We’re an early-stage, sector focused VC fund deeply engaged in our core digital industrial focus areas and the markets in which they operate. Over the last few years, as thematic investors since Day 1, we’ve internally developed market research that we leverage for our investment diligence and portfolio support efforts. In 2023, we will start open-sourcing a lot of this work to share our insights and get feedback from the community to further refine our point of view.
At Ironspring Ventures, we invest in founders eager to create change and catalyze innovation across the industrial supply chain. But we are more than investors – we are curious learners, researchers, analyzers, and builders – always thinking about the real-world customer pain points, emerging technology, and macro market trends impacting the sectors we invest in and shaping the world around us (both digital and physical!).
Today, we’re introducing a new quarterly series called the “The Blueprint” to share what we’re thinking about, observing, and predicting across the digital industrial innovation ecosystem. We’re excited to share more about how we approach market analysis, technology exploration, and sector focused investing. If this work resonates with you, we’d love to chat and collaborate on building a more productive, sustainable, and secure industrial supply chain.
We invest in great founders who leverage innovative business models and technology that industrial businesses use to design, build, distribute, and operate daily across four key sectors: manufacturing, construction, alternative energy, and transport and logistics. These critical legacy industries, and their associated supply chains, consist of over half of the US GDP and employ millions of skilled laborers/heroes who keep our country running. These sectors make our modern day lives possible, but have experienced significantly less digital transformation and investment than other industries (such as consumer, healthcare, etc.). Ironspring Ventures exists to help shorten the digital industrial transformation curve.
Investment in industrial innovation is imperative to help these sectors keep pace with the technological trends that have become ingrained in our daily lives. Furthermore, in a market that has seen supply and demand whiplashes from COVID, global conflicts spurring near/reshoring, and increasing inflation hindering GDP growth, we believe investing in digital transformation is all the more consequential. Fortunately, we’re seeing more founders dive into industrial sectors to take on these challenges and massive opportunities.
What kinds of innovation excite us in our core focus sectors? In manufacturing, we aim to support founders who are changing the way goods are made, be it via new production methods or through novel software-enabled manufacturing tools. In construction, we are attracted to platforms increasing the flow of information between currently fragmented parties, digitizing formerly analog processes, or developing new methods to build infrastructure with less waste. In alternative energy, we are believers in companies that plan, power, transport, and deploy the infrastructure for a more sustainable future. In transport and logistics, we look for companies providing resiliency and efficiency in the first mile, middle mile, and last mile of the supply chain.
Additionally, we are proud to see our portfolio companies enabling their customers to design, build, distribute, and operate across the industrial value chain in a more productive, safe, and sustainable manner.
To date, we’ve invested in 16 companies across our four core focus areas. Our portfolio companies also span what we like to define as the digital industrial value chain, delivering tools and platforms to advance the start-to-finish flow of how we design, build, distribute, and operate in the physical world. Already, our portfolio companies are having a tremendous impact, from making housing more affordable and accessible to increasing the visibility, sustainability, and resiliency of the B2B supply chain.
The challenges – and opportunities – in front of us are too important not to tackle. We invite you to join us in understanding and engaging on these pressing issues facing the industrial ecosystem. Please reach out to explore, collaborate, and share your feedback on our approach and content in “The Blueprint” quarterly series starting with our first release next month.
The Ironspring Ventures Team
Ty Findley, Co-founder and General Partner (Ty@ironspring.com)
Adam Bridgman, Co-founder and General Partner (Adam@ironspring.com)
Peter J. Holt, Co-founder and General Partner (Peter@ironspring.com)
Colleen Konetzke, Principal (Colleen@ironspring.com)
Natan Reddy, Investor (Natan@ironspring.com)
Stephanie Volk, Head of Platform (Stephanie@ironspring.com)
