Ski Lift Pitch draws big investors to Taos

Nicholas Seet in 2021 started Undesert, a Los Alamos company that is seeking investment to grow its water purification business.

Seet has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair. So at Ski Pitch Lift — an annual event where startups pitch their business to investors on a ski lift at Taos Ski Valley — Seet sent a proxy.

“Youngest ski pitcher ever,” said Anya Seet, a 16-year-old at Los Alamos High School, who attended the event to pitch her father’s company to investors.

On Tuesday morning, Anya Seet got on a lift with Julia Davourie, of San Francisco-based Convergent Ventures. For about 10 minutes, Davourie peppered Seet with questions about the company as they rode up lift 8.

“We’re looking to purify the brackish water that comes with oil and gas drilling. There’s 500 million gallons of that stuff being produced every day,” Anya Seet said, explaining that her father is looking to raise $2 million to expand and industrialize.

The 9th Ski Lift Pitch was Monday and Tuesday at Taos Ski Valley. Nine New Mexico startups competed against each other for a $10,000 prize in a pitch contest, which is hosted by CNM Ingenuity, a nonprofit that helps Central New Mexico Community College launch ventures in technology and entrepreneurship.

The nine companies were divided into three divisions. This year, the companies were either consumer-facing, or in the sustainability and environmentalism field or deep tech and space, said Jeff Bargiel, the program director for entrepreneurship at CNM Ingenuity.

The companies must be headquartered in New Mexico and be in the early stage or seed stage level, Bargiel said.

The investors are from all over the country as well as New Mexico.

Davourie said her firm has a long history investing in New Mexico companies.

“We love to be here in person because it’s way easier to meet some of the companies and spend time with the entrepreneurs,” she said. “We invest in science-backed companies, and there’s a lot coming out of Sandia and Los Alamos (national laboratories) and some of the universities as well.”

A new idea

Katie Rice, a partner with Tramway Ventures, was skiing at Taos more than a decade ago when she hatched the idea for the pitch contest.

Rice’s children were in ski school and she was skiing by herself.

“I had all these great conversations. I heard a couple of life stories, I talked to an entertainment lawyer, a rancher, a cowboy, a high school kid from Oklahoma and I had all these really fun conversations, right? So I was thinking, they’re giving me their life pitch,” Rice said. “I was working on a couple different pitch events and I thought, ‘You could give a company pitch (on a ski lift); you have just the right amount of time.’”

The first Ski Pitch contest was in 2015.

Rice said the slopes of Taos make a perfect setting for a startup to make a pitch. For one, she said, many investors ski and have heard of Taos.

“And more importantly, it gives the entrepreneurs a way to make a meaningful connection. At a conference, you meet someone, you network. But when you’re on a lift there’s adrenaline, there’s fresh air,” Rice said. “And you’re sitting right next to the person, who can’t take out their phone because then their hands would get cold. You have their undivided attention.”

Bargiel said organizers believe the New Mexico event was the first of its kind. He said organizers have copied the idea at ski areas oversees.

“The concept here is totally unique,” he said.

The businesses

The burgeoning businesses that competed in the event run the gamut. There was Bee Clean Spot, an organic hand sanitizer that kills germs while moisturizing, and Both&, which is making clothing to serve gender queer and nonbinary people. There were also more traditional tech-oriented companies like Space Kinetic, which is building a new platform for space operations, and Cheshir Industries, which is creating a novel and more efficient antenna system.

Chris Brower was at the event to pitch Flow Aluminum.

The company is trying to make an aluminum-based battery mainstream. That, he said, would have a significant price advantage over traditional lithium batteries. He said testing shows aluminum batteries are not as flammable as lithium batteries, which would make manufacturing the product cheaper because companies wouldn’t have to spend as much on fire-prevention measures.

“If you look at every consumer product, there’s a desire for battery or electrification,” he said.

Geoff Aiken, the vice president of engineering of Integrated OffGrid, pitched the business to an investor on a lift Tuesday.

The company is seeking to scale up its technology that pulls water from air in dry environments.

“There are billions of gallons in the air at any given moment,” he said.

The team will flow air over a desiccant system that pulls moisture from the surrounding air. Similar technology exists, but only for more humid climates. Integrated Offgrid believes its technology could be used in the desert Southwest.

“The idea is to replace pallets of water being flown to disaster zones with a rainmaker that will make water,” he said.

The other companies that participated in the event were Senior.One, which has created a tool to help seniors and caregivers navigate aging and resources, and Hoonify, which won the competition. Hoonify is a team of supercomputing experts who worked at national laboratories that is looking to make supercomputing power available to everyday users.

“Winning Ski Lift Pitch means everything to us in terms of having the support of both local and national judges, and it’s a big step forward in our continued growth,” said Andrew Clark, Hoonify’s chief executive officer.

The investors

Doug Campbell grew up in Albuquerque and graduated from the University of New Mexico with bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

The engineer then moved to the Denver area, where he had a 20-year career in the startup field. He raised two companies and took one of them public on NASDAQ before moving back to New Mexico.

He was one of the potential investors skiing Tuesday.

He said he is looking to invest in either New Mexico companies — he’s focused on additive manufacturing space propulsion — or New Mexico venture capital funds.

“We need stuff like this. We need to grow the ecosystem. Having spent 20 years in the Denver area, Denver is a destination for VC dollars. Albuquerque, it needs some help,” Campbell said. “What this community lacks, to put it in real simple terms, is people like me. Guys who have been there, done that in terms of startups.”

The contest

After spending the morning pitching their businesses to investors, the entrepreneurs gathered at the Martini Tree Lounge for lunch while judges tallied up the scores.

Based on the lift pitches, three finalists were chosen to give presentations and answer questions on stage, before Hoonify was announced as the winner.

Though the winner received a $10,000 prize, the participants said the event was about more than just winning. After all, the investors participating in the event were from venture capital firms that brought an estimated $1 billion worth of potential investment dollars to the ski hill.

Rice said the event has developed a reputation and investors are returning year after year to hear about more New Mexico businesses and potentially bring more dollars to the state.

“It’s a memorable moment. There’s all these endorphins and it’ll be a memorable conversation,” Rice said. “And if you ski with them a bit more, they’re going to remember you when you call two months later for an intro or some advice.”

Brower, of Flow Aluminum, said winning the event wasn’t the company’s goal.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of innovations in startups. Every one of those, in my view ... was based on partnerships,” he said. “So our philosophy is not necessarily winning the competition. Our goal is developing trusted partnerships. It takes a community, a partnership community, to scale.”

The event also gave the entrepreneurs a platform to showcase their business plans. All of them were passionate about their idea.

“I know it has the potential to change the world, to bring my generation and future generations pure water. Which is what we need, because that’s a resource that is rapidly declining,” Anya Seet, the high school pitcher, said of Undesert. “(My father) picked me instead of his entrepreneur friends because I’m the one he started the company for. He really wants to help future generations before it’s too late.”