Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Podcast

On the turn of Ironspring Ventures 5 year anniversary (!), Peter shares the story of the Holt family background and his own journey to now leading HOLT Group, details the various industrial businesses and associated sectors that HOLT Group operates within (hint: “Dynamic” is a core value),

Josh shares a then and now look back on his 20-year journey building multiple Builtworld startups and what key evolution points he has seen in the ecosystem, details how Oracle Construction and Engineering is leveraging AI to help customers and their skilled workforce do their jobs better and more safely, outlines how responsibly applying AI in construction can advance the entire industry, and walks us through what his key lessons learned are from his three M&A transactions in the Builtworld to-date (tactical and strategic).

Nick walks us through how he and Upfront went about furthering development of their national infrastructure and hard tech focus areas, shares his outlook on the LA and SoCal industrial resurgence that is underway, discusses the rich SoCal industrial history underpinning this resurgence (“primes” and associated talent have been there for decades!), and details why the human element involved in industrial sectors is only going to be strengthened by the adoption of industrial automation (not replaced).    

Sivan details both why Xylem set up a corporate innovation and venture capital team in 2021 and how those efforts move the needle for a $8B revenue F500 water-focused corporation that spans 150 countries and 23,000 employees, dives into how integral water and water technology are for the current Ai frenzy and data center boom to actually achieve the potential everyone is hoping for, outlines some of the water improvement efforts that will be required in order for international supply chain reshuffling to occur where water access might prove challenging (ie. Nuevo Leon), and finally we discuss how everything Xylem innovates on is inherently sustainable and what that means to her. 

Craig shares his story from growing up in the freight industry to what led him to found Freightwaves, takes us behind the scenes of his industry statements/predictions both entering (2022) and exiting (2024) the current freight recession and what the blow back was from being out ahead on market moving data like that, channels his inner Sec. of the Department of Transportation on what his vision would be and what he would do his first 90 days, and finally a “What’s Hot and What’s Hype” session from his recent Freightwaves F3 conference and awards context.

Dave shares why he took on the challenge of building Tidemark after over 20 years in the venture asset class (and garnering Midas List recognition), how Tidemark takes on a product ethos in building its Vertical SaaS (VaaS) value-add capabilities such as content and community events among other efforts, VaaS learnings from recent research they’ve done on “Control Points” and a benchmarking study on Vertical and SMB SaaS trends, how the Tidemark thesis and lessons learned apply to digital industrial end markets, and finally where Ai is headed for VaaS now that the “Ai meteor” has landed. 

Usman shares how Ai is entering the AEC ecosystem faster than ever and how Bluebeam has developed a 4-part Ai framework to guide the company's approach, details why careful attention to the ethical considerations of Ai’s deployment within the AEC environment is key to long term success, describes some of his lessons learned on what is takes to scale commercial adoption in industrial innovation from his over a decade of experience across various industrial verticals, and finally a “What’s Hot and What’s Hype” section where he sees the Builtworld headed. 

Zach dives into the Primary thesis on supply chain innovation bringing better interoperability, decreasing operational complexity, and better financial infrastructure into this sector, shares his outlook on how Ai will impact logistics operations, explains his reasoning for business model evolution to “sell work not SaaS”, and where he sees the future headed for this sector after nearly a 10-year wave of VC behind it.

Liz walks us through the USA manufacturing agenda detailing where we’re at given past and present efforts, shares how government funding and the private capital markets can be better bridged together so that manufacturing and supply chain innovation efforts actually hit scale, discusses both why now is different and why we’re seeing more innovation talent and capital flood into manufacturing than ever before, and finally why “digitalizing the middle” is such a critical effort to ensure our USA industrial skilled labor (heroes) isn’t left behind the current wave of technology innovation.

Chris shares what strategic storytelling is and the difference between a story and a strategic story, why this is all very important for industrial innovators to get right, how founders can get started to sell their vision more effectively (thematically and tactically) by building their personal brand which in-turn bolsters the company brand, and finally a “What’s Hot and What’s Hype” section when it comes to which tactical media tools and channels are most effective in 2024.