In the third episode of Season 11 of the Propcast, host Louisa Dickins is joined by Gregg Wallace, Partner at Building Ventures, who invest in companies reshaping the way we design, build, operate and experience our built environment and Matt Wegworth, Vice President of Dawson Ventures at McKinstry, whose goal is to advance early-stage technologies and offerings and support innovative startups.

Episode Highlights:

• How Gregg as part of the Hilti Group invested in Building Ventures first funding round

• How they have now launched Fund 2 and the different strategic partners this will bring onboard

• The growth they have seen in the market and what it means for their organisation

• The synergies between Building Ventures and McKinstry and why they started working together as strategic partners

• The tagline that McKinstry work by and how that benefits their clients

• Why Dawson Ventures was created

• The stage and ticket size that both companies invest in and trends they follow

• The different areas of growth they are seeing, despite the economic situation

• The importance of having a go to market plan in the construction and proptech space

• Gregg and Matt’s ideas for generating more innovation and adoption within the industry

• Their view on the best ways to attract new talent into construction technologies

• The battle the industry has between efficiencies and innovation

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy

• LMRE YouTube Interviews

• PropTech Salary Report, LMRE 2022

• ALICE Technologies

• ICON

• A/O PropTech Report

• Hilti Group

• Assemble System

• Autodesk

• Financial Times

• ENR 400

• TurboTax

• BuiltWorlds Conference

Shout outs:

• Mayra Soto

• Vivin Hegde

Key Takeaways:

• We appreciated as Hilti the ecosystem that Building Ventures brought, so we made an investment in mid 2018, alongside a whole number of strategic investors as part of Building Ventures first fund, which launched in 2018 as $53 million and placed 16 startup portfolio companies. - Gregg

• That's what we also represent as Building Ventures, looking at how do we create a fundamentally better built world? Not the transaction side of buying and selling and dividing buildings into crypto coins, but really creating a fundamentally better built world, connecting the historically disparate phases of the building lifecycle. - Gregg

• What that does for us here and certainly for our clients is it brings a suite of thinking and offering to drive that desire to how do we remove the waste and climate harm out of the environment through innovation, so that it has 60 years of operation. - Matt

• We believe by keeping really close to the industry, we can be very supportive. At the early seed stage, getting to know founders, making introductions, helping them think through strategically the problems. - Gregg

• This is not a one-time transaction. This is the start of a five to 10 year relationship through all of its ups and downs that we want to support our portfolio company. - Gregg

• So do we see a slowdown? Not at all. Are we continuing to invest in our own startups? Absolutely. - Matt
  
  

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast ‘The Propcast’ where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

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