TL;DR 💚
What is The Built Environment? It was a coin termed in the 1980s [Wiki], and has recently caught the attention of venture capital through — primarily in it’s connection to the real estate planning and development space. In general today, people tend to attach it to the idea of urban sustainability, green spaces, energy-efficiency, climate-technologies, and integrated renewable energy systems.
The Machine
The Built Environment market opportunity is vast and varied, with emerging trends and technologies disrupting traditional domains of real estate, construction, and urban planning.
Here are some of the areas shaping the future of themarket: [Deloitte]
- Smart and Sustainable Buildings: Many buildings are energy inefficient and contribute heavily to carbon emissions. Startups are exploring biodegradable materials, recycled resources, and carbon-neutral manufacturing processes, aiming to mitigate the environmental impact of urban development.
- Smart Infrastructure: Encompassing IoT-driven systems for optimized energy use, waste management, and transportation, is creating cities that are not just smart but seamlessly interconnected.
- Sustainable Renovation, Construction, and Restoration: Stimulating and prioritizing sustainability-targeted renovation, construction, and restoration projects can help reduce the environmental impact of the built environment. Launching incentive plans to promote alternate materials and building a strong engagement ecosystem can also help drive sustainable development.
- Infrastructure Data: Beyond investing in buzzwords like 5G or sensory-tech solutions, extracting value from data can help drive innovation in The Built Environment market.
Venture capital firms are also increasing investments in the development or leveraging of technology to facilitate the purchase, management, maintenance, or investment in the built-tech ecosystem. [EY]
Assessing the social and environmental impact of such investments can be challenging, as there is often little useful data available to evaluate the actual impact on customers or society. Nonetheless, the rapid growth of impact investing in this area is expected to spark a chain reaction in impact creation, touching investors, big business, foundations, and social organizations, which could hasten the adoption of impact assessment in day-to-day business processes and operations. [EY]
Building a sustainable business in the built-environment market often entails making risky long-term bets. Entrepreneurs who want to build a sustainable company must formulate a bolder and more explicit strategy that integrates their aspirations with specific long-term policies about the needs the company will serve, its geographic reach, its technological capabilities, and other strategic considerations. [HBR]
How Big is the Market?
The global construction market size amounted to $6.4 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020, and it is expected to reach 14.4 trillion in 2030. [Statista]
The US construction industry generated total revenues of $2.1 trillion in 2022, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.2% between 2017 and 2022. [MarketLine]
However, it’s difficult to say what the bottoms-up venture market in the US may be for The Built Environment. Regardless, it’s quite large to say the least!
And who are making the BIG bets?
Some top firms making bets in this space:
- Fifth Wall: Europe’s leading Built World VC firm.
- Builders VC: A team of over 35 operators who’ve worked together for over a decade successfully scaling dozens of venture-backed companies.
- Brick & Mortar Ventures: A venture capital firm that invests in startups that are transforming the built environment through technology.
- Camber Creek: A venture capital firm that invests in startups that are transforming the real estate industry through technology.
- Corigin Ventures: A venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies in the technology, consumer, and real estate sectors.
- Planet-A Ventures: Make Scientific Impact the New Normal.
- Breakthrough Energy Ventures: Finance, launch, and scale companies that will eliminate greenhouse gas emissions throughout the global economy.
- Hyde Park Venture Partners: A venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies in the technology, healthcare, and consumer sectors.
- Octopus Ventures: A venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies in the technology, healthcare, and energy sectors.
- Bessemer Venture Partners: A venture capital firm that invests in startups in various industries, including construction tech.
Recent Exits:
Recent Fundings:
Copyright 2023, All rights reserved, by Zecca Lehn via @posi2ive. No advice given here (e.g., financial / legal / business / other). All views expressed represent those of the author personally at the time of writing, and not those of any external business entity nor organization. Content generated partially with both Perplexity.ai and ChatGPT — we made best attempt, but please do your own fact checking to confirm statistics.
