“Replicants are like any other machine. They’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit it's not my problem.” - Rick Deckard, Blade Runner
Hi ,
A few things are certain for 2019. Even as private firms push to accelerate adoption of new, promising tech, regulators and policymakers will have more reasons to slow them down. At the same time, incumbent firms and governments will try to continue to profit from fossil fuels by delaying climate policies but climate action will not be slowed. We explore these and other urbantech trends for 2019.
Startup Intro
Welcome to the family Sandeep, Patrick and the Cove Tool team who are working to solve climate change one efficient building at a time.
Startups
Why Autodesk Just Spent $1.15 Billion On Two Construction Tech Startups
E-scooter sharing startups ‘not sustainable’, says scooter maker
Top 5 SaaS Metrics VCs Look At for Series A/B/C
Ten pieces of friendly VC advice for when someone wants to buy your company
Justin Kan’s tweetstorm on why and how you should make it super easy for people to help you
What it means go be a ‘mission-driven’ company
AirBnb will start designing houses in 2019 h/t Fedor Novikov
Cities & Sustainability
Rad. First cross country autonomous drive. [video]
The NYC Transit Mess by Fred Wilson
The Future We Don’t Want by C40 Cities
Jobs
Product Marketer at Urbint, Brand Ambassador at Bowery Farming, Sales Rep at GreenQ, Head of Product at Borrow and 75 more jobs at Urban Us portfolio companies.
Opportunities
Apply at Civic I/O pitch to mayors at SXSW
Vancouver is using Citymart’s BidSpark partners to help implement it's $50M smart city strategy
URBAN-X applications are open
Urban Us Portfolio
Deal docs were still going out last week, so there will be more news. But here’s a lot of what happened in the last few weeks.
Bowery raises $90M for indoor farming
Kiwi delivery robot caught fire on berkeley's campus and students set up a candlelight vigil
Starcity shares plans for 800-bed 'co-living' proposal near downtown San Jose Google project spark zoning conversation
OneConcern in Fast Company, Borrow in Forbes, Wright Electric in TechCrunch
Dog begins conquest over mankind by learning to ride a OneWheel
Now you can earn rewards for riding mass transit with Miles App
Radiator Labs installs are up 400% so far this season.
Perl Street recently completed its third non-dilutive startup financing deal - this time solving a critical gap in mobility (subscribe at perlstreet.com for future updates).
Holiday Reading/Watching
Here’s some of what we’ve read or are planning to read
Order without Design is a great way to understand the intersection of markets and planning.
Bad Blood is an excellent story of the most recent generation of startup hubris. If you’re more likely to watch and don’t mind heading back to the first dot com bubble, there’s also Startup.com.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century is an excellent effort to cut out noise and focus on what’s worth worrying about.
World Tour 2019
We’d love to meet you at CES next week or at one of our World Tour stops in the next few weeks - Cape Town, Sydney, Beijing, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Please let us know where you’d like to meet.
Here’s to a making city life better in 2019.
- Stonly, Liz, Mark, Anthony & Shaun