Undivided Ventures: AI, Sustainability & Data Centre Technologies with Ariel Shtarkman
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Now, the beauty about real estate industry, real estate, if you look outside and you look at the commercial building, you have a lot of data generated on a daily basis. The challenge is what do you do with this data and how do you mine this data in a smart way to give you better investment decisions going forward, better decisions on how you run the building, with opportunities to...

reduce your expenses? How do you, on the climate side, how do you reduce your operational carbon? How do you make those buildings better? Basically, and I think that here, GenAI can help big time because any solution that will mine this data smartly and will create a result output that real estate end users and owners can use to their advantage.

Welcome to Analyze Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leung. And when we think about sustainability and climate adaptation, the built environment and data centers are part of the solution, supercharged by AI and data.

What does it mean for venture capital funds targeting the built environment or construction tech and sustainability moving ahead? With me today is Ariel Strachman, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Undivided Ventures. Ariel, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Bernard. Excited to be here. Yes, last year I had your partner, Alex, on my show and we talked a lot about the construction tech, but I definitely must get you on the show because you also have pretty interesting insights that my audience will pretty benefit on. So maybe to start off with all our usual format, let's start with your origin story. How did you start your career?

Yeah, thank you, Bernard. And again, excited to be here. I mean, I'm a huge fan of Analyze Asia and I've been listening a lot to your podcast. So big shoes to fill here. So I came to Asia actually 16 years ago. I'm originally from Israel, Russia. I grew up in Israel, did my MBA in the US, New York and Columbia University.

And started my first job after the MBA in real estate private equity. I was very passionate about real estate. I wanted to do real estate investing. I was very lucky to get into real estate private equity. And in 2008, I got even more lucky and I had an opportunity to move to Hong Kong.

I moved with ING Real Estate for what I thought will be two, three years Asia experience. But now it's been 16 years and this is home. Since my days in private equity, I worked also in Citibank. I did restructuring of some special situations in real estate that structured finance. And a few years ago, I started my entrepreneurial journey.

I was a real estate investor. I've been investing in real estate in Hong Kong and in New York. I established our family's family office in Hong Kong doing variety of investment thesis. And all that brought me into another really interesting aspect, which is technology and how that relates to real estate.

Given that I started my career in really old school field, I realized that when prop tech and construction tech were coming out of age, all those concepts were very new and interesting about seven, eight years ago. And I realized that the only way for me to tap into understanding what works and what doesn't work is to become an agile investor myself.

So I started investing small checks into those companies and through that collaboration with Alex started and then he lured me over to Undivided. I see. I want to know the backstory in a little bit more detail. How did you meet Alex and then set up Undivided Ventures together? Oh, by the way, I need to give a disclaimer. I'm also your current advisor for the Fund on AI.

which is a very important topic that we'll touch up on later. So Alex and I, as I mentioned, we met probably 12 years ago and we met through real estate because we both were investing in various ventures in the same area in Hong Kong. We talked, became friendly, started chatting about deals. And when I started my PropTech journey, he started in parallel his PropTech journey.

started investing in pro tech companies specifically for him sustainability was first and foremost because his institutional investors were asking for certain solutions and as we started to collaborate on deals also in the tech space that idea of undivided emerged and then in 2022 Alex came up with the concept and said listen

Let's raise a fund. There is a lot of opportunity. He already got a very specific sustainability expert team, like Dr. Tim Foreman, who is also a partner in the UK. He brought on Amy Shuttleworth, our sustainability principal as well.

And when Alex and I sat down and had several conversations over coffee, I realized that an opportunity not just to invest in Angel, but an opportunity to raise a dedicated fund tackling the challenges of sustainability and efficiency in real estate and construction are much bigger than just being an Angel investor. And there is a lot of opportunities. So this is how we decided, let's do it together. And since then, we've been running with Undivided.

I see. And of course, your career journey has been very interesting. You come from the west part of the world and you come to Asia. What life advice can you share with my audience? Well, for me, I moved around a lot and I feel that

Taking the chance to come to Hong Kong when I was in a very comfortable place in New York, I mean, it was really difficult after MBA to get a buy-side job. And yet I had a buy-side job right after MBA. So, you know, in theory, nothing should have prompted me to move to Hong Kong. But I came to Hong Kong, a little bit of background story, for the first time when I was a student in Columbia Business School during a real estate spring break trip.

And I was just so intrigued by everything what's happening in Asian corn. We went to China as well. And there was something in me saying,

I have to move here if there is a right opportunity and the right opportunity came so I totally embraced it. You know what I learned from this journey and then I changed within my big real estate umbrella. I changed fields several times. That constant evolution never stop learning as cliche as it sounds and never stop evolving. It's really, really important because

technology and the world are moving now in an unprecedented speed. With AI, everything is happening so fast. Now, you don't need to change the course of your career because of AI, but you need to be able to adapt. And in order to be able to adapt, you need to go for those evolutions and changes and going to live in places where I didn't know anyone in Hong Kong. I just had a job. But again, I'm very happy that for fortunate turn of events,

I totally agree with you, Errol. You're probably one of the most well-read people that I have met. Every time we actually exchange book lists, I feel like I miss out some of the books on your list. So probably to start and we get to the main subject of the day, I want to talk about undivided ventures. I want to talk about sustainability and AI. Maybe to start, can you share an overview of undivided ventures and the funds investment thesis? Sure. So undivided ventures invest in

sustainability related technologies in software and hardware, which tackle the most important needs of the built environment. Now we look at the built environment as really three parts.

existing real estate, construction and infrastructure. And when you look at all those three parts, it's pretty much everything in the world which is not moving. As Alex likes saying, when you look outside the window, whatever is not moving, so apart from vehicle and people, this is the industry we play. There is a huge opportunity because this industry tended to be quite conservative when it comes to decisions on tech and innovation.

and there is a lot to do. Now, when we look at the topic of sustainability and efficiencies, of course, sustainability has been a big theme both for regulation, but also just when we look at energy efficiency, for example. How do we make buildings more energy efficient

without too much pressure on the balance sheet, without too much pressure on the P&L. On the contrary, our thesis says that there are now technologies that can help you to reduce your expenses and reduce your carbon footprint. And when you come to your users of technology, which are the real estate companies, the contractors, etc., with this proposition,

that sales cycle of technologies into those companies, into those huge businesses can become much shorter because it's very pragmatic.

So this is an actual thesis. When we look at companies, we look at three key parameters. The companies need to tackle a particular sustainability challenge and it needs to be quantifiable. On the other hand, they need to be very commercial. In other words, whatever the end user pays to use those technologies need to have immediate positive ROI. Otherwise, they cannot be scalable.

And the third very important topic, we're really passionate about scaling those technologies in Asia. We're based here. We're based in Hong Kong. We have a team now in Japan. We're targeting companies across Asia, Europe, and really globally. But all the defining threat is that we want to bring those technologies into Asia context.

Can you share what are the recent highlights of the funds? There's some interesting stuff that's just gone on. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not a secret that it's been a couple of really challenging years for VC in general. But when I look at our portfolio today, we have nine companies already in our portfolios soon to probably go to 11. And when I look at overall the performance of our companies, they have been

not just surviving as early startups, they're thriving. We have an interesting data point when they look at the P&L of our companies, quite a few of those are reaching significant milestones when it comes to revenues, which is quite remarkable because again, we look at companies down the road that can produce real revenues and real profits, which sometimes is unheard of in VC, but this is what we tackle.

We have other exciting news, like four of our companies are going for up rounds in the first half of the year, which will bring our portfolio to a pretty significant increase in value in the next four to six months, which is exciting. It's exciting for our early investors to back us up.

In terms of adoption, for example, for you, I'll give you a couple of examples. We're investing in a company called Gentian, which is in the biodiversity space. They're based in the UK. Well, they've opened several Asian doors and now focused very much on bringing their technologies into Asia. They're working in Japan, they're working in China, they're working in Hong Kong with top tier developers.

And this is an exciting point touching on what you asked me before. In real estate, we see an opportunity for scale in a very big way because if one or two major developers are starting to use a technological solution, whether it's hardware or software, many times the industry will fall. So there is a real path to scale for those solutions.

One question I always do ask, what is the one thing you know about your investment thesis for Undivided Ventures that very few do? That's a really good question. Well, our secret sauce, to be honest, is because Alex and I come from real estate background. And in our team, majority of people, if not all, understand real estate as well, understand sustainability really well, but also real estate.

When we look at those portfolio companies or potential portfolio companies, we can wear the hat of a real estate owner or a contractor and they use them and think, well, if I had a real estate company and I had a portfolio of assets, would I use this technology? Will it really impact my ROI in a positive way? Will it really have a positive ROI? Will it really impact my expense line in a positive way?

Can I implement it? Because again, I look at big real estate companies with different layers of command, with different KPIs. I can go into their shoes and understand every one of those layers, KPIs and workflow to see, well, will anyone use it or not? Is it really as productive as the founders of startups? They're always very optimistic.

I have to be very optimistic as being a venture capitalist, but you also need to wear the realist glasses. This is something that is quite unique. And in order to get there, you need to work years in the industry, work on construction sites like Alex and Amy did. Do a development, do developments in different parts of the world to understand what works and what doesn't.

I really appreciate when we have the chat with you all. Usually we talk about the operator side of the construction and the real estate process. If you're not really an operator, it's actually very hard to think about what technology will work for the industry and how do you think about even helping them to scale throughout the regions or even globally.

One interesting question. We all know that in the last two years, there has been difficulty in actually doing fundraising. Can you share the process and what you have learned in getting your first close, given that it's actually a very difficult period in fundraising for any venture capital or even private equity funds in the region? Yeah, I mean, look, we got out of the gates in 2023, which was basically the graveyard of fundraising last year with no different. Of course, we were a little bit

overly optimistic in the beginning. No one realized how long this downturn is going to take. But the good news, I think it's over or starting to be over. Now, what I learned is, you know, there is never a long enough period of time to invest, to fundraise, I'm sorry. And

The challenge that we face as an industry right now that investors were sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what's going to happen in whether it's geopolitics, whether it's interest rates, whether it's the stock markets, VC is still not a huge sliver of an investment pocket. If you look at whether family offices or big real estate corporates, which are looking to invest in this field,

So what I learned during this process is to be even more patient. Also, I think what helped us is that we were very lucky to have early investors early on. We put, of course, our own capital right away to invest in those companies. And the fact that we managed to build a portfolio during those difficult times and not only to build a portfolio, but to build a portfolio, which is

proven to be positive when it comes to the potential multiples. I mean, we already had a couple of up rounds. And as I mentioned, we'll have several more up rounds to come. It shows track records. And this is very important for investors. Anyone who is starting to fundraise today will have a little bit easier time because right now the bigger investors waking up from a bit of

cooling period saying, "Okay, right now I am ready to put some dollars in. Where am I going to put it?" Another theme that I learned over the last couple of years is that because we're so focused on a particular industry and within that particular industry solving the challenge of sustainability and efficiencies,

Investors really like that we stay focused, that we're not really listening to the noise outside and not drawn to different themes and fads. But we believe in our thesis, we have a conviction, we have statistics to back it up, and this is how we keep going. So we have that conversation recently. So thinking about generative AI with so much of it pervading across all industries, I think it's like a horizontal technologies.

What are the investment opportunities specifically in the prop tech, climate technologies part of the equation? Well, as you mentioned, and again, you are the expert in AI. I think that the more I go down the rabbit hole of Gen AI and LLMs,

Of course, it's revolutionary across industry and it's going to be a backbone for everything we do with data first. Now, the beauty about real estate industry, real estate, if you look outside and you look at the commercial building, you have a lot of data generated on a daily basis. The challenge is what do you do with this data and how do you mine this data?

in a smart way to give you better investment decisions going forward, better decisions on how you run the building, with opportunities to reduce your expenses. How do you, on the climate side, how do you reduce your operational carbon? How do you make those buildings better, basically? And I think that here, GenAI can help big time because any solution that will mine this data smartly

and will create a result, the output that real estate end users and owners can use to their advantage. This is a great, like, it's a never-ending opportunity. So, Errol, if I were to ask you, right, given that Gem AI keeps coming out Innovations Week after week, and by the way, I don't consider myself an expert, but talking to you most of the time, sometimes you even send me stuff that I was like, wow, I didn't even know about that. How do you think about...

investing in such a fast-moving technology that's actually going into that specific niche that you are very focused on to say prop tech and sustainability. And that's an amazing question because a lot of our end users, let's say when we talk to real estate companies, both as potential investors or collaborators, they ask us, well, if I implement a solution,

What gives me the confidence that in a year it's not going to be obsolete? Well, you know, we don't have a perfect answer, but I think that GenAI in those types of solutions needs to be a backbone. It's not the theme.

If a company comes with a solution to reduce operational carbon, for example, or run the buildings more efficiently, or when it comes to data centers, create some solution to really maximize the efficiency of cooling while minimizing your electricity bill. That's the overall solution first. And if they're using an AI backbone,

to analyze data, well, they should of course develop it every week or every month as new tools come in, but the solution needs to be working first. The reason why they're creating this technology. And if the reason is right and there is an adoption potential, AI becomes the tool in the background. It's like a programming language, but better, faster.

So what do founders and startup teams get right or wrong in that specific niche that you are targeting to invest? Well, I think if we talk about GenAI, for example, and there are two other cases that I would like to mention after for GenAI in real estate in general. If a company comes to us today and say, well, we're an AI, a GenAI company that's tackling sustainability in real estate. And this is what we do.

I want to hear the third point first, actually. I want to hear what is the problem they're tackling and only then, well, how do they use those new tools, Gen-AI tools to tackle this problem? I'll give you an example from our portfolio maybe.

So one of our portfolio companies is StructurePal. So StructurePal is an AI based solution which helps you to optimize how much concrete you're using in development. So basically you use it in design phase.

Now, the founder is an architect and an engineer. He realized we're using way too much concrete and necessary. And the reason why we're using so much concrete, because we have too many variables, we have too many Monte Carlo simulations to run, and no one can do it as a human cannot do it. But when you create a platform using those AI and AI tools,

running through all those variables, whether it's of course, safety, whether it's building code, whether it's design specific requirements and put it all together, then you use your GenAI tools, have an output, which is the correct output and can minimize your, again, we tend to overbuild concrete by sometimes 40%.

Structure power say, well, we're not reducing your concrete usage by 40%. That's just scary. But let's get to 10, 15% efficiencies. That's already, of course, reduction in cost right away and reduction in embodied carbon, which is a much more difficult problem to tackle these days than the operational carbon. Yeah. And especially when materials are inflationary now. So I think what structure power is doing is interesting. Definitely. Exactly. And the reason I bring this example is it's

the problem first and how we tackle this problem and using those AI tools to tackle it in a much better way. Because again, we're not an AI-focused VC fund. As I mentioned, our focus is very important for us, but yet of course we need to leverage those new technologies because they are revolutionary.

So getting from what I understand from you is that StructurePal got it right, correct? Because they think about the problem first. Then what about startup teams and founders that get it wrong then? Well, again, in our space,

teams that get it wrong sometimes come with a solution for a real estate challenge, but they're not from the real estate industry. They didn't sometimes bother to understand how real estate industry work, how sales cycle work in real estate. And they can be brilliant engineers, brilliant scientists. But when you look at the technology or the solution as a practical real estate person,

Those are not sellable into the real estate industry. They might be too early, they might be too cumbersome. And one of my favorite questions to ask when I listen to a pitch of some of the startups is, well, don't give me a pitch. You gave me a pitch as an investor. Give me a pitch as a client. How do you pitch to your real estate industry clients? Because this is really important. Because, and again, there can be a decision tree in two parts.

Some technologies are amazing and they don't even know that they are really solving a real need in real estate, but they don't know how to articulate it. Again, that's solvable with the right salespeople. Yet there are some solutions which on paper look interesting, but when you dig into it, you don't see a potential positive ROI right away.

you see the challenges in implementation and the sell cycle. And without scale, those companies just cannot lift off. So what are the traits of founders and features of startup teams that will make you invest in them? Well, we're going into psychology, interesting topic. And as I mentioned, for me, what's important is even if the founders are not from the real estate industry per se, they really need to understand

who are they selling to and what are they selling to? Because again, a lot of times founders can have unrealistic goals. It's true, as I mentioned, we believe in this industry, the built environment industry is vast and there is infinite opportunity for scale. But how do you tackle that? Your potential addressable market doesn't mean anything if you don't know how to tackle your first client.

So I think that's one that the combination of resilience and grit, I mean, everybody talks about it, but I mean, I see our founders in our portfolio. I mean, again, it's been two challenging years and we see for a variety of reasons, whether it's fundraising, geopolitics, et cetera. And I think that being able to deal with challenges

as they go and pivot, not necessarily pivot from completely from what you originally planned, but be nimble. It's just crucial. I think we like founders

who can listen to advice. I mean, we don't get involved, of course, in the operation of companies, but because we have this bench of sustainability and real estate experts, we believe we can actively help those companies to scale. So I think the summarize a tent and be passionate about what they're doing because it is difficult industry. It's a difficult industry, even during the times that people say, well, it's easy to raise capital. I mean, nothing is easy.

So you need to be able to keep with the daily grind. So if I reverse the question, what are the red flags that you don't want to invest in? Another great question. Red flag number one, when you start getting into more due diligence, faith,

and you ask questions, we pride ourselves having a very structured approach to what questions we want to ask. And when you get gray area answers or not direct answers, for me, it's not great. Now, again, we're talking about early stage startups. They might not have the best data room. They might not have the best, you know, the numbers are not in order. But, you know, if you start a business,

You need to know what you're getting into. You need to know your sales figures. You need to know your prospects. You need to be very clear about how are you going to bring this product to market. You know, another red flag is talking a very big game. Well, you know, we have contracts now, potential contracts with 30 people.

but that's maybe a cold email which was sent and not responding. So again, being realistic is always good. Not responding on time, not being responsive. Again, if you are fundraising, you should be following up. You know, again, it's a simplistic way to talk about it, but when you look at the collection of Doza red flags, now a lot of, look, like every VC fund, unfortunately, cannot invest in every company, which is amazing.

We do have to let some companies go for, you know, we're constructing our portfolio, etc. But, you know, if the founders of the company fail all those basic tests, then...

they will not progress to the next stage. So what is your mental model then on valuation? Is it about investing the right capital for just the right 20 to 30% for say a Series A? I'm just using just the industry average for a specific area. Or are you willing to pay the price if the valuation is very high? I think we have that 2021 to 2022 peak, which is really valuations are too overblown. Yeah, well, we are lucky in the sense

that there is always a silver lining, right? Even though we started fundraising in the toughest period. But on the other hand, valuations are very attractive. This is the right period to invest. We didn't invest during the hype and the hype. And this gives us the opportunity to be very selective. It gives us an opportunity to also not make those very hasty decisions. Remember in 2020, 2021, it's like, okay,

The round is closing in like two weeks and we're 2x oversubscribed. And you need to... The valuation increases within the same round because there is so much demand. This is not happening anymore, right? So you have the... I mean, in AI now, in Gen AI, of course, this hype is being built, but overall, I feel we have an opportunity to spend more time with the founders to really tackle all those questions that I talked about before.

we can see how the companies are performing. In terms of valuation, we have a luxury not to invest in anything which is too overblown. And again, as a thesis, especially because it's our first flagship fund, we really want to overachieve, meaning that we cannot invest into high valuation and we cannot be invested in hype. We need to be invested in companies which we see

a real 10x potential which is not just okay well it will be you know 30 40 60 times future earnings based on you know three months of of future potential revenues and those are all just not even signed contracts I mean you just don't have it anymore some companies do we would not do it

So I want to shift gears a bit. I want to talk about data centers because I know you're pretty knowledgeable in that specific area. Given now that there is a big heavy buildup of data centers in the Asia Pacific, I think the whole region is responsible for almost 50% demand of the entire global market. And I think just for Southeast Asia in the first half was already 30 billion. I think there was like a 900% increase in that region.

What are your perspectives now on data centers and specifically in technologies that actually power the infrastructure? Well, I think that data center with what's happening with AI, what's happening globally with AI,

We just saw yesterday there was a big announcement in the US to build more and more data centers with a really interesting group of people: Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank, right? With President Trump just signing this yesterday. In Asia, there is even more so a need to build data centers where underbuilt.

We're not overbuilt in any shape or form. Now, we need data centers, a totally different animal when it comes to just construction alone. You need a stronger floor reinforcement and floor load, stronger walls, again, to withstand the heat of the servers and the cooling and the energy demands.

that requires to power data centers. So it's really like some bankers like to call it digital infrastructure. Right now, if it's digital infrastructure, of course, tech can play a huge part. I would not to get into the details, but I think that anything to do with cooling and how do we make cooling more efficient

That's one very big area. Within cooling, I mean, we're looking at a company right now in the refrigerant space, which is very relevant to cooling of data centers specifically. So that's one topic. Another topic is, of course, access to energy and power. Well, where is this energy coming from? How expensive or inexpensive it is? And how you can make it more effective?

Now, there are several technologies coming up which are a little bit touching the servers specifically. Is there a way to make the servers not as hidden during the process of work? So those are technologies that go onto the servers, right? And then, of course, I mean, you touched upon the topic of materials.

Materials is something that we're getting very passionate about. I mean, we haven't invested yet in any technology or any material which is a concrete substitute, but there are many materials or material components in development which can help to reduce that embodied carbon, which is inevitable when you build a data center today.

So another thing which can be really interesting is just management, right? If you're building a huge portfolio of data center and you want to know what's happening in each and every one of them,

Again, the digital tools to manage. This is, again, this comes back to data, comes back to Gen AI. This is another opportunity because it's an asset class of its own. And you know, Berger, when, you know, let's say eight, 10 years ago, when data centers became an asset class that real estate private equity funds started to talk about, that was always considered a niche asset class.

It would usually be lumped with industrial because it's built on the same land, but totally different parameters, of course. But now it's totally an asset class of its own. It's not niche anymore. It's as mainstream as they are, and it's much more popular than office and retail.

So I have a couple of thoughts in the data center side, right? So the investment demand, say for the construction technology is one piece, but then how do you think about, say, like the chip technologies, the server side of the technology? How does that factor into your consideration when you think about the data center investment?

I think that look, for us specifically as a fund, this is a little bit outside of our purview because cheap technology is not something we would touch upon. It's not directly touching real estate. But what it does affect is exactly what I mentioned in the point before, well, how the servers operate, how much energy they need, right? How much cooling we need.

how much space we need. I mean, we didn't even talk about edge data center, which is a whole separate theme. Again, a huge opportunity for where do you build them? How do you build them? With what do you build them? And how do you operate them? Right? So we keep a very close eye on what's happening in the cheap development space, and then how it affects data center design.

For us, that's the important piece. What would be the data center of the future? Because again, we're looking at servers in particular is not in our purview, but where are they? What is the physical space that we're building for them? This is the interesting part. And I think the design of data centers will evolve as those technologies... I mean, look, I was recently at an investment round table.

where someone was talking about putting data centers in space down the road.

That's right. Again, not an idea which is outside of conventional thinking, but not something we're touching upon. Interesting. So I'm going to have a couple of quick firing questions and then I want to get your point of view. What is the one thing that shifted your mind in the past 12 months, whether it's in your field or some major technology trend? Robotics. I think that for me, I've been again, for Undivided, I've been very much focused on robotics,

technologies for construction. I think you and I had a brilliant conversation about 12 months ago about robotics and Gen-AI together. And this is the point that I forgot to mention before. Robotics have been a theme in construction for some time. I have to say the progress of adopting robots in construction was very slow.

And the reason is twofold. First, they've still been very expensive. And when a contractor looks at using robots when they can just use people, it's not worth it because the robot is actually more expensive, even though it might be more efficient. And second, the robots themselves are not as sophisticated. But right now, when you layer the Gen AI layer, both in terms of robot design,

And in terms of what they can actually do and how they're doing it, I was recently reading, actually a couple of days ago, a fascinating paper on humanoid robots and the future. Again, a little bit futuristic, but something, again, not out of the realm of possibility. Right now, we're on this inflection point for robotics to become a mainstream use in construction.

Again, we talked about materials and actually manpower being quite inflationary. Now we can produce really light, cost-effective robots that can do a job of a person without really substituting people, but more enhancing and again, making construction more efficient, less prone to mistakes and less costly.

As again, that AI side develops together, it's an unstoppable combination. So if 12 months ago, we were looking at it, but not as in-depth, now it's, you know, fourth gear for me in terms of that we should be on this. So another one of my favorite question, what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about Undivided Ventures or any topic that's specific to the industry you're in? I think that

The question that I would like people to ask is, well, not it's what you asked. It's what is the secret sauce and why now? Because of course, in fundraising, we want to

keep going and make sure we're going to be on fund two and three in the near future. You know, making that point very clear is very important. But I already talked about it before. But if I were to ask you the why now question, you definitely, Clep, give the secret sauce pretty well from the perspective of being very specific in the niche that you want to target. But why now then?

Why now? Again, a couple of reasons. First, what I mentioned before, I think that's a very opportune time to invest. Across the board for VC. VC is coming out from a very long winter. Besides, again, those AI technologies, let's put that aside. In general, VC is waking up. Institutional investors, family offices are now interested to allocate more back into alternatives, back into VC. On the other hand, the valuations are...

very attractive right now so why now this is one one topic why now specifically for undivided well we already going to see some positive uptick in valuation so that's a really good time to

take advantage of the valuations we came in for with an upward trajectory. And I think also why now, because we're seeing really tectonic shifts when it comes to the mindset of real estate industry and construction industry when it comes to using innovation.

whether it's related to sustainability, whether it's related to efficiencies. This is a very good time to invest in early stage companies because they will have a great scalability prospects. So my traditional closing question, what does great look like for undivided ventures then for you from your perspective? Great in the next 12 months? Well, it could be in a few years.

Well, I would say great in the next, this year, our goal is to close our first fund.

Finishing fundraising by fall of this year, focusing on investing in best-in-class solutions. The second, and thinking, you touched about data centers. We've been thinking a lot about our second potential vehicle and data center, so stay tuned for that. Great is also finding those amazing companies in the fields that I touched upon.

that really can make the difference and can scale. So again, target to invest in probably two to five new companies or more. And greatest to continue being a thought leader in the field and talking to amazing podcast like this and bringing that our thesis out there. Okay, Errol, many thanks for coming on the show, but this is not going to be the first. You're going to come back again.

Two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? So you mentioned I do read a lot of books when I have time. Yes, you do. I have four children and I make them read books. And I read books. My recent book that I just finished, and it's a great read, is called Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. And it talks about both...

personal development, but also organizational development, whether it's education. I took a lot of points for kids development, but also as we're a young organization, as Undivided is still a young organization. And also when I look at all those young organizations that we invest in, how do you develop this right mindset in teams? I thought that was a really great book.

I think that again, I try to, it's a topic that a lot of people talk to, but I do try to reread Meditations by Marcus Aurelius every year toward the end of the year or beginning of the year. Because it's a very quick read, you can do it on a couple of planes and it sets your year. So this, I have to say, I've read it several times and it inspires me every time.

Nice. So you're a fan of stoicism. Just like my wife, by the way. As I looked on your reading list, which is excellent, I already circled quite a few books that are on my reading desk for this year. I get really inspired by that. There are several people, for example, I follow on LinkedIn, including yourself, and especially those posts about very specific books or themes when it comes to investing. It's always great.

How do my audience find you? Undivided Ventures, you see? Arielle at undivided.vc. All for you, Bernard. I'm happy to talk to anyone. Okay. So all of you, you can actually subscribe to us on YouTube and Spotify. And by the way, we got a video on Spotify recently. So Errol, many thanks for coming on the show and I will look forward to speak to you soon. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.