In this new podcast series, ArchDaily invites architects and interdisciplinary leaders to discuss the future of the architecture and construction industry. Welcome to Building Future.
We invited KP Reddy for our latest edition of Building Future. An author and serial entrepreneur with a background in civil engineering, Reddy has developed his career in diverse BIM/AEC companies, including Gehry Technologies and other companies that have gone public. He now advises companies of all sizes on innovation applied to the built environment and runs Shadow Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm focused on BuildTech.
Today, construction is one of the least digitalized industries, which means that there is room for innovation. While it has been difficult, the industry is on the verge of profound change. The current state of the construction cycle (from architectural inspiration and workflow to project delivery, construction site management, and finally the building life cycle management), is highly fragmented and mostly offline with potential for many integrations.
“This fragmentation is interesting because it no longer depends on the big guys to push the industry. You know, the big companies. For them, [it] is hard to adapt,” says Reddy. “So we see a lot of workflow improvement and process improvement, which is nice. Some of the deals we've done were with investors for a company called Icon 3D that does 3D-printed houses. That was a 9 million-dollar round in Texas, the largest seed-stage investment ever made in the state of Texas. Icon can print a 3D-printed house in 24 hours for $120,000 dollars. So we're looking at transformative things like that. We also look at a lot of interesting data-oriented companies, whereas in this industry we have lots of data sitting on hard drives and the cloud or whatever, but no one's really leveraging it to automate anything. It's just there but no one knows how to use it. So we keep identifying startups that are really leveraging that data stack."
Shadow Ventures will host the Shadow Summit featuring architecture firms’ CIOs, entrepreneurs in the BuildTech and PropTech industries, investors, makers, and builders. The summit will take place in Atlanta, GA in September. ArchDaily readers can save 15% on their registration using code ARCHRDR15.
