Heavy Hitters: The Digital Industrial Podcast

Jim shares the origin story of Toyota Ventures and how the firm leverages its $500M AUM to discover what's next for Toyota, how having a broad investment thesis beyond just core automotive and mobility helps avoid the innovators dilemma, what he is looking for in robotic-enabled innovation and the associated challenges and opportunities that come with those business models, and how having a dedicated Climate Fund is supporting Toyota’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.   

Sam shares how the convergence of data, compute, and advanced engineering is leading to their thesis of “The Super Evolution”, how that thesis is intersecting and driving impact into industrial sectors, what the 4 key trends are that she is seeing develop behind tailwinds in industrials, and why she thinks of climate tech as a “persistent, horizontal underlying trend in nearly every space we touch”. 

Katie shares The Engine’s definition of and approach to Tough Tech investing, her thoughts on why the Tough Tech category has shown fundraising resilience during a challenging time for the broader venture market, details how the firm drives value to their portfolio via both public and private sector partnership networks (stat: for every $1 raised from The Engine, raised another $1.22 from the public sector), and how The Engine has chosen tools and frameworks that enable the firm to quantify and deliver on its deep commitment to having a positive impact on the world.

Hot off a trip to Vegas for the 2023 Manifest supply chain innovation conference, the four besties Chris Stallman of Fontinalis Partners, Julian Counihan of Schematic Ventures, Santosh Sankar of Dynamo Ventures, and host Ty Findley of Ironspring Ventures go off script digging in on a macro market pulse where we are now in the latest freight market cycle, a then & now reflection on what supply chain innovation has occurred over the last decade that led us to today, and finally a 2023 crystal ball session about where both innovation and deal-making trends are headed in this sector. I might even ask them what they would do first if they were made Department of Transportation Secretary for a day...

Lior shares the origin story of both why Uber Freight was launched in 2017 and how the intrapreneurship support he had from Uber leadership was key to building this freight division, the circumstances and path Uber Freight took from launch into profitability in 2022, how far along we are in the autonomous, Class 8 trucking commercialization effort, and finally why Uber Freight decided to link up with competitors Convoy and JB Hunt to form a data interoperability consortium and make freight appointment scheduling more efficient for the entire industry.

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.