Founder, General Partner

David Hertz, FAIA is an inventor, entrepreneur and a pioneer in restorative architecture. He created one of the first sustainable building materials, Syndecrete, in 1984. Hertz’s work at his Studio of Environmental Architecture responds to environmental challenges by lessening the impacts of the built environment on the natural. Examples of radical reuse and repurposing are the 747 Wing house, a residence designed from the wings of a decommissioned airplane, and the Sail House, which collects 100% of its water and energy. David has been widely published and exhibited and has promoted the idea of sustainability as a progenitor of design. 

David’s invention, the WEDEW, won Water Abundance XPRIZE in 2018. In 2022, David received the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s National Design Award for Climate Action. The National Design Awards is a Cooper Hewitt initiative launched in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council. The Climate Action Award is given in recognition of a design project for its significant contributions to addressing the urgency of the global climate crisis. David’s mission is to use nature-based systems thinking for nimble, distributed, self-sufficient and resilient communities with point of use solutions, which work to help the most vulnerable people to adapt the emerging threat multipliers of climate change.

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Founder, General Partner

Mike Siegel has been an active venture investor and strategic advisor to entrepreneurial CEO's for over half a decade. Together with Mark Arnold, Mike founded AVP Management to make venture investments in audacious startups in the deep tech and climate tech domains. AVP portfolio investments including commercial space pioneer Orbit Fab, Inc. and sustainable additive manufacturer Orbital Composites, Inc.

Prior to his work with AVP, Mike built a highly successful career over 20 years as an operating executive in the technology industry, leading high growth companies in cybersecurity and identity management in both the Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas. Most recently, Mike was senior vice president and general manager at identity management leader SailPoint Technologies where he helped take the company public in 2017 and oversaw growth of its market leading business unit. Prior to that, Mike was the global head of products at cybersecurity leader Forcepoint (formerly Websense), where he drove a broad expansion of the business and had a lead role in delivering the company's private equity owner Vista Equity Partners one of the highest investment returns in its history.

Mike earned his MBA and BA from the University of California at Berkeley and is committed to developing the next generation of Climate Tech startups to blunt the impact of climate change.

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Founder, General Partner

• 25+ years as a venture investing/ tech M&A executive (more than $6B of transaction experience)

• Co-founder of AVP, a disruptive technology focused early-stage venture fund

• Executive leader at multiple energy innovation start-ups

• Former VP CorpDev at Forcepoint, $1.9B sale to Raytheon (NYSE: RTX)

• BS, MBA University of Pennsylvania

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