The End-Game of the ESG Movement is Not EVs
Michael Spencer
A.I. Writer, researcher and curator - full-time Newsletter publication manager.
Two Megatrends are on a Collison Course
I believe the exponential power of artificial intelligence and automation will next tackle the construction and real estate industry in the near future. This will be the moment AI intersects with ESG, two of the meta trends of the 2020s and 2030s in the 21st century. ESG stands for environmental and social governance and represents how young people want to see the world.
While the EV sector has gotten a lot of hype with Tesla, it's not actually that impactful for young people today globally who are suffering from an enormous housing affordability crisis and increasing wealth inequality, and now inflation. Many young people are halted with student debt, career uncertainty amid a great resignation and a prospective future where they will never be able to own a home.
What will Solve the Housing Affordability Crisis?
With an incredible housing affordability crisis with inflation, spiking construction materials, wait times and a labor shortage –?the construction and real-estate industry seems poised for a disruption. I think that could come from pre-fab home startups.
Remember these names and find the pre-fab startups with your own due diligence, invest in the space early since I think in the years 2025 to 2030 there will be a revolution in housing and the way homes are built. You can already see this with the Tiny home and Van Life revolution on YouTube. Modular smaller homes will likely be much more common for GenZ.
Modular Prefabricated (MPF) Housing is Coming
Prefabrication is not just a hype. The technology of building homes inside a factory has become widespread, especially for small, temporary and movable homes. But permanent and larger houses can be prefabricated, too.?There is a pretty high probability companies like Tesla, Amazon and others will end up purchasing the best pre-fab housing startups. Just as Opendoor, Zillow or Offerpad might be by someone like Airbnb.
So the future of affordable housing is bring for the declining middle class, but it will take at least another decade for us to witness that future of sustainable and economic living. Wealth inequality in America will mean young people will likely live in smaller homes integrating new technologies.
Prefab business models that make the design, implementation, customization and price affordability (based on modular methods) of such an industry disruptive are slowly evolving and should transform the housing and construction industry eventually that will be done by robotic assembly and with considerable 3D-printing augmentation.
Venture Capital is Heating up In the MPF Space
As for Cover, Valor Equity Partners and Founders Fund both were in on the $90 million round (early investors in Tesla). Cover is following?Elon Musk’s 2006 paper?on how Tesla’s business model would work. Their founder is Alexis Rivas, who grew up in Toronto, studied architecture in college and bounced briefly around a number of architectural firms before founding Cover. Series B funding is being led by Gigafund. Other names that come to mind are:
There are literally dozens if not hundreds of such startups globally.
What you get is a picture of how the?modular pre-fab housing revolution?has already started all over the world, now it just needs to mature.
领英推荐
The best of these startups will mature and many will get acquired. The intersection of 3D-printing, the smart home and modular pre-fab (MPF) housing and finally robotics in the construction industry changes everything and reduces the price of housing tremendously about twenty years from now, let’s say circa 2033.
So why is it worth to watch this space? It’s because the TAM is so significant. Airbnb is one of the likely major winners in the space. In their latest earnings,?profits for the quarter rose 280% year over year?and the company saw its highest revenue and net income ever. They can afford to acquire the smart home builders of the next era.
Veev, originally called Dragonfly Group, launched in 2008 as a real estate developer. Veev (in Tel Aviv) have?actually raised?quite a lot. Many of these startups are at Series B. Veev are backed by More Investment House, Migdal, Psagot Investment House and Shavit Capital participated in the round, which brings Veev’s total funding to $200 million.
MPF is also impacting the?tiny home market. Here is a?rundown of some of the startups?we’ve already mentioned. Most of these startups haven’t gone IPO yet, but track them so you can get in early when they do if you think they have potential.
The Future of Housing will be an ESG Movement
However it’s not just housing affordability at stake here,?it’s the ESG movement moving to disrupt?the construction and real-estate industry. So if you pick the right company, you will see just incredible gains. It’s just the beginning for sustainable modular software based personalized housing at scale that are smart homes from day one. Can you imagine?
As an investor and an amateur futurist, these are?the prediction opportunities I live for. How big has ESG gotten with young people today with EVs? Now multiple that by the necessity of owning a home to feel financially secure. A Tiny home or a Van-life home is still a place of rooting, a physical belonging metaverse even if the idea of what a “home” is has changed dramatically.
Think about how GenZ and Alpha will want to live, they won’t want to own cars or big homes, necessarily. Transportation and construction will be augmented by technology. The way we live might be completely different by 2040 or 2050.
It’s not hard to pick the winners if you are willing to do the work of due diligence before the crowd.
That’s why I started?StockQuest?and its premium version to give investors added information that they might not have the time to find.
Disruption in the construction and housing industry is coming. The Real-estate crisis we’ll face in 2022 will be evidence of the need for new models. There’s startups working towards modular pre-fab augmentation with:
We can see on the horizon how this will occur and how lucrative the best companies in the space will become. AI won’t just stay in the cloud, it will come back down to Earth. Pre-fabricated modular homes will become a bigger piece of the future housing market and there are drivers like the ESG movement and churn of the Middle class that makes this inevitable.
Local laws around tiny houses are changing. The same will occur for MPF housing projects. This is because?the housing affordability crisis is getting worse?with each year and decade. Just look up on YouTube tiny homes or “van life” and you start to get an idea of how young people are string to live and work different.
We cannot expect GenZ with $100,000 in student loans to buy a $800,000 home any time soon. We need a better future for the future of housing affordability.
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Sr Python developer + ML experience
3 年Michael Spencer thanks for the very interesting article!
Professor at Poznan University of Economics
3 年In Poland, many companies offer Energy-Efficient Modular Houses with an area of 70 m2, prices from 15k dollars. You have to have your own plot to build them. The government has recently introduced facilities for people who want to build such houses.
Executive bei Athene
3 年Do not call this evil criminal aggression of enemeis in such a manner a game!
Author of What "Do I DO" appeared in Forbes Magazine, Media including Fox and NBC, Radio and talk shows.
3 年This will be very interesting to watch. I definitely knew it was coming. Thanks for sharing.
An accomplished senior executive with a track record of leading strategic initiatives and creating new AI business opportunities across Ent & Gov and Telecom. Creating New Bus Model (Smart Cities & Metaverse)
3 年Please note...all people want to to see ESG.....