We dive deep into our sectors. Our research drives our insights and thesis-driven approach.

In our 2023 Research POV, we highlighted our focus on “going global” with our climate practice. In this post, we’d like to share more context on what we believe is one of the biggest opportunities in climate tech: the energy transition in emerging markets.

In our 2023 Research POV, we highlighted our focus on “going global” with our climate practice. In this post, we’d like to share more context on what we believe is one of the biggest opportunities in climate tech: the energy transition in emerging markets.

I’ve spent most of my life working on two core areas — 1) clean energy and 2) digital transformation of legacy sectors. The first 5–7 years of my career were explicitly focused on the former.

As we highlighted in our Death to DTC? post, the DTC-only strategy is no longer a viable path for the vast majority of brands. In 2016, Andy Dunn, CEO / Founder of Bonobos, coined the now famous term DNVB — digitally native vertical brands. Since then, billions of VC dollars have poured into not only DNVB brands, but also the ecosystem supporting these brands and the broader ecommerce channel — “ecommerce enablement” software and services.

Before generative AI became all the rage, vertical software, and embedded/vertical fintech were all the rage (perhaps it still is for many others as it is for me). At Equal, we love investing in vertical software businesses.