Month: December 2022

We’re getting ready to launch a price hike, but you still have time — 72 hours to be precise — to attend TC Sessions: Space 2022 on December 6 in Los Angeles for $199. Will you be in the room?

Click, register and save: Space tech may come with a jaw-dropping price tag, but this space conference doesn’t. Buy your pass before December 2 at 11:59 p.m. PST — prices go up to $495 at midnight. Why pay more if you don’t have to?

Let’s take a gander at just some programming we have lined up for the day. Check out the event agenda for specifics on all the speakers, topics and times.

TechCrunch Space Pitch-off: You can improve your own pitch by watching how the VC judges react and by the questions they ask. It’s a window into what might make them decide to schedule a meeting with you. We’ll announce the competitors soon, and they’ll have to deliver their very best to impress our panel of expert judges: Jory Bell (Playground Global), Mark Boggett (Seraphim Space), Tess Hatch (Bessemer Ventures) and Emily Henriksson (Root Ventures).

Gearing Up the Next Generation of Scientists, Explorers and Robots: As chief technologist of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Carolyn Mercer has her finger on the pulse across countless projects to explore and understand our planet and solar system. As priorities and methods shift in the Artemis era, Mercer can speak to how tech helps us move forward and how NASA’s unique insights and well of talent can put it to use.

Space Station Shake-up: Commercial space stations are all the rage these days, especially with the mission end in sight for the existing ISS. Blue Origin has announced Orbital Reef, a “mixed-use business park” in low Earth orbit. We’ll talk with Shahir Gerges — director of business strategy at Orbital Reef, Blue Origin — about the orbital economy and what we can expect from privately operated successors to the ISS.

Of course you’ll have plenty of time during the day for networking. The event app makes it easy to find and connect with the people who can drive your mission forward. Use it to schedule meetings in advance, on the fly — or you can roll old-school, like, you know, strike up a conversation in the exhibition area or between sessions. You never know what opportunities a brief meeting or casual conversation might present.

TC Sessions: Space 2022 takes place on December 6 in Los Angeles, but you have only three days left until that $199 deal leaves orbit. Buy your pass by December 2 at 11:59 p.m. PST. The price increases to $495 at midnight. Don’t space out on serious savings!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Space? Contact our sponsorship sales team byfilling out this form.

T-minus 72 hours left to save on passes to TC Sessions: Space by Lauren Simonds originally published on TechCrunch

The built environment is responsible for nearly 40% of carbon emissions worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency. And while a portion of that is from the energy and materials required to construct buildings, the lion’s share — nearly 90% on an annual basis — comes from their use. Decarbonizing the grid could go a long way to address that, but oftentimes it’s easier, and more profitable, to simply reduce emissions.

That’s where proptech can step in. By cutting carbon emissions on the operations side, it can save building owners and managers money while also enhancing the experience for occupants. We asked three venture capital firms investing at the intersection of proptech and climate tech about how a focus on reducing emissions can trim a building’s carbon footprint, and offer new opportunities for returns.

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Challenging market conditions, though, mean that returns are anything but assured. But for category leaders, there’s potential for significant upside. “This economic environment will continue to test a lot of companies,” said Jake Fingert, managing partner, and Lionel Foster, investor, at Camber Creek. “Those that survive will have an opportunity to expand market share.”

And the potential market is enormous. Spending on getting the world’s real estate to net zero will require $1.7 trillion every year between now and 2050, according to McKinsey. “This is the single largest capex supercycle any industry has ever seen,” said Othmane Zrikem, chief data officer of A/O Proptech.

We spoke with:

Jake Fingert, managing partner, and Lionel Foster, investor, Camber Creek
Anja Rath, managing partner, PropTech1 Ventures
Othmane Zrikem, chief data officer, A/O Proptech

(Editor’s note: To build a complete picture of this sector, we’re examining proptech from three different angles. This survey examines the environmental impact of proptech and what startups are doing to minimize their footprint, and we’ll soon publish another covering upcoming tech in the space. The first part of this survey covered proptech startups solving financial problems.)

Jake Fingert, managing partner, and Lionel Foster, investor, Camber Creek

There’s a lot of overlap between construction tech and proptech. What would you say is the difference between the two? Where do they overlap?

We hear people make this distinction between proptech and construction tech all the time. However, we see a lot of overlap between the two categories, and think it is beneficial to be deep in both areas. For example, we self-identify as a proptech company and co-led the Series B round for Bridgit, which identifies as a construction tech company.

The built world is massive and hugely consequential to everyone’s quality of life. Technology that improves how much we can utilize and enjoy these spaces at any stage of a building’s lifespan is relevant and valuable. That’s what matters. In fact, we would argue you need more ideas that stretch across a building’s life cycle, which lasts decades.

What is your investment thesis for proptech in 2023? What sort of growth are you expecting in the sector?

Our approach has always been to invest in and support the growth of companies that are true category leaders or well on their way there. This economic environment will continue to test a lot of companies. Those that survive will have an opportunity to expand market share.

So we expect to see more opportunities to invest in the best companies at prices that are more closely tied to current performance and reasonable growth prospects. Also, when transactions slow down, real estate groups tend to focus more on internal operations. This usually involves technology, and we expect some companies that are helping real estate groups drive margin to have a strong run in the coming period.

Commercial real estate has taken a hit during the pandemic. How has that affected investor interest in climate-friendly proptech?

Many of our portfolio companies offering sustainability solutions also save customers money and improve operational efficiency. That value proposition is irresistible. It’s just a matter of getting that information in front of the right decision maker.

When you combine that with companies who increasingly want to lead on sustainability and are being encouraged to do so by their stakeholders, we don’t expect to see a slowdown in the rate of adoption of these technologies.

In the intersection between proptech and climate tech, where do you see the biggest opportunity?

Approximately 50% of the CO2 emissions from a building’s life cycle are created during the construction phase, so the more we do to lengthen the useful life of a building, the less carbon associated with that site. This dovetails with investor and tenant interest in spaces that can accommodate multiple uses, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes over time.

There will be increased activity around retrofits, renovation, and data-driven site selection that helps people discover non-obvious spaces that can meet their needs. We are also spending significant time in areas like IoT and sensors, where innovations can have a potentially big impact on the climate.

The Inflation Reduction Act offers significant tax credits for energy retrofits. Has that changed the type of startups your firm considers? If it has, in what way?

The Inflation Reduction Act is arguably the most consequential piece of climate legislation in U.S. history. There are the incentives for retrofits, which you mentioned, but experts like those at our portfolio company Arcadia also anticipate a “solar rush” — a big uptick in clean energy production, connectivity of clean energy supply to a more resilient electrical grid, and development of clean energy assets in low- and moderate-income communities.

We have had many conversations with companies working on sustainable building and renewable energy solutions, but we expect to see even more activity in this space and a broader range of creative solutions.

Proptech in Review: 3 investors explain why they’re bullish on tech that makes buildings greener by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch

Running a startup can be a chaotic time; a million things need to be built, done, tracked, analyzed, considered, reported and validated. Keeping an overview of it all can be hard, and there’s always a threat of something (maybe something important?!) slipping through the cracks. StartupOS today launched a platform to bring some sanity to it all in a bid to help founders stay on track.

The platform was built in partnership with (and backed by) SVB, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank. It includes access to business tools, guidance, mentors and investors, with the hope that the founders can learn how to best shepherd their startups through the process of validating ideas, building MVPs and finding product-market fit.

The company is headed up by CEO and co-founder Paul Pluschkell, who spent the past quarter century building startups, and has a handful of successful exits under his belt, including MXNet, IXnet, Spigit, Global Center and Kandy.

“One of the primary reasons startups are successful is because they were empowered from the beginning of their journey with access to the tools, sources of funding, and network needed to support the growth of their company,” shares Pluschkell in a statement to TechCrunch. “Unfortunately, however, not every founder has the same level of empowerment and support due to their background and or geographic location. Through StartupOS, we aim to change that.”

Early next year, the company is adding the ability to connect to a network of investors, turning the StartupOS into a source of early-stage dealflow to interested angels and investors.

StartupOS’s stated mission is that it “aims to dramatically increase the overall number of startups and their probability of success for new, diverse generations of founders.” Which sounds good. As a middle-aged dude with 20+ years of work experience, however, I feel qualified to level this sliver of criticism: It feels a bit rich to have “diverse founders” as a stated goal when the press info features three middle-aged dudes — Mr. Pluschkell (CEO), Mr. Wagner (head of biz dev) and Mr. Dhillon (COO) — with 20+ years of work experience. Adding a woman or some fresher blood to the team might have been a nice touch. When I challenged the StartupOS team on its sausagefest at the top of the pyramid, the company didn’t quite agree.

“We do have a diverse leadership team. In fact, approximately 50% of the top execs at StartupOS are diverse, including women and minorities. Our platform was set up so that startups that would traditionally not have an opportunity for mentorships/investments through accelerators can now have a more direct path to success,” said Pluschkell. “This will be a major advantage for minority-owned businesses that have previously struggled to secure the funding that they need to grow. We are proud of the diversity in our leadership team, and we will continue to hire the best talent, regardless of race, religion, gender and creed.”

Curiously, none of the press materials nor the site itself says anything about what the platform is considering as its business model, which made me a little suspicious — from the screenshots, it looks as if the platform is gathering a lot of very valuable data about the various startups, and the old adage is true: If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Digging a little deeper, the team shed a bit of light on the road map:

“We have a multi-tiered business model that focuses on the demand side. Startups are free on our platform,” explains Pluschkell. “We will offer a subscription-based service that offers opportunity providers (VCs, accelerators, educational institutions, corporations, etc.) a dashboard to StartupOS companies or enrolled portfolios to view, filter, create watchlists, and connect with Startups on our Platform. We have a Sponsorship & Referral Model that allows for ads on our site for companies that service Startups and can provide services at a discount.”

The company also has a “PowerUP Builder” that enables companies to create PowerUPs (tools that provide learn-by-doing exercises) that work within our platform and create initial awareness by offering a lightweight version of their enterprise tools for startups. The idea is that this is lead gen, in the hope that the startups will subscribe to enterprise services once they raise funds and continue their growth trajectory.

“Later next year we plan to offer a Data Subscription that is aggregated and anonymized data about certain sectors, geographies, business models, and stages of a company lifecycle,” says Pluschkell. “For example, a corporate client in financial services with a StartupOS data subscription can access median revenue growth, cash burn, etc. of pre-Series A financial services startups.”

I wanted to dig a little deeper and discovered that the site’s privacy policy and terms and conditions aren’t where you’d expect to find them. Instead they were buried at the very bottom of the FAQ. In any case, the T&C’s highlighted that all content (“all information, data, and other content, in any form or medium, that is collected, downloaded, or otherwise received, directly or indirectly, from you […] by or through our Service”) you upload to the site can be shared with other site users in perpetuity, and “You further grant (…) an irrevocable, perpetual, transferable, sublicensable (through multiple tiers), fully paid, royalty-free, and worldwide right and license to use, copy, store, modify, distribute and display Your Content.”

Given how much startup info can be proprietary, I’d probably think twice as to whether I’d want to hand over a bunch of my startup’s information to StartupOS.

I find myself wondering if, given the incredible breadth of startups and the needs of various founders, StartupOS is able to be as broadly useful as it is setting out to be. SaaS companies can often play by a similar playbook, but hardware companies or companies operating in regulated spaces (fintech, medtech, etc.) often have a lot of variety in terms of what the “long pole in the tent” represents. It’ll be interesting to see whether the platform is able to attract startups, and whether it’s able to help them in a way that ends up being efficient.

In any case, StartupOS is one to keep an eye on as it scoops up its first few startups and starts proving its thesis.

StartupOS launches what it hopes will be the operating system for early-stage startups by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch