How Is The Landscape Of Contech Investment Changing with Gregg Wallace and Matt Wegworth

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 guests

Gregg Wallace:

Gregg is a Principal on the investing team at Building Ventures, based in San Francisco.  He joined in 2021 after recent years in Silicon Valley opening and managing for Hilti Group a new startup-focused office. His previous years at Hilti were in Europe in global strategy and product management roles at Headquarters, and as CMO of Hilti Spain. Gregg’s early career was at Bain & Company as a management consultant, based out of Atlanta and Dallas. Outside of work Gregg enjoys trail running, podcasts, and volunteering for Upwardly Global.. Gregg received his BA from Davidson College and MBA from the Wharton School.

Building Ventures:

We are Building Ventures. We chose our name very intentionally – and not just because the url was available. That word: Building. It encapsulates what we care about and what we do. We focus equally on the process of building and the artifacts that are buildings. We work closely with the entrepreneurs we invest in to support them in the building of their companies. 

Digital technologies are reshaping the way we design, build, operate and experience our built environment and will have a profound effect on how we live as humans on our planet. Our objective is to keep a watchful eye over the entire innovation landscape of the built environment but only deploy capital into those with the most promising return characteristics.

Every investment we make lives up to our mission, as it is our sole focus.

Matt Wegworth:

Matt advances McKinstry’s vision and industry leadership through collaborative innovation. Constantly curious, he partners with his team to always ask what’s possible and continually explore emerging industry trends that are reshaping and advancing the built

environment. The result can be seen in McKinstry’s emerging and inflight ventures, delivering innovative products and solutions to clients across the country.

Matt has been in the AEC industry for over 25 years where he has spent his career focused on removing the waste out of the built environment through the grow and development of innovative product solutions and business models. Matt leads Dawson Ventures, McKinstry’s corporate venture practice, where he and the team work to cultivate an ecosystem of innovation, supporting and standing-up new offerings and business ventures providing capabilities and services which enable McKinstry to transform the planning, design and building process.

In his spare time, he enjoys boating, hiking and alpine skiing with his family.

McKinstry:

McKinstry is the national leader in designing, constructing, operating and maintaining high-performing buildings. McKinstry has a platform of integrated services and capabilities that allows us to serve any need in maintaining and improving the life of your building. This platform is put to the test every day in eliminating waste and transforming the built world into comfortable, healthy and productive spaces. 

From new construction and ongoing operations to adaptive reuse, energy retrofits and advanced renewable energy systems, McKinstry provides a single point of accountability across the entire building lifecycle. We focus on people and outcomes to ensure the built environment serves owners, operators and occupants alike. McKinstry works with school districts, universities, municipalities, hospitals and private companies nationwide. Our clients care about long-term planning, saving energy and driving out waste, and have sophisticated facilities that require nothing but the best. America’s built environment squanders energy, labor and construction and maintenance costs. At McKinstry, we don’t. We’re your trusted partner for the life of your building.

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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