Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Podcast

Mike outlines how a systems engineering background working on maritime tugboats eventually led to building up the supply chain investment thesis at BVP, how the firm defined its “Roadmap to Supply Chain Software” research to overlap and compliment categories BVP already had deep expertise (enterprise software, vertical SaaS, digital infrastructure, etc.), how over a decade of Vertical SaaS lessons learned can apply directly into scaling go-to-market for supply chain software, and finally a “What’s Hot and What’s Hype” outlook on trends he is keeping an eye on.

Katherine shares with us the why & how the a16z American Dynamism practice was founded to build for America and the national interest (USA!), what it takes to scale a company within these legacy industries whether private or public end markets, a deep dive example into the ~3,000 foundational machine shops infrastructure underpinning the American economy and our national security, and finally a “What’s Hot and What’s Hype” outlook on where things are headed in 2023.

Lior shares what the two ah-ha moments were to launch Eclipse where he saw the tech growth potential ahead for industrial sectors, why the current global macro accelerants to innovation in these industrial sectors have him more bullish than ever on their strategy and additional capital providers piling in, lessons learned on business models at the “interaction of bits meet atoms” and the associated metrics/standards developing as best practices, and we wrap up discussing why its critical to define industrial sustainability impact both in terms of environmental and economic ROI markers to quantitatively build the case of just how important the industrial evolution is to society.

Torie shares the origin story of launching a venture arm, Four More Capital, within the multi-generational Henry Crown & Company platform, how they formed a three-prong strategy to build internal operating company partnerships that in turn drive differentiated commercial value to both the operating companies and startups they work with (hint: show up and get on the plant floor in person), why the rising trend of industrial family office venture investing is here to stay and which investment strategies best fit this model, and finally we wrap up with an outlook on "What's Hot and What's Hype" right now within Industry4.0.   

Bryron shares when, how, and why a private corporation with $120B in revenue, 120,000 employees spread across 70 countries, 10 major platform businesses, 550 manuf. facilities, etc. decided to launch venture capital and growth equity platform, KDT, how their team decided which CVC investing structure was most aligned to drive value back to all of Koch Industries various platform businesses, why Koch Labs was developed as a part of the KDT platform to drive differentiated value creation internally and externally to create a “virtuous cycle of mutual benefit”, and we wrap with a section of “What’s Hot and What’s Hype” in Industry4.0.

Clean Tech, ESG, Sustainability, Decarbonization, Energy Transition, Impact Investing, etc. descriptors have all seemed to blur, and Sophie helps us tie this all together with her definition of ‘Sustainable Investing’ and how she buckets efforts into 7 climate-related industry sectors (spoiler alert: a further deep dive with 80 sub-sectors is coming shortly!). We then discuss the newly proposed SEC rules to standardize and enhance climate-related disclosures for investors, how she thinks these potential SEC climate disclosure rules will be adopted in practice given how far behind most industrial corporations are in their digital transformation journeys, and we wrap up with a deals and dollars venture investment (and exit liquidity!) outlook on the trends she is seeing where Climate Tech is intersecting with industrials sectors.

Stacy walks us through a macro-historical retrospective detailing what structural issues led to the last decade of rapid innovation within the construction ecosystem, outlines when, why, and how he has seen venture capital pour into the broader builtworld environment to accelerate digital transformation aligned to those structural issues (note according to McKinsey, on a comparative basis, VC investment in construction tech outpaced the overall VC industry 15-fold through 2019; and didn’t slow in 2020 or 2021!), and finally we discuss how the accelerated movement towards Pre-fabrication and Modular construction is ushering in major impact aligned to the term “Constructuring”.

Eric explains how he defines Industry4.0 and walks us through a global outlook on how the US, Germany, and China are progressing their respective initiatives, what the challenges are associated with selling digital innovation into these industrials settings both for large enterprise accounts and the long tail of mid-market manufactures (tip: get them to see successful digital innovation in person!), how companies can get started on their digital transformation journies and why you have to bring along the human element from the very outset, and finally why systems integrators are becoming an ever more critical component within the Industry4.0 transition towards digital and interoperable industrial capabilities.

Carl shares what led to his maker passion within industrial settings and re-launching Flying Moose, how the current Russia and Ukraine war (as well as Covid fallout) will impact global supply chains, how he is advising his h/w-oriented startups to harden their own supply chain and manufacturing capabilities, his strategy for capitalizing business models with sizeable 'bits meet atoms' h/w components (tips: take the cash if available, building truly differentiated h/w products create clear moats), why the ‘blitzscaling’ model often doesn’t fit within industrial innovation and in some ways can be slightly destructive, and finally, tech trends on "What's Hype and What's Hot" including a shout out to fusion energy potential.

Ankoor outlines his macro take on what’s occurring within the current global supply chain strain, why customers are searching for integrated, end-to-end multi-mode/multi-node supply chain solutions to fix it, how rail and intermodal are critical pieces of the supply chain that are innovating faster than ever, and how the private equity asset class is clearly not sitting on the sidelines when it comes to pouring capital into the digitization of the supply chain.