VC @EarthFoundry | Adj Prof @ChicagoBooth | Forging Earth's Future | Coach, Entrepreneur, Business Builder, Science Nerd & Family
Chicago, IL, USA
Joined October 2009
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Proud to join the Founding Advisory Board of @UMich Center for Innovation in Detroit (UMCI). #Detroit & the #Midwest defined how the world builds. AI, energy and advanced manufacturing give us the opportunity to define what comes next.
The talent. The industrial depth. The entrepreneurial grit. The ambition.UMCI brings these strengths together to build globally leading companies and careers people can build their lives around. At @EarthFoundry we back technologies and entrepreneurs transforming essential industries. I’m excited to bring my experience to this amazing team and platform.
Grateful to join Scott Shireman, @katz_lisa, the UMCI team, University of Michigan, and my fellow board members on this mission.
Let’s build the future!
🤖 Made with AI
Strong showing from our portfolio company. Disruptive!
New startup company will put ‘Mini Data Centers’ on the side of residential homes all over America
Companies Nvidia and PulteGroup are patterning with SPAN, “A major U.S home builder is now making small fractional data centers, or they call them nodes that can be put on the side of residential homes.”
“These could negate the need to build as many hyperscalers and AI cloud providers Just tap into the node network like a regular data center now SPAN, collaborated with NVIDIA using its technology in the system span claims it can install 8,000 of these units about six times faster and at five times lower cost than the construction of a typical centralized 100 megawatt data center of the same size.”
In return for letting this company put a mini data center on the side of your home, you’ll get a $150 credit on your electricity bill
In some locations you could get free electricity and internet
❤️
OMG moved to tears- this morning I received an inspirational message from @MSU_Basketball coach TOM IZZO who spent the weekend with Lorraine & I at our Gala.He is a HOF coach but a genuine HOF person. He really has inspired me as I now focus on my latest battle with cancer.👍👍👍
Links to these groundbreaking companies:
@eZinc → makes power reliable and economic
@Recurve_Energy → makes power controllable
@span_io (XFRA) → makes compute deployable
Atlas→ makes storage scalable
🧠
We spent $15,000 on billboards targeting one person: the guy controlling all the chemical spend at a saltwater disposal company in Texas. We mapped his commute and bought every billboard between his house and the oil field. When we finally called, he said "I see your billboards everywhere." That landed us our first oil field contract. At the time our entire operation was a $10,000 reactor built from PVC pipes from Home Depot, turning corn sugar into industrial chemicals. People keep trying to throw it away. It still works. That leaking reactor started a multibillion-dollar company. @ycombinator visited our plant in Houston. The original PVC reactor is still on the floor next to the Bioforge.
Global fertilizer markets just broke again.
@EcotoneRenew turns waste into fertilizer. IMIO cuts farmers’ fertilizer use by 30%. Game changers. This chart says everything:
What looks like a price spike is really a system shock. As fertilizer supply tightens, prices jump, farmers adjust, and pressure moves through the food chain.
This is exactly why innovation in the physical world matters.
At @EarthFoundry , we’ve backed companies whose technologies reduce exposure to fertilizer volatility and, as they scale, will have a meaningful impact on the industry.
● IMIO's technology reduces farmers’ fertilizer use by ~30% or increases yields by >15%, lowering dependence on traditional inputs.
● @EcotoneRenew turns local food waste into organic fertilizer, creating a circular, hyper-local supply chain.
Different approaches. Same outcome.
Less exposure. More resilience.
🤖 Made with AI
AI will reshape how the world thinks.
The physical world will determine how it runs.
Their is a $100+ trillion prize in building and rebuilding those systems.
For decades, innovation has been shaped by a model built for software: speed, iteration, and scale.
That model worked. It built extraordinary companies and transformed entire industries. Today, AI is accelerating that digital world even further.
But the systems that power, move, feed, and build the world obey different laws.
In the physical world, breakthrough innovation creates the moat. Companies are built deliberately toward value inflection points. Success comes from efficiently aligning customers, capital, partners, and talent to translate breakthroughs into real systems. When we apply a software-era playbook to physical systems, progress does not accelerate. It breaks.
This is why many promising ideas fail. They are not true step changes, and they are not being built for the real systems that must be financed, regulated, and operated today.
According to McKinsey, more than $100 trillion will be invested through 2040 to build and rebuild the physical systems that power the global economy.
That is the prize.
For those interested, here is the McKinsey analysis referenced above on the scale of investment required to build and rebuild global infrastructure and physical systems.
McKinsey estimates more than $100 trillion will be invested through 2040.
mckinsey.com/industries/infr…
Look forward to speaking @builtworlds Chicago Global Summit. BuiltWorlds is an amazing platform for serious conversations about what is actually getting built, what is scaling, and where real advantage is being created.
We are in the middle of a major rebuild of the physical world. AI, data centers, electrification, robotics, and infrastructure are all moving at once. That creates noise, but it also creates real opportunity for the companies that can execute in the real economy. At @EarthFoundry, that is exactly where we focus. We back the technologies and platforms powering this shift across critical industries.
Come join us in Chicago on April 14 to 16.
Event details: hubs.ly/Q042kkl10
Thanks to Sean Wrenn and Matthew Gray for the invitation.
#BuiltWorldsSummits #ChicagoGlobalSummit2026 #ConnectingGlobalInnovation #BuiltWorlds #EarthFoundry #DataCenters #Infrastructure #Robotics hashtag#AI
Honored to speak at the Inaugural Climate, Energy & Sustainability Conference. Look forward to joining a terrific group of leaders, many of whom I’ve had the privilege to work with over the years.
As #trillions flow into rebuilding how the world powers, moves, feeds, and builds itself, the real question isn’t which technologies sound promising. It’s which ones actually scale in the physical world and who understands how to translate breakthrough innovation into deployable systems, real companies, and durable returns.
@InvenergyLLC, @Exelon, @MarathonCapital, @ConstellationEG, @EarthFoundry, @ComEd
* Learn more: boothenergy.org/index.php/ce…
* Sign up: groups.chicagobooth.edu/CES/…
