New Partners, Old Friends
I’m thrilled to share that Kat Manalac and Mike Trapanese are joining Convective as Partners.
Convective was started in 2022 with a simple idea: wildfire was one of the defining challenges of our time — and technology would be essential to solving it. Working alongside our founders and community, a lot of exciting things have happened since:
Firetech has become a word — and also the hottest category in climate resilience (bad joke).
The sold out Red Sky Summit has grown to a full week with 600+ annual attendees.
Our portfolio has collectively raised over $515M to scale their Firetech efforts.
And most importantly, our portfolio founders are proving that innovation can save lives, protect communities, and create lots of value in the process. Convective companies now protect over 30 million acres and over $140B of assets.
But as the historic and tragic fires in Altadena and the Palisades showed us this past January, we still have a lot of work left to do. That’s why I’m so excited for Kat and Mike to join us as partners.
Kat brings unmatched experience building communities and platforms for founders from her years as a Partner at Y Combinator. She’s a builder, storyteller, and operator who knows how to help great founders scale their vision. We’re excited for her to bring that energy to Convective — growing and activating our ecosystem by connecting founders, investors, the fire service, utilities, and governments around a shared mission of resilience and innovation.
Mike has spent his career as an operator then investor across industries where volatility is the norm — from fintech to food systems to paper manufacturing — most recently as a Partner at Behrens, a New York-based private equity firm. He’s seen firsthand how shocks like wars, pandemics, and commodity swings can threaten even the most essential businesses, and how the right capital partner can help them thrive. He’ll bring that perspective to Convective, where he will help companies navigate uncertainty, structure risk, and scale solutions for a more resilient world. He will help Convective build world class finance & operations functions to support and grow our investment business.
In addition to their impressive resumes, it’s worth mentioning that I’ve known Kat for over a decade and Mike for two.
I originally got to know Kat as a founder myself at YC — benefitting from her amazing events, community building efforts and storytelling — and then getting to work alongside her at YC as a part-time partner. If you ask anyone in the Y Combinator community, they’ll tell you that Kat was the heart and soul of the founder community, beloved and known by all and the driver behind Startup School, the Female Founders Conference and many other amazing moments. We, our founders and the broader fire & resilience community are incredibly lucky to have her at Convective.
Mike has been one of my best friends since our time together at Boston College and has been a close thought partner to me throughout my career at WePay and the early days of Convective. We also once spent six weeks driving the US together in my parents’ 1996 Volvo 850 station wagon. (I think he has finally gotten over that experience and so decided to join up this year). Here’s one of his startup ideas from 2008 (note that we’ve since gotten up to speed on magnetic bearings):
I feel incredibly fortunate to now work with two people I’ve admired for a long time and to leverage their talents in service of Convective’s mission: to help humanity thrive in a volatile world.
Some days the world seems darker and more unpredictable than ever, and that can be a scary prospect. But spending time with our founders, our community and the Convective team gives me hope. Never bet against entrepreneurial energy and great teams facing big problems. If you’re building solutions, we’d love to hear from you.
— Bill
New Partners, Old Friends was originally published in Convective Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.