¶ Innovation in AEC and CRE
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All right , welcome back to Unpacking KP Ready . This is my opportunity to ask KP . What were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn ? You know KP Ready . If you don't follow him on LinkedIn , you should be KP Ready R-E-D-D-Y on LinkedIn . Lots of insightful posts every day on LinkedIn . You should be K-P-R-E-D-D-Y on LinkedIn .
Lots of insightful posts every day on LinkedIn . All about innovation , ai , different aspects of the direction , the technology that shapes the built environment . You probably don't know me . My name is Jeff Eccles . I'm a senior advisor at Shadow Partners and this is my opportunity .
Like I said , once a week I get to sit down and ask KP about a post from LinkedIn . So , kp welcome .
Thanks for joining me again today . Good to see you .
Going really well . Good to see you . We actually we did a version of this last week where we were both sitting . We're sitting side by side in the same room . That was pretty bizarre .
Yeah , we didn't know what to do ? We didn't know whether to look at the screen or look at each other . It was very weird .
It was very uncomfortable , it was weird , it was very strange I prefer doing it this way . Well , yeah , so this way , how many miles away are we ? A thousand miles away , or whatever it is ? Yeah , Well , so we were in Miami last week . We did a couple of things there .
We had five of our , and I think part of this post that we're about to unpack sort of harkens back to that experience last week . So let me start by reading it . It's a little bit long , but I'm going to read through the whole thing and then we can go back through it and unpack it whatever way that we want to .
So it starts out Sunday Scaries first cup of coffee edition . This is what KP wrote . I spent the last week with startup founders and AEC innovation executives of Miami last week . Here are a few takeaways . Number one you can be great at storytelling , but you need to make sure that you actually have a compelling story to tell , Fair enough .
Number two build a Venn diagram to understand what your true differentiator is . Start with yourself , then with your company . Number three spend more time outside of industry events . I have been glowing this week from the NVIDIA Developer Conference content . What was your key takeaway ? Number four Miami is a fun city . Not sure if I could live there .
I saw more rain in Miami last week . That's what I've seen .
I saw more rain in small dogs .
This is absolutely true . Number five public startup pitches are tough . Yes , they are . Number six look , if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment , would you capture it or just let it slip ? Who said this ? I know who said this . Number seven focus , forwardness and follow-up from events .
Focus on a few strong relationships . Be forward with your ask and aggressively follow up from events . Number eight how aggressive . When my kids played competitive soccer , they got $50 for every yellow card and $100 for every red card $100 .
Actually minus $100 .
Oh , minus . Okay , sorry , minus $50 for every yellow card and minus $100 for every red card . So how much do they still owe you ?
They owe me the rest of their lives . But I'll tell you they got good at like not getting . They got yellow cards but they didn't get red cards .
That's good . So they were aggressive , but not aggressive .
The boundary of the referee right Like that's . That's what it is right . It's so much subjective so you do have to get comfortable testing the boundaries and adjusting appropriately .
Absolutely so in that one to strive for yellow cards . Number nine shout out to jordan wilson for being such a great resource for the aec startup community . Yes , big thanks to jordan . He hosted us for lunch , our founders and our innovation leaders . So thank you , jordan . Number 10 if you haven't watched the movie Air , I highly recommend it .
If you are a Gen X person like me , the soundtrack is great and nostalgic . And number 11 , what was the first concert that you went to ? Mine was Rush says KP . So there you go . 11 points from the Sunday Scaries first cup of coffee edition . Where do you want to start ? Do you want to go all the way through or do you have favorites in there ?
I think you know , obviously we have . We always have kind of limited time . But I think the aggressive thing is super interesting because I think it applies not just to startups , it applies to engineering firms or corporates as well . Right , like I don't want to be too salesy , I don't want to be too , I don't want to be too . Insert the blank .
Right , and I think you , it's not your choice , right , you have to be as aggressive and be a good listener and react appropriately .
It's like I said with my kids , like playing soccer , like yellow cards are okay , red cards are not okay , and if you're not getting a yellow card , you're not trying hard enough , right , so you don't want to push somebody to the point where they're like just unsubscribe , I'm tired . You don't want to piss people off , but you do want to be challenging .
Right , when they say , hey , this is not a great time , you don't just hang up , say , hey , well , when is a great time ? Right , and I don't know . Like , well , can I send you a text and can we figure it out ? Do you have an assistant ? And I think people forget that aggressiveness is a and a bit of a .
I would say it's part of being passionate , it's part of caring . Like when you're pissed off about solving a problem and you're trying to like solve for it , aggression is kind of an indicator that you are actually doing the work .
If you're super passive , you may not believe , you may not believe , you may not believe , and if you don't believe , the market , the customers , all of it figures it out Right .
And so I think you know I've been definitely more than once been uh , I've been told I'm too aggressive and I'm like I'm sorry I give a shit , like if you don't give a shit , that's cool , like I don't have to talk to you , I'm going to hang out with the people that do give a shit .
So sorry , you know , and I think there's not enough of that , and part of progress and moving markets and showing leadership is just that it is . You have to show it's an early indicator of success .
There's very few passive founders that have been successful right yeah , I think that's a good lesson and we see this all the time in our startup incubator .
You know , and one of the first things , whether it's my , my grad students or it's our actual incubator , one of the first things that I say is you know , if you get to the end of this and nothing has changed , there's a problem . Right , you came into this with an idea and you have to be .
You know , we , we talk about in the incubator , you're pushing the founders to , to make a hundred cold calls or you know , whatever , whatever metric is out there but but be aggressive about having these conversations and then adapting and adjusting to what you're hearing , what you're learning , and so if you started here on day one and at the end of the incubator ,
whenever you graduate out , essentially if you're in the same spot , there's a problem . You were not aggressive , you did not go after , you did not adjust and adapt . Um , so I think I like that idea because you know , we've had founders before .
In fact , I was had a conversation earlier this week with a pair of co-founders from a past cohort that you know have almost radically changed what they've worked on , but they're , they are finding success because they have been aggressive they're . Part of their legend is that shadow summit back in october in atlanta .
They were having so many conversations and you know they weren't being obnoxious or anything like that . That's why they were there to have these conversations with with presumably their , their ideal customer profile . They actually followed someone into the restroom to say , hey , can , can we have a minute , not in the restroom , but can we grab a minute of your time ?
They were aggressive about that . They got a yellow card . Right , that's their legend . They got a yellow card for following someone into the restroom , but they didn't get a red card for cornering them in the stall . So that was good .
Yeah , no , and I think that's the . You know , I don't know . I think you know , as an investor I have to look at early indicators of success and you start to see a pattern of what that is . And it's not that day one . Everybody has it in them . But you know , they might be a little bit standoffish , especially if they came from a corporate environment .
They might feel like aggressiveness is for salespeople . God forbid someone be a salesperson , right .
But I think it can be a learned behavior and what I always tell people is like if you actually care about what you're building , you will have zero issues unleashing kind of those aggressive traits and if you don't , you might want to question are you working on the right thing ?
might want to question are you working on the right thing ? Yep , yeah , james clear , the author of atomic habit , says that every step forward is is a vote for your new you know , fill in the blank , your new business , your new life , etc .
And then you know if , if you believe right , if , if you , if this is something you care about , you're going to keep taking those steps forward . Right , you're going to be aggressive about moving forward . You have to be . Yeah , you have no choice . 100 . So one of the things that we talked about a little bit was the NVIDIA developer conference .
You want to unpack that ?
Yeah , I think you know we all get very myopic into what we're working on , and I think there was a follow-on post . People asked me , like what conferences am I going to ? And I was like , well , I'm kind of focused on either tech or kind of broad market .
You know customers and I think in the broader market of what we look at in our day job is that ultimately it's the developer owner that pays for everything , and so if you're not educating the owners and developers about innovation , it's a missed opportunity
¶ Tech Industry Event Strategy Discussion
. So you know I think you know this this fall , you know we're doing this aec zone thing at CRE Tech , which has never been done , which is all about putting architects , engineers and contractors in front of the developers and owners and asset owners to show off what they're innovating .
You know engineers and construction companies and architects can talk about , oh , we're so innovative . I'm like , great , I'm gonna put you in front of your customers and you show me how innovative you are . Right , like , show me how you can pitch . I've had some of these AC from you want us to stand at a booth and pitch .
Literally said that last week .
You want to make a difference , you will . If you don't want to make a difference , go turtle up somewhere else , right ? So so I think I'm focused on those areas asset owners , investors , kind of at a broad infrastructure investors and on the other , just pure play tech .
So , whether it's the NVIDIA developer conference , I'll probably go to Dreamforce because Salesforce is doing just so many things with AI and I've got a great relationship with the C-suite there . So they're a bit insistent that I come . But I think that you know I'm not going to go to the rest of them . It's just I don't get the point , you know .
It's just really . I know post pandemic , I went to a built worlds conference and it was fantastic because I hadn't seen anyone for two years . So it was like meeting up with all friends in one place . One plane ride to hotel nights . I got to meet up with everyone .
But then at some point , a lot of these you know Autodesk University I stopped when Autodesk University five or six years ago . There's nobody new to me , there's no new narratives . It's the same old , same old . So I think it's like you know , in a world of resource constraints , both on time and capital , it's really important .
You know , that's why I started going to South by Southwest several years ago . I didn't go this year . You have to take a break from the tech crunch , disrupt stuff , the YC demo days , like I mean , I think there's just a lot of stuff outside of our industry that we should be spending time at . By the way , not every event is about networking .
Sometimes it's actually about learning . Yes , god forbid , right , so , like , that's why I've just been , um , uh , you know , the nvidia developer day stuff was just such a massive learning experience and if you didn't , if you didn't like , if you're not watching and rewatching everything that they talked about , you shouldn't even be in technology .
Like , how can you not ? Like it's one of those shame on you moments AI narratives , nvidia narrative and you didn't invest . I mean , I've probably invested 10 hours into it already and I'm still not done , right , yeah , that is , your job is to keep up with these things . How can you not keep up with these things ? Yeah , it's like .
No , I'm going to go to AU and hear about the latest BIM update that whatever audit has terribly made . Like , I mean , who cares ? Who cares about ?
that or bought yeah .
Yeah , or bought Right , who cares ?
Yeah , yeah . We often hear that the the value of the conferences in the corridors , which there's a lot of truth to that , right the networking piece of it . But , to your point , when NVIDIA or somebody has one of these conferences , they're rolling out the future , and what better place to learn about it ?
And NVIDIA has just been a lot of incredible news coming out of there the last couple of weeks from their CEO . Look , if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment , would you capture it or would you just let it slip by ?
So it's so funny , my wife's actually from Michigan .
It's so funny , my wife's actually from Michigan .
So I give her a hard time about Eminem , which I like , eminem , but I'm like OK , michigan , you guys produced Eminem , kid Rock and Ted Nugent Fantastic . She's like that's what you're saying . Oh , and Madonna , that's what you're honing in on . What about Motown ? I'm like I don't know , that's not like you give you a hard time about . Motown .
I'm like that's not . I can't give you a hard time about that . Like I can't give you a hard time about Motown , but I can about Kid Rock and everyone else that you guys produced . But , yeah , no , I think that ties into the demo day . Like I think it's tough because we have like a hundred executives in the room .
Yeah , and I will tell you that those startups , that was their shot . That was their shot in front of that group . These people are busy , they don't have time , right ? So either you were impressive and just like they were like Holy crap , like I need to meet you , they didn't .
And that was your shot with , I mean , and that's one audience , right , that's one audience . And that's why we're a little bit particular about some of the startups that didn't align with engineering executives , like , hey , don't spend the money and time to fly into Miami Because even if you do a great pitch .
They're not going to know what you're talking about .
Yeah , yeah , I would say that we're not a little bit particular . We are particular . Say that we're not a little bit particular , we are particular , but the point is not that they shouldn't be pitching or not that they're not worthy of pitching .
The point is , I'll find another opportunity for you to pitch to an audience that has a better alignment , and we've already done that with a couple , because and that's also a good segue Maybe this is a shameless plug , and that's also a good segue .
Maybe this is a shameless plug , but Friday so as we're recording this , two days from now , we will have our virtual demo day , where all nine of the founder teams from this cohort of our startup incubator will be pitching virtually inside .
Well , if you're watching this right now , right here inside the community , so join us Friday at noon Eastern and you'll see pitch after pitch after pitch , five minutes to pitch , five minutes for Q&A . You'll see those that pitched in Miami and then you'll see those that didn't , mainly because it just wasn't the right audience for them .
But we're going to have I mean , we're going to have so many opportunities , whether it's virtual or in person , for our startups to to , to get their word out .
So yeah , yeah , that's a good point . I mean we're going to roll into a season of monthly virtual pitches and then and then we're also starting to host more and partner on more of these live demo days , these live pitches at different conferences . We've got the Zwei group coming up in Atlanta at the end of May . I think it is and that's another opportunity .
If you've got an event and you're interested in this , that's something that we can talk about . Yeah , all right interested in in this or that's something that we can talk about ? Yeah , all right . So if uh , again , if you're not following kp ready on linkedin , I don't know what to tell you , why not kp ready r-e-d-d-y on linkedin ?
Um , look for this post , and was there anything else you wanted to unpack from this one ? I know , I think a little bit long yeah , I think it's good okay , um , look for this post as we're recording this . Three days ago it starts out sunday scaries , first cop , first cup of coffee edition .
So again , this is my opportunity , my weekly opportunity , to ask KP Ready what inspired him as he wrote this post for LinkedIn . So , kp , thanks again for joining me for this . It's fun to do these and fun to get into the brain of KP a little bit .
All right , we'll see you .
All right , thanks everybody .
Thank you for tuning in to another episode on the Shadow Network here with KP Reddy . As always , remember , you can connect with KP and other innovators in the AEC and CRE industry in the Shadow Partners community . Go to shadowpartnersco to learn more today . Until next time ,