WIND Ventures 2023 Predictions
By Brian Walsh, Bob Ma and Gracia Lagos, WIND Ventures
2022 will be remembered for many things. The start of the Ukraine war. Inflation and monetary tightening. The COVID pandemic hanging on. The IPO market drying up. But there were many positive developments, especially for WIND Ventures. We saw a lot of innovation, and we expanded our portfolio into exciting areas. In 2022, we made several new investments, including Xeal, Source and Yummy while also doubling down on Busbud, and Zoomo.
As we begin 2023, despite some new challenges, we remain excited about the innovation we are seeing. We’re seeing breakthroughs in combating climate disruption, as well as making our lives healthier, more convenient, and less expensive. Although it has become a hackneyed tradition to make predictions for the year ahead, we feel it’s important to look at key developments we see taking shape. Here are a few of our predictions for the year ahead.
We’ll make progress toward electrifying everything: 2023 will reveal the world’s first climate-tech startup “dragon” (a private startup valued at $12B+)
With the IPO market on hold, startups are more likely to stay private for longer and, therefore, birth our first climate-tech dragon. This company will be a very special animal indeed. Our guess is that this first climate-tech dragon will be propelled by the unlocking of large infrastructure pools of capital. Our best guess on where to look is EV charging.
We’ll see increased climate-tech investing around the supply chains of food, construction, fashion, consumer goods, electronics, automotive, professional services, and freight.
These eight sector supply chains are responsible for +50% of global emissions, according to a report by the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group. Time is running out to decarbonize them all. Addressing supply chain emissions would enable firms within these sectors to impact a volume of emissions “several times higher than they could if they were to focus on decarbonizing their own direct operations,” the report said.
Dirt and grime will be hidden gold.
Cleaning may not immediately come to mind as related to climate change, but it should. Simply cleaning industrial and commercial HVAC systems, especially the heat exchangers, can have a tremendous impact on increasing energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. Cleaning can also reveal-to-reduce draftiness, making HVAC systems and buildings more efficient and improving comfort.
With EV adoption entering hyper-growth in the U.S., many shortcomings related to the first wave of shared EV charger infrastructure will be revealed and overcome.
The growth of EV adoption will drive the second wave of newer, better, shared EV charging solutions that genuinely support the needs of the growing fleet of EV drivers (both individual and commercial). Drivers will only switch to EVs when chargers are readily available, which means embedding them around and within buildings is key. We’ll see a re-engineering of every variable of the EV charger equation to make chargers a no-brainer investment for buildings.
The “energy transition” narrative will evolve toward a “carbon problem” narrative.
To keep global warming to no more than 1.5°C — as called for in the Paris Agreement — emissions need to be reduced by 45 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. To address the problem, we’ve focused primarily on transitioning the energy sector to emit less carbon. That will evolve in 2023 to an increased focus on carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS). Heightened urgency will focus efforts, investment, and solutions on the fundamental problem: not just on producing less carbon but on capturing it before it enters the atmosphere or removing it afterward from the air.
Following the success of startup Pinduoduo in China and startup Meesho in India, group consumer buying via social commerce will take off in Latin America.
Latin America is overdue for social commerce and group consumer buying, facilitated by social networks. The region is one of the biggest markets for social media, with the highest usage of any region in the world. In 2023, we’ll see digital community engagement and group buying that results in better prices for middle and lower-income communities. Grocery items will be the first category to take off.
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About WIND Ventures
Based in San Francisco, WIND Ventures is the strategic venture capital arm of Copec, one of the leading energy companies in Central and South America and one of the most valued brands throughout Latin America. WIND Ventures leverages Copec’s significant resources to accelerate growth, primarily within Latin America, for startups and scaleups across the world within the new mobility, energy and retail sectors. Visit windventures.vc or follow us on Linkedin and Twitter.
