Tamiami Angel Funds invests additional funds in Climate Tech firm

Angel investors from the Tamiami Family of Angel Funds invested an additional $200,000 in Kind Designs, its second investment in the Florida-based climate-tech company that manufactures environmentally friendly Living Seawalls to protect coastal communities from rising sea levels.

With this most recent investment, Kind Designs has now raised a total of $400,000 from Southwest Florida angel investors. “Kind Designs’ solid business thesis combined with the environmental benefit gives us confidence that the company is on a strong growth trajectory,” says Timothy Cartwright, partner of Fifth Avenue Family Office and chairman of Tamiami Angel Funds in Naples.

Miami Beach-based Kind Designs uses 3D-printing technology to print concrete seawalls that mimic coral reefs and mangroves, hosting biodiversity and improving water quality. The company’s Living Seawalls are reinforced with recycled ocean plastic fibers and contain embedded water-quality sensors to create a global network of water data. Kind Designs is benefiting from government mandates to raise seawalls, the need for environmentally friendly building materials in marine construction and the competitive edge of lower production costs that 3-D printing technology can deliver.

“We installed the first 3D-printed seawall in the world in Miami Beach earlier this year with Dock & Marine Construction, which has been in business here since the 1950s,” says Kind Designs Founder and CEO Anya Freeman.

Since the initial investment by Southwest Florida angel investors and others late last year, Freeman says Kind Designs has expanded to a larger 50,000-square-foot warehouse on the banks of the Miami River from where it can transport the walls more easily by barge to residential, commercial and municipal projects. The company’s three 3D printers can also be transported to a job site, such as a forthcoming 750-acre Maldives-style eco resort planned on the Bahamas island of Bimini.

The investment by Southwest Florida angel investors was part of a $5.6 million capital raise that has also attracted big-name investors such as Mark Cuban, one of the entrepreneur personalities on the reality television show Shark Tank. In addition to larger facilities and two new 3D printers, Kind Designs has boosted its staff to 14 employees who can now build walls throughout Florida.

Cartwright says he first learned of Kind Designs when he served as a judge at the 2023 Aerospace + Emerging Tech Forum’s pitch competition last summer hosted by the Florida Venture Forum and Space Florida in Melbourne. The company won first place and $40,000 in the pitch competition.

Naples-based Tamiami Angel Funds are member-managed funds that allow high-net-worth individuals and families to invest in promising early stage and expansion-stage companies located in the U.S., with a preference to those in the state of Florida. For more information about Tamiami Angel Funds, visit www.tamiamiangels.com. For more information about Kind Designs, visit www.kinddesigns.com.