1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Joshua Posamentier of Congruent Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: We’ve looked at a bit of what you’ve done and how you operate. We’ve got a flavor. In one of your examples, you said you’ve invested in a problem that you were already familiar with. You found a great technology out of CalTech that addresses that problem.

One could posit that you were already looking for a company that addresses that problem. Are there other such problems that you have identified that you would like to find an entrepreneur solving it. Please pick the ones that are in the IT and IT-enabled services domain.

Joshua Posamentier: We have a deep thesis around certain things. At the same time, we are an early-stage firm. We look at whatever comes in whenever it comes in. We’re pretty opportunistic. Some of the opportunities that are IT-centric are in supply chain efficiency.

We’ve made two or three bets in making supply chains more efficient. One of them that’s turning paper at the edge of supply chains. Another is leveraging data and Internet of Things tools to ensure better supply chain quality for food specifically for grains and seeds. The third one is doing drive optimization. All of those hit a topic that we’ve looked at before.

Areas that I’m interested in right now are making better use of multi-modal transportation tools. Rail freight is underutilized. We have too many trucks on the road. How do you make these systems interoperate? It’s really a software problem at the end of the day. We need tools around urban and infrastructure tech to enable urban planners and public planners to make better decisions to optimize what resources we have. Those are all huge opportunities.

Then on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I would say our electric and energy utilities are operating on software that is written 30 to 40 years ago. Bringing those capabilities into today’s software space is potentially huge.

We have one company working at a corner of that market called Camus. They’re working on replacing some of the edge software in the utility space. That core software are marketplace models. They’ve been done elsewhere. The utility space is a very conservative universe. We haven’t seen that space presented with a compelling set of solutions. Those are few of the IT-centric areas that we focus on.

It’s not only developing the right product, but understanding how to take them to market. Understanding how utility buys, how you need to build a company to intercept that purchasing pattern, and not over capitalize too early. It’s a tricky space.

Sramana Mitra: Given what’s going on in the world right now, we are facing an incredible lack of sustainability on a global scale. How do you process that? Are there problems that you see that can be solved with technology? Are you looking for things in this domain?

Joshua Posamentier: Almost everything we look at reduces cost at the end of the day. There’s no sacrifice to be made when you move towards most sustainability-centric solutions. The perception that it’s a more expensive thing is a little bit outdated.

My take, especially as we’re talking about sustainability globally, is if profitability is a challenge, you should look towards sustainability as an opportunity.

Not everything is good for everybody. What’s good for alternative energy is probably not good for conventional energy. It’s an opportunity to shift value from a very old outdated unsustainable ecosystem to a sustainable one. 

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Joshua Posamentier of Congruent Ventures
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