Updates Archive
Once a month we produce our email updates covering new investments, insights and opportunities at the intersection of startups, cities and climate change. There is no time to waste, so we mark the weeks since we started and begin each subject with the current week. Apply to get our future updates.
Most recent updates (2019-present)
WK392: Pricing, History, and Welcoming Ashtynn + Yana (web)
WK382: Exceptional Talent and Elliptical Climate Effects
WK378: First Urban Us Unicorns
WK370: Policy and Capital for Climate Tech
WK364: How it started. How it’s going. 7 Years of Climate, Cities, & Startups
WK362: The Cloud City, Density, Climate Decade and Adaptation
WK354: Time for a New Playbook
WK352: Leadership and two portfolio exits
WK345: Upgrade Cities for Climate Change
WK337: Remote work, real estate and cities
WK330: Black lives, equitable cities, and the next crisis
WK309: Startups help cities beat climate change
WK307: The secret force multiplier of climate action + 7 new startups
WK296: Don Valentine, Climate Resilience & Unicorn Deflation
WK290: Raising less VC money and what does it mean to be a tech company?
WK275: The Urbantech Investor Playbook (+ 7 New Startups)
WK271: NYC Green New Deal & 7 New Urbantech Startups
WK264: Seed Stage Allocation Strategies, City Rankings, Startup Cash, and EVs
WK258: Find the next urbantech unicorn
WK249: Better Hardware Startup Math & The Mobility Data Platform
WK242: Climate Change, Mobility and the Near Term Future of Everything
There is more. We started sending email updates every few weeks after our first 6 months.
2014
We started on Basecamp with a few folks and then opted for email updates.
This was the first Urban.Us 2.0 (alpha)
Wk30: HVAC, Resilience & 76 Startup Failures
Wk31: SAAS to HAAS, Public Safety & $GS IOT Primer (Early views on hardware as a service)
WK32: Venture Communities, Citytech & Street Surfing
WK33: RIP Good Times Again? Celebrating Our First Year
WK34: Crowdsourced Street View, Learnings & YC Class (One for the anti-portfolio. We were too slow to decide on Mapillary after asking for feedback in this update)
WK35: Life Quality Index & The Internet of Cars
WK36: UrbanTech, HVAC, SAAS & Drones (Our first attempt to map the urbantech space)
WK37: Do Things That Don’t Scale, DIY vs DFY & See You in SF
WK38: Ending E-Waste, Raising Money & IOT Investors
WK39: Reimaging Mobility, IOT Love & SCS2015
WK41: Founding Crowds, First Rides & Traction
WK43 : Asking Questions, Solving eWaste & Porter on IOT
2015
WK45: Founder & Investor Expectations, Rallybus Introduction & 2015 Prognostications (New year predictions and framing of founder and investor expectations, starting with regular updates)
WK48: Onewheel wins CES, Broken Cap Tables & Guaranteeing Energy Savings
WK50 : Climate, Cities & The Growing Interest In Startups (In which we make the case for climate and cities)
WK52: PT Barnum, Distributed Energy, Air Quality & The Urbantech Radar
WK54: Forrest Gump, Floodscoring, Better HVAC, Private firms, public data & private IPOs
WK56: Money Getting, Future Getting, Better Policing & IR Blasting for Good
WK58: Revolutions, Seed Funding & A Magical 9V Battery
WK60 : YC Winter 2015 Batch, Urbantech & Smart City Startups
WK65 : Smart City Startups Recap, See Click Fix Intro & Hello Blocpower (We missed out on investing in See Click Fix, but were happy to start working with Blocpower)
WK67 : The Hardest Seed Stage Problem, Natural Disasters & Hot Water
WK69 : Batteries, Google I/O, Internet Trends & Cities
WK71 : Google for cities, commercial off-the-grid power, and stronger communities
WK73: The Pope, Building Robots & Our Newest Team Member
WK75: The Rise of Corporate Venture, City Farming, & EV Charging Pain
WK77: Regulators, Less Optimism, More Talent, and Better Maintenance
WK81: RIP Good Times II & Some Good News
WK83: Timeless VC Insights, Urban Farming Opportunity, and the Best Gift Cards (Bowery Farming was still in stealth mode, so we asked for feedback about the category)
WK85: Not fooling yourself, analytics and incentives
WK87: AI for emergencies, electricity & cheating. Urban.Us is two years old.
WK89: Diversity, Independence and Back To The Future
WK93: 2015 Holiday Edition & Walt Disney On City Design
WK96: COP21, Water Analysis & Stolen Bikes
2016
WK101: Call for startups, roommates and massive robots
WK103: Urban.Us Fund II, Urban Logistics & Portable Smart-locks (Our second fund gets underway)
WK105: Death Spirals, Tortoises & Pop-up Transit
WK107: NYC Urbantech, Citymart & Staying in the Game
WK109: Fun, Stylish, Economical, Convenient, and Low Footprint?
WK112: Hard Tech YC Special Edition
WK114: Free EVs, Robot Cars, Storytelling & Our Secret Plan
WK117: City Policy, Robot Inspectors, Toilet Networks and Our New Team Member (Our team gets better)
WK119: We Like To Move It, Move It
WK122: Internet Trends, VR, and Air Quality
WK124: Jaws, Narwhals & The Urbantech Fellowship
WK126: Software Eats The World But Regulators Set The Menu
WK130: AI HVAC, Distributed Teams, and Billion Dollar Videos
WK133: M&A vs R&D, Robot Furniture & Blockchain Energy
WK136: Burning Man, Pension Plans, Mobility & Co-Living
WK138: AI & The City, Carpooling, Compliance, Air, and Scaffolding
WK141: Three Years of Urbantech, Landlord Reputations & Welcome Starcity
WK144: What Trump Means For Urbantech (Start of the Trump era and the end of climate support (for four years))
WK147: Startup CEOs Second Job, Connected Bikes & Shared Kick Scooters
2017
WK151: 2017 Urbantech Predictions, Commercial Solar, Car Rental & Thank You
WK154: Trust, Urban Data Scientists & Smarter Rooms
WK156: Linkedin for Government, Persistence & Traffic Accident Prediction
WK162: Lawns, roommates & zero emission airliners ✈️ (We should use emojis more often)
WK164: Revisiting real estate funding & prefab homes
WK166: Chemical Waste, Multi-Modal Travel and Climate of Hope
Special Update: Urban Us + BMW/MINI (We partner with MINI and BMW Group to build URBAN-X)
WK171: Summer tour, city government power & lots of housing news
WK175: Better Roads & Hello Liz! (Our team improves again)
WK184: Blockchain governance paradox & the next seven URBAN-X teams
WK189: Four Years, Urbantech Playbook & Seven New Investments (We launch the urbantech playbook
WK193: Startup Communications & People Directory
WK197: Art and machine learning for cities
2018
WK202: Believability Weighting, AVs, Roads and AI (On how founders should manage inevitable conflicting feedback)
WK206: Demo Days & Flying Cars
WK210: Leadership, Decision Making & Delivery Robots
WK218: Robotic Spaces and Seven New Urbantech Startups
WK223: Visiting Our People, URBAN-X Cohort 4 & GDPR
WK230: Department of Urban Testing, LA & Lot’s of Fundraising
WK236: Time Budgets and Robot Groceries
WK242: Climate Change, Mobility and the Near Term Future of Everything
WK249: Better Hardware Startup Math & The Mobility Data Platform (In which we make a case for why startups need to look beyond equity finance, especially if they make or use hardware)