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Case studies · Sunspan

58 investor replies for a tubular solar seed round.

Sunspan is a neonVest portfolio company building tubular solar panels for lightweight industrial roofs, parking lots, floating solar, and agrisolar applications. We ran the outbound for the seed round across three sequenced campaigns. 32 of the 58 replies came in positive.

Investor outreachClimateDeepTechSolar / Cleantech
Client: Sunspan (neonVest portfolio) Founder: Dr. Christopher Barnes (Stanford PhD physicist, 8 patents, ex-Amazon) Validation: NSF/DOE grants, UC Davis, Oregon State, UL underway
890
Investors contacted
Across 3 sequenced campaigns
58
Replies
From cleantech & deep-tech funds
32
Positive replies
40% positive reply rate
66.67%
Top campaign positive
Campaign 03 alone

The setup.

Sunspan is pre-revenue but heavily de-risked: NSF/DOE grant validation, completed Oregon State floating-solar tests, UC Davis agrisolar field tests, and UL certification underway. The thesis works, the data works, the founder is credible. The remaining job: get the deck in front of cleantech and deep-tech investors who back early-stage hardware.

Campaign performance.

Campaign 01 -- 590 contacted, 27 replies, 11 positive (40.74%)
Campaign 01 -- 590 contacted, 27 replies, 11 positive (40.74%)
Campaign 02 -- 164 contacted, 28 replies, 19 positive
Campaign 02 -- 164 contacted, 28 replies, 19 positive
Campaign 03 -- 136 contacted, 3 replies, 2 positive (66.67%)
Campaign 03 -- 136 contacted, 3 replies, 2 positive (66.67%)

Replies from top firms.

Reply from GFT Ventures
GFT Ventures -- $140M Palo Alto frontier-tech & AI fund (US/Israel deep tech)
Reply from Climentum Capital
Climentum Capital -- ~€150M European climate-tech firm (Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin)
Reply from Capital T
Capital T -- ~€70M Amsterdam deep-tech VC (AI, climate, complex systems)
Reply from Bharat Founders Fund
Bharat Founders Fund -- ~$40M India-focused early-stage (global category leaders out of India)
Reply from Antera Agro
Antera Agro -- Brazil-based agrifood / agtech (LATAM agrisolar relevance)
Reply from Archangel Network
Archangel Network -- one of Canada's largest angel platforms (Ontario, Quebec, Alberta)

The stack we deployed

  • Octoparse + Instant Data Scraper -- investor database scraping
  • Clay -- data enrichment and personalization
  • Apollo, Icypeas, Leadmagic -- email enrichment
  • BounceBan + Reoon -- double email verification, sub-1% bounce
  • EmailGuard -- bypass ESPs, land in primary
  • HeyReach -- LinkedIn outreach sequencing
in
The full copy framework

How we research subject lines per investor and frame the pitch -- broken down on LinkedIn.

Read the data-backed guide to fundraising

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