Tank Talks By Ripple Ventures Tank Talk: Nate & Chris (GPs @ UNION Labs) Deep-Tech Investing at the Early-Stage
On today’s Tank Talk! We welcome our two guests Nate Williams & Chris Kim Co-Founders and Managing Partners at UNION Labs to discuss, “Deep Tech Investing at the Early-Stage”
Nate & Chris both have an incredible experience in building and scaling deep-tech startups given their mutual background at August Home where they both met back in 2015 and helped grow the company to over $75mm in sales before being acquired.
Nate's career originally started at Intel in the Digital Home Group and eventually went on to lead BD at 4Home and Motorola before it was acquired by Google in 2011. Nate eventually became the Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Partnerships at August Home where he led deals with AirBnB, Walmart and Amazon.
Chris started his career as a Product Manager at Bank of America and then moved on to eBay and then CSAA and eventually joined August Home as VP of Product when it launched in 2012. Chris became CTO of August and led the product development team of new smart locks for homes and offices.
On today's talk, we ask Nate & Chris why they decided to launch a hard-tech fund that both backs and builds early-stage startups vs just creating a venture studio or traditional VC fund. We dig into the areas of deep-tech they are most excited about today and what areas of consumer deep tech they are already invested in and where they see the industry going.
Nate’s Book Recommendations:
The Score Takes Care of Itself
Chris’ Book Recommendations:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Nate’s words of inspiration - “Be authentic, life is too short to be something you are not and invest in yourself first!”
Chris’ words of inspiration - “Startups are hard but they can be a huge amount of fun!
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