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Keeping Up with the Delivery Rocketship Part II: Opportunities in Warehouse Automation
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”
Keeping Up with the Delivery Rocketship Part I: The Case for Logistic 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.
The $400 Billion Market Part III: Opportunities in Construction Analytics
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”
The $400 Billion Market Part II: Opportunities in Construction Automation
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”
The $400 Billion Market Part I: The Case for 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”
Kidney Disease: A Silent (and Costly) Killer
The underlying macrotrends, current solutions and investment opportunities Creative Ventures recently led an investment into VenoStent, an advanced-material technology company working on eliminating the 50%+ failure rate in vascular-access surgery required to initiate hemodialysis. Here we unravel the underlying macrotrends driving the development of solutions and investment opportunities in this sector. The kidneys are amongContinue reading “Kidney Disease: A Silent (and Costly) Killer”
Myths and Realities of Automation and Labor Shortages
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”
What is Method Driven VC?
In order to truly address global problems facing society, many of which stem from resource shortages, we turn to technology, a resource multiplier. However, technology needs capital–for successful access, execution, and deployment at scale. Thus, the question becomes, how do we enable new and potentially impactful technology to reach the broader commercial market? Capital isContinue reading “What is Method Driven VC?”
Invest in “Product-Ready” Technologies, Not Moonshots
At Creative Ventures, we often hear from our peers, “You seem really fearless about technical risk.” Ironically, this could not be further from the truth. We explicitly do not invest in technologies at Creative Ventures (even though we are a deep tech fund).
The Fall of Data Moats
“What’s your data moat?” It’s one of the most common questions to AI-related startups. It’s also an increasingly irrelevant question. Thanks to better representations and algorithms it’s now possible to do a lot more with a lot less data. Outside of a limited number of fairly specialized applications, data moats are becoming less and less secure.
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Why is the health care system so poorly set up to handle chronic disease? What interesting technologies are on the horizon—specifically in medical diagnostics—that might be able to change this and be promising venture investments? James Wang, General Partner at Creative Ventures, is joined by Chidi Nwankpa, MD, Summer Associate at Creative Ventures, formerly a practicing physician in Texas, and MBA at the Chicago Booth School of Business.
During this summer, Chidi’s project analyzed opportunities and challenges in the medical diagnostics space, and she shares some of her findings here.
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