Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Podcast

Anna explains the origin story of why PepsiCo decided to launch Labs and how those efforts for a global CPG company tie into the digital industrial ecosystem, details how the Labs team programmatically both identifies and collaborates with startups to drive a win/win for Pepsi business units and the startups (hint: Labs acts a single point of contact accelerator within the 340k employee organization), and finally details why the Labs team is specifically scouting for manufacturing operations innovation in 2024. 

Maggie shares the origin story of why she launched an industrial tech venture firm in America’s heartland, details how she builds a competitive advantage leveraging a six-state Midwest region of industrial stakeholders to drive value for her portfolio, explains why sector-focused emerging managers play a critical role behind this industrial tech thesis, and shares some tactical lessons learned on how she activates networks within her region of stakeholders across founders, investors, industrial operators, civic leaders, and non-profits.  

Matt outlines why Stifel (~$7B market cap + 8,000 employees) expanded its venture banking group in 2023 to further support the innovation economy, dusts off his crystal ball to describe where the venture market is headed in 2024 and how that macro outlook will play into the digital industrial sectors, shares a ‘then & now’ look on how the digital industrial ecosystem has evolved over the last decade (hint: founders, funders, exits, etc. have all ramped!), and finally defines some hard-earned lessons learned as to what is required in these sectors from a capitalization strategy and building businesses efficiently.  

Chris describes both the why behind Trimble standing up a corporate venture capital (CVC) strategy and what he means by Trimble Ventures being an “and” within the company’s innovation efforts, details how the CVC platform aims to accelerate growth and drive value for its portfolio companies (hint: aligns to corporate objectives to Connect & Scale), and a 2024 look-ahead crystal ball session of “What’s Hot and What’s Hype?”.  

Vijen details both what he defines as un-sexy industries and why he cares about driving innovation into the 81% of the US GDP underserved by VC, outlines how he activates a differentiated network of founders who’ve built in un-sexy industries to drive value for his firm, describes the founders fund ethos he instills into his VC firm by leveraging his own prior experience as a founder, and finally shares some 2024 look-ahead thoughts on trends he is most interested in for un-sexy industries.  

Emily shares a macro outlook on the growth stage ecosystem aligned to sectors in industrial tech, mobility, buildings, and energy, discusses lessons learned investing in these sectors for both software and hardware-enabled software (“bits meet atoms”) business models, and outlines how The Westly Group approaches climate tech investing as its evolved over the last couple of decades.   

Marianne outlines what Climate Tech means to Congruent, shares how her unique industrial innovation background has shaped her own outlook on this topic (hint: all industrial tech companies are climate tech companies), gives us an outlook on how far along we are in the digital industrial adoption curve and what she sees ahead, describes how both hardware (atoms) and software (bits) innovation will play key roles in industrial settings, and finally a “What’s Hot and What’s Hype” section.  

Ryan shares how a 120 year old manufacturing trade association remains out in front driving technology innovation forward in the industry and why AMT launched a Tech Lab in Silicon Valley to support that, discusses what “The State of US Manuf.” currently is, defines how the industry has more of an adoption hurdle than we do an innovation hurdle, outlines how the accelerated US reshoring manufacturing efforts will be closely linked with associated nearshoring efforts in LATAM, and what efforts are underway to build up ecosystem and the associated talent base required for the next decade in manufacturing.

Scott shares why he decided to transition into advising and angel investing in builtworld startups after selling his company to Procore in 2021, details the value he hopes to bring from an operator-to-operator perspective (hint: 3 horizons of vision setting), advises what he thinks the state of ConTech currently is now vs. what has been maturing over the last decade, and describes what it takes to scale the go-to-market engine of a startup when selling into the nuances of the construction market. 

Tom shares how a coral reef led to the genesis of At One Ventures launch, defines what “Net Positive” investing means within the current climate tech landscape, outlines At One’s physics fundamentals approach (matter, time, energy, and space) to screening deep tech innovation that in-turn has the potential to upend the unit economics of established industries, and describes why he is more focused on the aforementioned unit economic analysis ahead of traditional founder archetype and team dynamics heuristics when making investment decisions.