Creative Ventures is a deep tech venture firm investing in early-stage companies solving humanity’s most critical crises.
During the 2010’s, mobile Internet was experiencing its golden years.
The US started with 20% smartphone penetration and ended with over 70% and 250 million users. Uber roared. Airbnb IPO’ed at a $100+ billion valuation.
But for an investor, this is yesterday’s glory and that means it’s also someone else’s money.
So what’s next?
Let us be frank about this: we think last mile delivery has a very attractive upside, but we think it is too challenging to be an attractive investment.
The difference between the two are the risks involved.
Luckily, we know exactly what it takes for founders to change our mind.
In Part I, we discussed how the exponential growth in eCommerce leads to an increase in cost of fulfillment and shipping as a percentage of net sales, driven by rising wage and consumer expectation. Worker wages in fulfilment centers sit at $17 an hour, almost two and a half times more than minimum wage. ConsumersContinue reading “Keeping Up with the Delivery Rocketship Part II: Opportunities in Warehouse Automation”
Two things that my wife loves are good food and nice purses. In 2020, those two options became exclusively available, for the first time, online. While our personal airline and hotel expenses declined by 100%, our e-Commerce and food delivery bill mushroomed.
In our previous posts in this series, we established a case for construction technology due to severe labor shortages, and discussed two primary challenges as market fragmentation and complex market structure. We then looked into a number of automation-related opportunities involving site preparation and foundation phases of the construction process, focusing on construction surveying andContinue reading “The $400 Billion Market Part III: Opportunities in Construction Analytics”
In Part I, we explained that the construction industry is experiencing heightened demand primarily from the residential and infrastructure segment, an aging workforce that is retiring, and the challenge to attract younger generations. These factors lead cumulatively to a severe labor shortage and rising labor wages that are constricting an industry historically operating at aContinue reading “The $400 Billion Market Part II: Opportunities in Construction Automation”
In 2018 my friend excitedly mentioned that he and his wife were looking to buy a house. Finding a new home would end up taking them another 24 months. Maybe those of you who are living in the San Francisco Bay Area have had a similar experience involving an excruciatingly painful journey to bid, getContinue reading “The $400 Billion Market Part I: The Case for Construction Automation”
This is the introduction to a series of articles Creative Ventures will be publishing on the topic of Labor Shortage and Automation. The pandemic has brought discussions of automation front and center once again. In our new contactless, socially distant world, automation has allowed operations to continue and has accelerated trends in industries where laborContinue reading “Myths and Realities of Automation and Labor Shortages”