By Gabrielle Morgan, Investment Manager

We’re coming up for air after a whirlwind couple of months for the Conduit Connect. We kicked things off with our partners Katapult and The Conduit at the Katapult Future Fest in Oslo, bringing 7 of our portfolio companies with us who wowed the crowds across four different panels. During London Tech week, our CEO Eva took the main stage to talk about investing through the noise, and we hosted a very sunny (and sweaty) rooftop cocktail party with our Conduit family to celebrate our founder and investor ecosystem. We squeezed in our Climate Showcase during London Climate Action Week, with keynote Sam Sutaria at Waterbear reminding us of the importance of combining art and activism. We hosted an angel investor event with our partner Beringea focussing on creating impactful boards, and earlier this week we co-hosted an AI Symposium with Google, Xoogler, Deepmind and Cooley’s.

Amidst all this activity, the Conduit EIS Impact Fund invested in two stellar B2B technology companies working to decarbonise one of the most polluting industries in the world: the Built Environment.

Commonplace: You know those letters that appear in your mailbox asking for comment on a new local development – a block of flats, a bike path, a new climate action plan, perhaps? Have you ever responded? I doubt it. This is where our new portfolio company, Commonplace, comes in. Commonplace’s software platform helps governments and developers meaningfully connect with communities about their local built environment. Public engagement is important beyond the impact factor – 15% of project proposals fail to get planning permission due to public engagement factors. CEO and Co-Founder Mike Saunders experienced this first-hand, when he worked on an urban planning project that never got off the ground for lack of public support. Commonplace has already helped over 100 clients engage with 5.5 million people, and in doing so, helps clients fulfil planning requirements and carry out projects in collaboration and harmony with residents.

Our take: We see cities becoming increasingly connected places where citizens expect to be able to influence how they operate both for long term development and in real time. The Commonplace platform has built a considerable data moat surrounding citizens views on the physical space they spend time in – and the Conduit Connect believes it is exceptionally well placed to both drive and take advantage of a move towards increasingly connected and interactive urban spaces. We are excited to have participated in Series A+ round with co-investors Concrete VC and Beringea.

Qualisflow: Turning to the projects themselves - Qualisflow digitises materials and waste data on major construction sites, allowing project teams to make consequential cost and carbon saving decisions. The onsite team can take a photo of any receipt on Qflow’s mobile app, which automatically processes the data using machine learning and produces real-time carbon and resource insights on the qflow platform.

Our take: We believe that incoming regulation and intensifying institutional investor pressure will force the construction industry to decarbonise. However, the industry is risk-averse and slow to adopt change. This is why we are so excited about QFlow – it has already convinced industry giants like Skanksa and Bouygues to buy in by solving multiple pain points for them: it saves time and money, it reduces regulatory risk, and it helps meet carbon targets.

QFlow’s impact story gets even more exciting in the future as it has the potential to create a circular platform of waste building materials. Co-founders Brittany Harris and Jade Cohen are deeply experienced, connected and passionate civil engineers uniquely positioned to solve the construction’s sustainability problem. Not to mention, they are building a fast-growing tech company in an industry traditionally dominated by men. A real highlight was celebrating the oversubscribed Series A close with the QFlow team, lead investor Systemiq, co-investors and supporters at its 5th Birthday boat party floating down the Thames.

Qflow and Commonplace are innovating in an enormous market in desperate need for change if we have any hope of achieving our climate goals. These are precisely the dynamics we look for at the Conduit Fund.

That’s all for now! We’ll be hard at work producing our 2023 impact report over the next few months and gearing up for the next close of the Conduit EIS Impact Fund in September 2023. As always, get in touch at gabby@theconduitconnect.com if you want to find out more about our Fund, our portfolio, or anything else!