Tres Palmas Ventures

Partners Rob Lair and Tim Wall manage the fund's investment process, operating from the Hula campus in Burlington. They were appointed by Hula founder Russ Scully, who launched the fund. The small team evaluates opportunities across climate and industrial tech, drawing on the broader Hula network of over 150 investors for co-investment and diligence support.

The fund's primary sourcing engine is the Hula campus itself, a lakeside coworking and innovation hub that attracts and incubates early-stage Vermont startups. It also taps regional university pipelines and its 150-plus investor network. The fund explicitly targets companies that benefit from the state's local economy, creating a distinct geographic filter.

No. It operates as the venture capital vehicle embedded within the broader Hula campus, a real estate and technology redevelopment project in Burlington, Vermont. This structure tightly couples the fund's portfolio support — mentorship, facilities, community — with the campus infrastructure, making it more of an embedded investment platform than a standalone fund.

The firm invests at the early stage, backing tech-driven startups that are 'value-aligned' and rooted in Vermont. While the fund does not publish specific round-size ranges, its portfolio includes companies from pre-revenue deep tech to scaling industrial enterprises, reflecting a flexible approach to stage within early-market Vermont businesses.

The fund concentrates on climate and industrial technology, with known investments in electric aviation, space propulsion, subsea robotics, and geospatial mapping. It looks for companies delivering clean, sustainable solutions with long-term net-positive environmental and economic returns — particularly those that can create quality jobs in Vermont.