or working with early stage companies? What concerns would they have? Um, and we can, we can normally tell pretty quickly, like Who, what types of companies are in this to really make change happen and really actually make meaningful impact? Um, you know, one of my, my general partners always says, and I want to get the quote right, you know, he's like, there's a lot of sizzle, but there's no stake, right? Like, are you there to do the innovation showcase and essentially like host a demo day and, you know, appear to be? Innovative kind of that virtue signaling, or are you willing to put in the hard work and actually like put your money where your mouth is, work with these companies, you know, devote resources to invest in that innovation and to work with them. Cause anybody can do the sizzle aspect, but you're not actually getting value out of that, right? You're not going to get meaningful impact by just having, you know, 50 startups come to your office one day a year. It's the, how do you follow up on that and how do you actually make things. Move after that.

Chris Brandt: 14:55

Yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen the sizzle side of that a lot. Yeah, but I got to imagine for a company, you know, for some of these corporations, like the types you're talking about, they, uh, a lot of times it's so hard for them to get past their internal culture to actually innovate and build anything like going out and doing this, I can see as being really healthy for them that maybe if they do roll it back up inside that it's something that they could, you know, You know, learn business process from and just sort of that spark of innovation and, and things like that. So I could see how that could be really beneficial to some older school companies.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 15:32

Absolutely. I mean, sometimes honestly, even just by being around some of these startups, like the innovation rubs off, right? Like you're, you're reevaluating how the corporation is doing things. You know, we often hear, Oh, we've, we've done, we've always done things that way, or we do it because that's how, you know, my boss did it. Um, and I think being surrounded by innovative and creative and strategic people that are hustling at early stage startups, it encourages employees to kind of think about like, are there ways I can kind of be innovative and entrepreneurial in my day job, right? Like, are there other things that I can kind of do to push this business forward? Um, so I think it's, it's definitely a contagion and can definitely be beneficial for culture. Careful when you say

Chris Brandt: 16:16

contagion these days.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 16:17

I know, right? We still put PTSD.

Chris Brandt: 16:21

Now, now you've got, you know, your investor, And, and they say, here's the kind of thing we're looking to, you know, grow our business in, or like, here's where we see a hole in our vision. So like, how do you go out and source those companies to invest in?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 16:40

Great, great question. Kind of the secret sauce, right? Yeah. So first of all, they normally have an investment thesis that they come to us with, you know, uh, they're an audio company and they want to be investing in microphones and speakers or, um, battery technology to extend the life of, of the hardware. Um, and we'll come to them. We'll understand what they have thinking. And then our goal is also to try and Branch it out a little bit. Okay, great. You've thought about, you know, the hardware components, um, you know, certainly want to be looking in that area. If you thought, have you thought about software or have you thought about your supply chain or two steps behind or how to sell to your customer? Um, so we try and branch that out a little bit and really kind of push the corporate on, you know, what's core, of course, but what's frontier and what are the things that are coming five years down the road, 10 years down the road? Um, That you want to get ahead of and that you want to have kind of your pulse on to make sure that your advantage in that stage. Um, so once we have been the broad investment thesis identified, we have an entire team at TechNexus. There's about 15 of us on the venture side. That is focused on this day in and day out. So my team of analysts, we have three of them currently. They're spending the vast majority of their day is sourcing, you know, they're scraping Google, they're scraping pitch book. Um, one of my analysts is kind of a Twitter nerd and he's all over Twitter. The things he finds on Twitter. Um, I don't even want to know how much time he spends on it, but it's fascinating the way he's like, I think this guy's starting a company. I'm like, okay. Um, so he's on Twitter all the time. They're doing demo days. They're looking at incubators, accelerators. Building relationships with other co investors that might be looking at similar stage deals or they can pull us in or we can send them deals. Um, so it's literally a little bit of everything anyway and every way that we can think of to, you know, get in touch with startups. Uh, and then we're, we're reaching out, you know, anything that might be interesting, might be relevant to the investment theme. We're having calls with those folks and kind of getting a sense of. What's going on under the hood? You know, what stage the company is that what they're looking for from a fundraising perspective, how they could theoretically work with our corporate partner and trying to move that forward. Um, so it's, it's a ton of work. It's something that we all really love doing in terms of like scouting out deals and trying to find, uh, the next big thing and something that's going to make our corporate partners really excited. To continue to work with TechNexus.

Chris Brandt: 19:06

If somebody, you know, had a company and, you know, they wanted to get your attention, like what, what would be the way to do that?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 19:15

Straightforward. I, you know, I respond to cold emails. I respond to cold DMs. So careful what you

Chris Brandt: 19:20

say.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 19:20

I know, right? Um, but if anybody shoots me note, it's just Caitlin at tech nexus dot com. Um, I will take a look and I'll, I'll have, if not myself, I'll have somebody on our team, take a look at the deck and understand if there's something strategic. Um, now what's going to attract our attention in terms of in that email or in that deck? Um, we want to have a sense of, um, First and foremost, because of our model, how is this strategic? And how is this relevant to one of our corporate partners? Right? Like,

Chris Brandt: 19:47

okay,

Kaitlyn Doyle: 19:47

that's gotta be table stakes in order for us to move forward. Cause even if it's the best financial investment opportunity, um, we need to understand how it's going to facilitate something strategic for our corporate partners. So that's our first lens of like, is there something here in one of the thesis areas that one of our corporate partners is interested in? And then from there, we want to see like. You know, we have a pretty good sense of the market in these spaces because we're looking at companies constantly. So is it innovative? Is it something that, you know, we haven't seen before? Or if we have seen similar technologies, is it different than the last, you know, three companies that we spoke to in this spatial audio space? Right. Um, We want to understand the team's background and kind of why it's relevant to the business that they are building. And then I'll, I always look at just type of traction. Right. And sometimes that's really difficult to tell from just an email or a deck or a website is like, is this product actually real? You know, is it, have you produced it, whether it's software or hardware, um, or is it an idea? And, you know, if you have produced it, if you started selling it, like including some of those, uh, KPIs upfront can really attract an investors. interest, um, because it gives some validity, some teeth to what you're actually building.

Chris Brandt: 21:03

If somebody wanted to understand like what your current corporate partner's investment thesis is or thesis were, um, you know, is, are you posting that somewhere? Are you sharing that kind of like, we're looking for this kind of thing?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 21:22

We probably could be better at that. There's some general investment themes that are on our website. Um, And they're, they're pretty broad. And I think we do that intentionally because we'd love to hear from any and every company and at least have eyes on it. Um, but I can give you a teaser of, of kind of what we're focusing on now. Uh, we're doing a ton in the electrification space. Uh, we have a couple of vehicle manufacturers that are corporate partners, and so they're very interested in electrification and autonomy. Um, battery technology is affiliated with that e mobility

Chris Brandt: 21:55

technology is so important right now. That's like the one piece that seems to just not get over the hump.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 22:01

It's fascinating. And there's some really brilliant people working in this space. For

Chris Brandt: 22:05

sure.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 22:05

Um, battery tech is always something humbling for me of like. You talk with a scientist in battery technology and they can, I mean, they can get deep into it, but it's, it's really fascinating, really exciting that the developments that are going on in that space.

Chris Brandt: 22:19

I know there's a lot of that happening regionally with like Argonne and, and, and folks like that. I know they're doing a lot around battery technology. So hopefully there's, there's some good, uh, good stuff there to, to talk about.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 22:31

Argonne is a great, great sourcing avenue for us. We're always looking at their technology to see who's commercializing that, who's building businesses out of it. So the earlier stage, uh, technology and patents is a fascinating sourcing avenue too.

Chris Brandt: 22:45

I can't imagine a more fun job of just like taking a look at all these companies that are doing cool stuff. I mean, that's literally. What I'm doing here is like, I like to talk to people, cool people doing cool stuff is kind of the motto. And, uh, and you know, it's, it's so cool that like, and I, even in some of these little niche strange areas, the people doing such creative and innovative things about things you would never think about, but they, they have. The potential for huge impact, you know, so, you know, and, and looking for that, it's gotta be fun every day.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 23:16

It is so fun. I mean, my only, uh, regret is that you can't invest in all of them, right? You got to pick and choose and you got to figure out like, you know, all of these. Brilliant, intelligent, creative people are, are dedicating their life's work to move some of these technologies forward and they believe in it so strongly. Um, so it's, it's so fun and so fascinating and really hard to say no to the companies that you ultimately can't invest in.

Chris Brandt: 23:42

Their enthusiasm is always very infectious.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 23:45

Yes.

Chris Brandt: 23:46

Yes. Based on that, like you've got a lot of, I mean, I was surprised at how many companies you have in your portfolio now. You guys have a lot because you haven't been around that long because I mean, you're, you're kind of a startup yourself.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 23:57

We are. We've been actively investing since about 2017, made our first investment in 2017, I'd say like really doubled down and, and went forward with this path in 2018. Um, So not a ton of time, about six total years, but we have about 150 portfolio companies, um, made about 240 investments, including follow on investments. So, you know, I feel like every VC says they're one of the most active VCs, but I think if you look at those stats, like we are among the most active. And it's been interesting, even in, you know, macroeconomic conditions like 2023 and 2034, we're kind of continue, able to continue on that cliff. You know, we made 32 investments in 2023, where, you know, that was the year where I feel like a lot of VCs, Kind of had to pull back just based on general market conditions.

Chris Brandt: 24:47

The, the flow of money in the VC space has been really up and down over the last, you know, seven years, quite honestly.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 24:54

You know, it's fascinating because I got into venture about seven years ago, myself personally. So, you know, I'm just used to the flow. It's, it's ebbs and flows constantly. It's like, I've never seen kind of a, Yeah,

Chris Brandt: 25:08

that'd be boring anyways,

Kaitlyn Doyle: 25:10

right? Who wants

Chris Brandt: 25:10

to do that? I mean, you got to imagine there's some really cool portfolio companies that you, you've got. I mean, do you want to highlight it? Maybe a couple of cool companies that you got going that you're excited about?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 25:20

Let's see. So one of our, our really fascinating ones is a company called Reese Beecher, uh, we came in and investment with. With them through one of our audio partners, so they're a synthetic audio company that's able to recreate voices, um, for a variety of use cases. So there have a lot of partnerships with studios and Hollywood movie studios, TV studios to essentially recreate voices, um, for, um. Actors, actor, actresses, characters, um, you know, that are no longer with us. So they did a lot of work with Star Wars, um, for actors that have, you know, passed away. So it's really interesting technology. It's really innovative. Um, and it's definitely a use case that is getting a lot of attention just in terms of like deep fakes and security. So there's a ton of potential there and they're doing it in a very conscious way of how to use this kind of in the right way. You know what I mean?

Chris Brandt: 26:13

That's a tricky one. I mean, we had a massive, massive strike about that very topic. Right. I mean, it's and I, and I, I, I, Can sympathize with the benefits of having something like that because like, you know, if you have to do reshoots, you know, maybe you can just do them, you know, via AI instead of, you know, spinning the whole production up and trying to get people and, you know, having Henry Cavill, you know, have to get rid of his mustache and post and things like that because he's already on another project where he's committed to having that mustache, you know, so it's like, you know, You know, it's, it's, there's a lot to that. And even like doing ADR, I mentioned some of the actors might just want to be out of that, you know, doing that process. Cause I, I know, I, I understand it's a very painful process, you know, so it's interesting. What else you got?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 27:03

Yeah, so let's go totally off the end of the spectrum. Um, one of our most recent investments is in a company called the Haven Energy. Uh, so I mentioned a lot of electrification battery. This is kind of right in that sweet spot. Um, they are a marketplace for electricians to connect with consumers that want, um, battery installations and battery storage in their home. So they are launched in Texas and California. Um, obviously geographies that have a lot of Power outage issues, um, and a lot of focus on solar, you know, battery tech storage, uh, VPP. Um, so they've been a really interesting model to kind of how do you, how do you generate this at scale, right? Electrification is a very hot trend, both in terms of, um, home electrification and solar, as well as vehicle and automobiles, obviously driven by Tesla. literally driven by Tesla. Um, but they're kind of helping build the infrastructure at a consumer level to support that. So that's been a really fun one to watch. Um, I believe that was our very most recent one.

Chris Brandt: 28:10

I drive an electric vehicle, so battery tech is really key to that because it's just not enough capacity. And like, like you say, you know, like having that infrastructure in the house, cause like, you know, like I want to get to that point where my car is, is a storage. Or my, even my garage maybe is like an energy storage, you know, node that can power my house in case of an outage or, you know, it can flow both ways or I can utilize some of the power that I've battery stored, you know, to offset, you know, grid times, you know, that are more expensive and things like that. So I love that. That stuff's really cool.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 28:50

Um, and I can do one more. If, if you want to hear about another company to totally three,

Chris Brandt: 28:54

three's perfect. Yeah.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 28:57

Um, you know, another area that we're looking in is kind of employee engagement and employee training. A lot of our companies, as I mentioned, our industrial have manufacturing lines, or so are constantly working through how to be more efficient, how to be safer, how to train employees quickly. So one, another one of our recent investments is a company called deep how. Um, they are based out of Michigan and they are an employee training solution. Uh, so they have kind of like AI led, um, Video production that's able to train employees on a manufacturing line or on like industrial jobs much faster and much more efficiently. You almost always have training like very easily accessible. So that's been a fun one to watch, a fun one to like very quickly implement with some of our corporate partners as well.

Chris Brandt: 29:44

That's very cool. I mean, and it sounds like a lot of your investments are Um, kind of a lower lift financially too, you know, it's like, because they're specifically targeted and things like that, you don't, you're not, you can be very successful with them. Whereas you don't have to have the one that's like the, the, the, you know, billion dollar, you know, out the gates, you know, kind of company you can work with like more realistic companies that have a more realistic valuation. You know, so that's the

Kaitlyn Doyle: 30:15

financial side of our business, right? Like we're investing for the strategic and collaboration, but we also want to make money on these investments, right? Like entry point entry price is really important for us. Market size, growth, exit potential. Those are all things that we look at from a diligence perspective. Cause we're not just, we're not just giving away money for R and D. We're not just investing in this for, you know, you know, Access, you know, we are looking to make venture capital returns as well.

Chris Brandt: 30:42

Yeah, what's what's next for tech nexus?

Kaitlyn Doyle: 30:44

The million dollar question. You know, we're having a lot of brainstorming sessions on that exact question at the the team level of how do we kind of continue to build tech nexus? If tech nexus 1. 0 was the co working space and along the way, we've had many different versions of tech nexus. What's the next version? You know, what's tech nexus 4. 0? Um. I think that's still up in the air. We've tossed around the idea of raising a more traditional LP fund, um, whether it be a ton of corporates coming together to invest in a tech nexus ventures, um, or whether it be, um, family offices, high net worth individuals, institutional investors, um, Giving us a little bit more capital and a little bit more, um, leeway and creativity and types of companies that we've invested in. I think that's potential. Yeah, you know, we're doing a ton of deal flow. So I think there's also an opportunity for syndication, you know, others that want to get involved in our deal flow, building almost like a network that can kind of get deal flow and do follow on star portfolio companies. Um, so that's big. And then I think we're going to continue doubling down on our core investment thesis. You know, there's a lot of corporates that should be investing in early stage companies and that that will continue to support their growth. So having conversations with those corporates, with institutions that. You know, could benefit from a venture capital investment thesis and could benefit from partnering with tech nexus is definitely a decent part of how I spend my time and kind of brainstorming who those corporates are, how to get in touch with them and how to really kind of, you know, get the internal buy in to move forward with us.

Chris Brandt: 32:26

Yeah, I, I like the idea of like, you know, expanding on like, uh, your, your funds maybe because you know, like you said, you're seeing all these companies you want to invest in, but you can't because they don't have alignment with the corporate partners, but you know, they may have market alignment or, you know, those things. And so you're kind of missing out on that aspect of it since you're sealing, seeing so much.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 32:48

Those are the ones that kill me is that they're, they're not totally irrelevant, but they're not an exact fit with the investment thesis, right? Like those tangential companies where I can see the benefit, but they're not close enough to truly make the investment. So that that's what I'm pushing for internally is almost like those tangential companies. You know, like I said, we do electrification. But there's some electrification companies that, like, don't quite fit the thesis. So could we build a thematic investment vehicle that can kind of get a lot of those catchalls? And the hope is that, as you mentioned, we're already doing that work. We're finding those companies. We're getting the hardest part of the job done. And we have a great expertise in the space because of our knowledge, because of the diligence we've done, and because of the corporate partners that are at our disposal.

Chris Brandt: 33:36

That's super exciting. Um, I'm really, I'm really excited to see where you go. And I'm, like I said, we were talking before, I'm going to, you know, reach out to you about some of the, uh, some of the companies you have in your portfolio because some of them look really interesting. I'd love to interview some of those folks. So I'll be in touch. I'll be in touch about that. I want to just say, you know, thank you so much, uh, for coming on. Um, I, I really appreciate you sharing the whole, uh, Chicago VC scene. Uh, and, and you're very unique model, which I think is, is cool. You don't really see this kind of flavor of VC typically. So, uh, thanks for, thanks so much for sharing it with us.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 34:14

Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris. And for anybody that's listening, uh, would love to connect, would love to follow up. If you're interested in learning more about TechNexus, uh, check us out on Twitter at TechNexus or on LinkedIn by following TechNexus Venture Collaborative. Um, and I'm Caitlin Doyle on LinkedIn as well. If anybody wants to connect and follow up.

Chris Brandt: 34:34

Yeah, she's brave. She's brave.

Kaitlyn Doyle: 34:36

We'll see. Reach out to

Chris Brandt: 34:37

Caitlin. Reach out to Caitlin if you got a great company or if you've got a big corporation that needs a great company. So thanks so much. Thanks, Russ. Thanks for watching. I'd love to hear from you in the comments. And if you could, give us a like, subscribe, share the link with a friend, be social, and I will see you in the next one.