Celebrating an Incredible Year for Athena SPACs

As we embrace the opportunities for 2022, I want to thank you all who contributed to the Athena family of SPACs in 2021

Thank you fellow management team members who have poured through the operations of many of the technology leaders of tomorrow; thank you board members for offering your sound judgment applying your centuries of experience on corporate boards; thank you investors for trusting our ability to create value and for providing the capital life blood to our new platform. 

To our colleagues in venture capital and private equity, thank you for all of our collaboration on sourcing, structuring and so much more where we support each other in bringing the best assets together with capital. 

And to friends, thank you for adding balance and fulfillment in my life.

Each of you were co-creators in making 2021 a year to remember. 

In 2021, we raised Athena Technology Acquisition Corp., Athena Consumer Acquisition Corp. and Athena Technology Acquisition Corp. II. 

We announced and closed a combination with Bill Gross founded and Bill Gates backed Heliogen. Heliogen was the final SPAC combination of the year and I am pleased to say it was up over 50% on its first day of trading - a wonderful reflection of the company that we selected.

In doing all this, we achieved many firsts (there are so many I can’t list them all):

• IPO of the first all women SPAC entirely funded by women
• The first all women management team to ring the bell at the NYSE
• IPO of the first all woman serial SPAC
• First all women SPAC to announce and close a combination
• First black woman CEO to ring the bell for an IPO at the NYSE
• First Korean-American woman CEO ring the bell for an IPO at the NYSE
• IPO of the first ever all women immigrant management team

It has been a historic year. 

In the Summer of 2020, I was on a hike reflecting on the nascent SPAC boom. I visualized another story unfold where women were left out of yet another male dominated field. I decided then to found the first all women SPAC in order for us, accomplished women, to take our rightful place such that each member would  gain the capital markets track record to be empowered to launch future SPACs. This proliferation has already begun to get traction:

• The first Athena warrior to launch her own SPAC, Phyllis Newhouse, IPO’d Shoulder Up
• A second Athena warrior is launching 2 SPACs in the new year
• Many Athena warriors participated in the second and the third Athena SPACs
• Yana Kakar launched the G4G SPAC
• Sandra Shpilberg launched the first hispanic woman led SPAC, Sanaby Health

Together, we are making a difference. We must continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards in creating value together with the same commitment to our shared mission of giving the most qualified women founders, CEOs and entrepreneurs the support and platform they need in 2022. 

We will make the global capital markets opportunities afforded to our daughters a much more equitable place. 

I am also grateful to all the women who paved the way for us to accomplish what we have today. However, the work is not done. We owe it to them, to ourselves and to future generations to secure women’s seats at the tables of wealth and power and guarantee to all women that our contributions are counted.

We look forward to ringing the NYSE bell on January 5 with many of the Athena warriors and to continuing to build on the success of the Athena family of SPACs. 

Happy New Year! May 2022 be the very best one for you.

Isabelle Freidheim