Julieta Moradei, Partner at Hometeam Ventures, talks about their vision "to close the housing gap" through investing in ambitious founders developing revolutionary technology for the construction industry. Julieta shares an inspiring story of how they created Hometeam Ventures from a non-profit, about being a first-time fund manager, and authentic examples of startups making phenomenal innovations to improve the construction life cycle.
Julieta Moradei, Partner at Hometeam Ventures, talks about their vision "to close the housing gap" through investing in ambitious founders developing revolutionary technology for the construction industry. Julieta shares an inspiring story of how they created Hometeam Ventures from a non-profit, about being a first-time fund manager, and authentic examples of startups making phenomenal innovations to improve the construction life cycle.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
[6:01] How working with an AEC-based non-profit inspired our unique journey into venture capital
[10:07] Why is the construction and housing industry hungry for innovation?
[14:15] Your personality and reputation is everything in VC
[27:46] How a 3D printing startup is changing lives through affordable housing
Non-profit that Julieta is passionate about: New Story Charity
Julieta Moradei is a Partner at Hometeam Ventures. She drives dealflow and operations of the fund. Prior, Julieta led R&D at New Story Charity, where she formed 50+ partnerships with key academic and industry leaders to pioneer groundbreaking solutions for affordable housing. This includes a partnership with ICON, which built the world's first 3D printed community. Julieta’s industry research focuses on circular economy, automated drone inspection, resiliency, and sustainability.
Hometeam Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in and scales double bottom line startups that improve the construction life cycle by reducing cost, increasing speed, and improving quality, resulting in more adequate housing globally. Hometeam focuses on BIM & Digital twins, Finance, Project & Job Site Management, Supply Chain Optimization, Industrialized Construction (3D printing, modular, prefab), Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. Portfolio companies include AirWorks, ICON, and REDIST.
Coming up next week in Episode 73, we welcome a special guest, Charles Hudson, Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures, to talk about why Precursor is unafraid to back unproven, first-time entrepreneurs. Charles explains how he finds the most promising investment opportunities in mobile infrastructure.
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Julieta Moradei: The construction industry, as a whole, is one of the most archaic, one of the most undigitized industries of every industry vertical. And that's causing direct ripple effects into the housing crisis. Taking a step back, within the housing crisis we have 1.6 billion people who are homeless today. That number is going to duplicate by 2030.
Gopi Rangan: You are listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur, a podcast for founders with ambitious ideas. Venture capital investors and other early believers tell you relatable, insightful, and authentic stories to help you realize your vision.
Welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur. Today's guest is Julieta Moradei. She's a Partner at Hometeam Ventures. We're going to learn about how Hometeam invests in startups, what areas she focuses on, and her perspective on venture capital.
Julieta, welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur.
Julieta Moradei: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and especially a part of all these people that are storytelling and helping founders.
Gopi Rangan: I'm looking forward to our conversation. I want to start with you, your story. You grew up all over the world but your journey started in Buenos Aires, right?
Tell us a little more about yourself.
Julieta Moradei: Yeah. I'm originally from Buenos Aires. My whole family actually lives there except my parents and brother. They're in Boston.
Both my parents are scientists. So they do cancer research. And from medicinal chemistry, back in the day, you had to really travel to different labs in order to do your Ph.D. or post-doctorate studies. From a very young age, I was on planes, moving around all over Spain, all over the UK, and then they ended up doing their post-doc at OSU in Ohio.
At the age of five, I was already living in a dorm with other university students. Every weekend I was spending it in their labs getting to play with helium and balloons; always very immersed in education and science and technology. Then, they got the opportunity to have a full-time job and get a visa in Canada.
We ended up in Montreal, which is where I primarily grew up. I did elementary and high school there, which was interesting in itself because if anyone's been to Montreal, it's an incredibly international city. There's a lot of first and second-generation immigrants. And on top of it, they have a very strict policy or law around the preservation of the French culture and language.
My parents came to the U.S. and to Canada speaking hardly any English. And then I arrive and they put me in English school to later find out that that's illegal. As an immigrant, you have to be in a French school. So in third grade, I was actually pulled out of English school, put into a French school, and had to learn that really quickly.
Traveling that much at a young age really immerses you into different cultures, people, and languages. We ended up in Boston because during the economic crash, a lot of the pharma companies shut down in Montreal specifically. And there was an emergence of this science hub for pharma in Boston. They both ended up in Boston and then I quickly followed after I graduated high school and went on my own when I was 15 and then went to university at a very young age to Northeastern University. Long story short, from Buenos Aires, I grew up all over the place, primarily in Montreal, and then ended up in Boston for college and then UC Berkeley for grad school.
Gopi Rangan: Campus life is fun. I see that you really enjoyed living close to educational institutions because your parents were both researchers. I grew up in a very similar household with academicians at home tossing around books and papers all the time. I see that you went to Northeastern University. Northeastern has a very unique program that brings a practical aspect to education in addition to the academic side. Was that helpful to you?
Julieta Moradei: I honestly could not recommend a co-op program more. If you're trying to pick a university pick one that has some kind of internship program or co-op specifically. The way that co-op programs work specifically at Northeastern is that your undergraduate degree is actually five years instead of four. The whole idea is that you are learning within the academic bounds, so within classes, but then you're also learning on a job.
I studied civil engineering, specializing in structural engineering. In the fall semesters I would be in classes, and then spring and summer, so January through August I was interning. I started university at 16 years old. How am I supposed to know what I want to do with my career 10 years, 15 years out from that age? What I was able to really do is within structural engineering, think of different kinds of internships that I was interested in that are very different from each other, and understand what I like and what I don't like. That's so important to do before you graduate because then you go into your actual career professionally and you have a way better idea of what does not speak to you and what does. And on top of that, you graduate with two years of experience.
I don't know what percent, but I believe it's over 95% of students at Northeastern already have a job offer when they're graduating. That's massive for people and it allows you to also explore. I mean, when in life are you on a college campus surrounded by people of different ages and religions and cultures, and you can explore different career paths depending on what you're studying? It was exactly what I needed at that time.
Gopi Rangan: At Sure Ventures, my venture capital firm, I've had many interns from Northeastern University and it's a great joy to have fresh thinking and to give them the opportunity to experience venture capital. That's actually how I got into venture capital when I was an intern at a VC firm. So it's great that the school offers programs like that. So when you graduate, you have experience and you're not just a book nerd. You can actually add value to an organization.
How did you enter venture capital? What attracted you to venture capital?
Julieta Moradei: Okay. That's a pretty loaded question for me because it was incredibly serendipitous. Just to give you context, I did my undergrad and grad in structural engineering and architecture. I literally did not know what venture capital meant. If you would have asked me what an investor does a few years ago, I would have said, "It's Wolf of Wall Street. It's Leonardo DiCaprio, and they toss money and they invest in stocks and bonds".
I had no idea what angel investing was, what venture capital was, what PE was. I could summarize a story of how we launched our fund and how I even got into VC. Our story is very unique because we launched our venture fund one year ago as a spinoff from a nonprofit. The whole idea of why we started VC was because we saw an immense problem in the housing crisis and this idea that we need to innovate within construction.
Gopi Rangan: I know that at Hometeam you invest with a strong focus on real estate and your mission is to bridge the housing gap. You invest in early-stage founders who solve problems in that area. How do you do that? What do you look for in startups?
Julieta Moradei: Yeah. Within Hometeam Ventures, we invest specifically in pre-seed and seed, so very early-stage construction technologies and prop-tech, real estate investments, all with a lens of: can we reduce the cost of construction along the construction value chain? We believe if we're able to invest in these technologies that reduce cost and increase the speed of building, we could then have a direct impact on reducing the cost of housing. We know that the construction industry as a whole is one of the most archaic, one of the most undigitized industries of every industry vertical. And that's causing direct ripple effects into the housing crisis.
Taking a step back, within the housing crisis we have 1.6 billion people who are homeless today. That number is going to duplicate by 2030. That means that within the same decade, we're going to have 3 billion people who are homeless. There's no way that with current construction methods, technologies and materials, we could build fast enough and cheap enough to actually provide that kind of supply. The lens that we're approaching is: Yes we are a traditional VC fund; Yes, we believe that these construction technologies could have a huge impact on their business while also having an impact on the housing crisis.
In terms of what we look for in founders, we look along the whole construction value chain. Meaning, at pre-construction you're finding land, you are surveying it, you're going through the design process, permitting, supply chain management, scheduling. Then at construction execution, you're actually building whatever you're building. And then at post-construction you're trying to actually occupy these homes in a more efficient way. There are some fintech plays and insurance tech plays in there as well. Along that construction value chain, does your technology reduce the cost of that bucket? If we take the example of surveying the very first bucket along the value chain, if we're able to invest in a technology like our first portfolio company called Airworks, that completely eliminates the process of surveying and drafting, which is present in any construction project. Those are the specific areas we will look into. Does it reduce the cost? Has it increased speed while still maintaining quality? And can a developer in affordable housing use this?
We invest very broadly within construction. It could be used for any construction project. Airworks for surveying could be used for building a bridge or commercial at-market-rate housing, but it could also be used by governments that do informal settlements. It could also be used by developers that do affordable housing. That's really the lens that we use to look into the industry.
In terms of the kinds of founders that we are trying to find, of course, we do have that impact lens. We always want to work with founders that say, "I know my business is going to scale a ton. I know that we're going to be very successful financially, but also I do care about how my technology could have an impact on the world specifically on housing." Do they have that ambition? Do they have that passion and are they aligned with us in that sense?
Gopi Rangan: Construction and housing is an important industry. It's a legacy industry that hasn't had a ton of innovation. There's a lot of room for startups to build creative solutions. What's giving you the optimism to say that this is going to be a huge opportunity in the next few years for founders to build new businesses?
Julieta Moradei: I absolutely love that question. If we just look at the construction industry right now, it is the largest market sector in the world. It's valued at over $18 trillion; going to be valued at $22 trillion in a couple of years. Yet, it's the least digitized.
McKinsey did this report a few years ago where they looked at every industry vertical and how much that industry is investing into their R&D. At the very bottom, for least digitized is farming and right above that is construction. Most industries, on average, invest about 6% of their value into R&D; into actually innovating and improving constantly. Construction invests only 0.5% of that.
It's an immense industry. It's very sleepy and it's hungry for innovation. It needs it. Why is that exciting today? Why now for founders? We're seeing an incredible shift where a lot more VCs are looking at the construction tech industry. There's a lot more capital coming into it. Tiger Global is making big plays right now. A ton of angels are making big plays right now. And the reason is that in prop tech, over the past five years, there's been a lot of VCs that have entered the space, started new funds, and we're starting to see that same kind of shift within construction tech. People are paying attention to it.
As a founder, now you have a bigger pool of opportunity for funding, but also an immense potential for impact because the construction industry is incredibly archaic. The reason for that is that it is very slow to adopt. In the construction industry, when it comes to working with GCs and developers, you have to also think that you're working within the bounds of the built environment. You're working with the regulatory process of it. There are other hiccups along the road and that's why it's taken so long, but we see that as an immense opportunity to innovate. And that's why Alexandria and myself when we started this fund, were very excited that we have operator backgrounds. We have actually worked on construction sites, brought in early-stage founders to construction sites to pilot their technologies for the first time and truly understand what it means to work with governments, work with local partners, local developers, and actually be able to innovate from the ground up and pile these technologies first approve them and then get other investors on.
Gopi Rangan: I see the huge opportunity here. It's a sleepy industry waiting for new ideas to be created by entrepreneurs coming into the space. How is it different for entrepreneurs to build a business in this space compared to other sectors? What advice would you give?
Julieta Moradei: I'd say the biggest difference is that within the construction industry, it's not like you're building a product like a phone, for example, where you could do a thousand phones as a pilot and test them, iterate, break them, do customer discovery at length. It's very different within the housing industry or within construction as a whole. To do a proof of concept if you're working in hardware, for example, it's incredibly capital intensive and you're not going to be building a thousand homes and breaking them and testing and going through that innovation cycle very rapidly.
You have to be thinking a little bit differently about what that proof of concept looks like. For early-stage VCs, the first thing that they're going to ask you is: what's your MVP? What's your customer traction at? What speed are you building? And it's not the same thing as building software. It's not the same thing as building again, like a cell phone when it comes to hardware. You do have to think differently.
The whole reason that we started Hometeam, and one of our case studies is of ICON, we wanted to be that VC fund that will invest at the earliest stage. We will invest pre-seed and seed, sometimes pre-revenue, but we will help you do that very first MVP. We know what it takes to get other investors or later-stage investors and customers on board. And within the built environment, it's really having that proof of concept that they could look at, they believe in, they know is safe and has gone through the regulatory process. That's the main differentiator with other industry verticals to work in.
Gopi Rangan: There are some nuances to this industry that entrepreneurs need to understand. When you meet an entrepreneur for the first time, what questions do you ask them? What are you looking for?
Julieta Moradei: It's funny. I know a lot of founders come in with their pitch deck ready. They want to do their 15-minute spill and then do Q&A.
Gopi Rangan: They have the elevator pitch ready to go.
Julieta Moradei: Always. They've memorized it so many times, I could tell that their eyes are not even looking specifically at me. They're just going through the motions. That to me is very robotic. When I meet a founder, especially when we're investing at the earliest stage, we are investing in you as a person and your team.
We know that the product that you're pitching today is probably not going to be the same product in two years. We're investing in you as a founder and what you could build. Do we trust you to make really hard decisions, to be pushing an idea forward when things get really hard? When I first meet a founder, I always say, "Put the pitch deck away. I want to get to know you first. I've reviewed the pitch deck. I know what the product is. I've looked at your TAM. I've looked at your numbers. I want you to tell me a story of you. From day one, walk me through your journey and why you started this."
The reason I do that is to get to know the founder themselves through storytelling. I think that's the best way you get to know somebody right away. But two, I want to know, are you truly passionate about pursuing this one idea? I heard recently there's a professor at HBS that always asks people who are going between, 'do I want to be a founder one day' or 'do I want to be in VC'... and he says that you have to do the shower test. Do you love the deep dive into one idea for the next five to 10 years? Or do you like to be touching a lot of different ideas at once? The way that you could tell if you're one or the other is by the shower test? A founder is thinking about their idea all the time and they're asleep, in the shower, outside the shower. When I get to meet a founder for the first time, I really want to know what drove their passion to start this idea. Would they pass the shower test? In two years, are you still going to be driving this idea forward with every single ounce of passion you have?
Gopi Rangan: This is fascinating. You look for the story in the entrepreneur. You want to get to know their personality. There are so many founders who are coached to tell the story so well and arrive well-rehearsed with their stories. We don't get to see their personality. It's good to get out of that slide deck mode and sit down with them to ask about their life. What's the genesis of the story? How did they decide that they should start this company? How did they meet their co-founders? Those stories are very interesting.
Julieta Moradei: And also how they're doing...because when you invest in a founder as a VC, on top of doing portfolio value-add and supporting them to get customer traction, other investors, marketing, recruiting, all that stuff that a typical VC does, a big part of your job is to be their therapist. At the end of the day, a founder needs to be on their A-game. They need to be feeling their best selves to be actually pursuing their idea at the highest capacity. I need to like to work with you. This is a full relationship that we're about to onboard if I actually invest in you.
It's all about that personality that I want to see shine, and I don't want it to be rehearsed. I want to be able to hear a story, ask you questions that you don't typically get, get to see how you are on your toes. That first founder's meeting for me is always that. I want to get to know you, and if you pass that test that first time, that's when we get into diligence and really get to understand your business and how you are thinking.
Gopi Rangan: What happens next?
Julieta Moradei: The next step is really when we onboard on to technical diligence. After that first founders call, we have a cohort of research fellows. Right now we have a cohort of 18 research fellows. Every six months, we go through a new cohort. A lot of them stay on for the next one. And that's a combination of grad students that are in architecture, engineering, construction, or VC and PE, but are interested in the impact side of things. And we'll go through their full deck. We'll go through all their materials, their data room, if they've shared that, and really understand from a technical perspective, what problem are they trying to solve? And is their solution the highest leverage solution?
After that, we go through a series of knockout criteria that we at Hometeam look at. Specifically, on the investment side, does it make sense with how much we would be investing in, what their raise is today, what their valuation is today, other investors on board. We look deeply at competitive analysis. We'll start actually contacting potential customers before we even ask them for references. We'll contact people who could be their potential customers and people who are either our LPs or advisors to get their thoughts specifically on the problem and solution. Once we go over that technical side, the technical diligence, we will have another founders call, where I'll also bring Alexandria, my co-founder. The two of us will interview more specifically on the founder's diligence and the team. And then we have more questions related to the technical problem and the business strategy, their go-to-market strategy, how they're thinking about customers, how they're thinking about scaling the company the next year, or the next two years, going through their sprints. It's very dependent on what they're producing, whether it's software, hardware, material science. After that second founder's call, that's when we will actually dive into deeper diligence. We'll start contacting references, other investors that have invested in them or not, customers that they connect us to, other customers that we think would be potential customers, our LPs, and our advisors. And that usually takes another couple of weeks where sometimes we will have third, fourth, fifth meetings with the founders as well as other teammates. That's really when we will come up with our final decision based on all the information we've acquired.
Another big thing that founders should always know is that VCs do co-diligence together. Maybe you don't know it, but other VCs that are interviewing you today are talking to other VCs in the space. Especially within construction tech and prop-tech, a lot of VCs have relationships with each other and we're sharing notes. Something that you should always know is that these VCs are talking behind the curtains to each other.
Alexandria and I have operator backgrounds. We've been on construction sites. We really understand the pain points and what the technology takes to solve them. We always bring that perspective. We also bring the perspective of working with governments and doing proof of concept projects, what it takes to do that. Other VCs might have a specialty in insurance tech, like yourself, or in fintech. They will bring in a different perspective. The reason that we're talking behind the curtains is not so much to gossip about the founders, but really to understand based on our expertise, would we invest and why?
We're all sharing notes. I say that so founders know that as you're talking to different VCs, you should really be treating everyone in a good way and know that they're talking to each other. Reputation is everything within VC. You want to make sure that you are professional and talking well with different VCs because they're talking to each other.
Gopi Rangan: That's right. When a round comes together, it's rarely one VC investing all of the money. There are usually at least two or three investors coming together in that round, sometimes more. So it's important for those VCs to be aligned with the vision of the company. It's actually great to be able to collaborate with a select few investors who believe in the same ideas and have the same values.
Julieta Moradei: One of my favorite things about our industry and construction tech is that we're so new in the space. There are few VCs in the U.S. specifically that only focus on construction tech. Everyone's friendly. We're all sharing deal flow. It's very collaborative. I absolutely love being in the space as a VC. For founders, another tip that I'm thinking through is a lot of VCs are doing diligence at the same time. Make it easy for them to go through your materials.
One of my favorite founders that I was doing diligence on made a data room that was spectacular. It was so organized. He had all of his references in one folder. Another folder had the materials that we typically look at - the pitch deck and the demo. And then another one with frequently asked questions. He knew the game. He knew that all VCs were going to be looking at this one data room. Make it easy for the VCs to go through your materials.
Gopi Rangan: A lot of this takes time. What is your process? Can you give an example of one of your investments? How long did it take from the first meeting to the point where you said, I want to invest in this company?
Julieta Moradei: It would be our absolute dream to be able to say we do diligence and just two weeks for every single founder. But it depends so heavily on the relationship at the early stage, how well you know the founder and their technology and how familiar you are with the space. For example, we were recently doing diligence on a founder that is very focused on the deposit space.
When you're renting, you always have to put down a deposit and that's an area that we just don't have a lot of information on because that's not our expertise. That diligence inherently takes more time because we want to become pseudo-experts in the space by talking to other VCs, other real estate folks and other LPs who are experts in the space.
I'll give an example of a recent investment. We made that the whole diligence process took less than two weeks. That would be a short timeframe. And then I have another example that the whole process took probably two to three months. That will be our longest timeframe and not ideal, of course, for the founder.
The first example, the very short diligence process was we met a founder that came out of another company - a spin-off from another very large company - and a brilliant founder, one of the biggest experts in our space. We knew that he understood the space very well and he had a high reputation. Off the bat we were already coming into it, knowing that he knows what he's doing, and his solution to the big problem was probably a correct idea. But what really accelerated the process with him was that one of our research fellows worked for him. We got a direct insight into how he is as a manager, as a leader, as an expert. We were really able to dig in quickly into him as the founder and the team itself, and all their materials. We were able to ask a lot of questions fast. And again, they were very organized with us. They made it easy for us. They said, "We know as a VC, you're probably going to do reference checks. Here's the list of different references that we could give you. Here's a document with frequently asked questions from other VCs." That's how we were able to accelerate the whole process. So this is a company called Parspec, and they're focusing on the supply chain process, one of the biggest issues in construction right now.
Another example is the very first investment we made in Airworks. They do drone mapping for surveying. They're doing the whole process with a drone, radar scanning, and then apply computer vision and machine learning to output topographic mapping. We knew the founders through MITdesignX, which is a program at MIT. It's almost like an accelerator program, and I'm a mentor for them. And so I met them through that program and we were just launching Hometeam. We were doing diligence while also creating our very first deck to pitch to LPs. Why it took longer for them was because we had to actually close our first round.
Something a lot of founders don't understand is that VCs are constantly fundraising. We are investing, we're deploying capital, but we're also on our end fundraising. We understand your pain points of fundraising. Our investments and the timeline of our investments are also dependent on our fundraising cycles and if we're closing a round. So with Airworks, they had to keep their round open for us so we could do our first close and then invest in them. It's always really good for founders to ask VCs about their timeline transparently and also understand and be empathetic towards their fundraising goals.
Gopi Rangan: That's an important thing. Most entrepreneurs don't think about the other side of the story and where the money comes from, whether the VCs are ready, and how much they might invest. And are they ready with a certain timeline that a startup is operating with?
A lot of your conversations, especially the first meeting don't result in a follow-up meeting. You have to say no. What are the most common reasons for you to say, I don't want to invest in this company?
Julieta Moradei: The number one reason, going back to what I look for most in founders, is they're just not a fit personality-wise or passion level. One example is if a founder is just really not aligned with our thesis, our thesis being that we think construction technology is a prerequisite to housing. If they're just not aligned, for example, their customer base is for high-net-worth individuals only, then that's just going to be an automatic no for me.
Another thing that we always look at in that first call is speed. When you're investing at the earliest stage, something that is super important is speed. How quickly does the founder work? If they just came up with our idea three months ago and they're talking to you and they already have a pitch deck and they already have customers in mind or a pipeline of customers, and you could tell that 24/ 7 they are thinking about this idea and they are just trying to move very quickly and very efficiently, that's something that I really look for. If I could tell that you are just taking longer to do things, or you're not necessarily trying to think of your traction, that's something that automatically to me is a red flag. Within VC, if you're going to traditional VCs, meaning that most are looking for at least 3X returns, it's all about speed. We want to make sure that we're going to have an exit in the next few years.
Whenever you are pitching to someone, no matter what you're pitching, you have to think about the incentive of that person. The incentive of VC at the end of the day is: will I make my returns to my LPs, to my investors, and my fund? Speed is probably the number one quality in a founder to make sure that actually happens.
Gopi Rangan: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. You're giving specific details on what entrepreneurs can do when they go to meet a VC. And if they're more aligned with their mission and their values, then there's a better fit with those firms.
I want to switch to the next part of our conversation and ask you about your community involvement. Is there a non-profit organization you are passionate about? Which one?
Julieta Moradei: I'm very biased because I used to work there, but New Story Charity is my favorite non-profit. New Story Charity is one of the first and few nonprofits to go through Y Combinator. They're focusing on eradicating homelessness using innovation. Over the last six years, they've partnered with federal governments all over Central and South America in Bolivia, Haiti, El Salvador, and Mexico to actually build affordable housing communities. They've built about 25 of these housing communities. They're en-route to building for a million people by 2030 in Mexico specifically.
By building these communities with governments at a municipal state, federal level, they could truly understand by walking the walk themselves, what are the biggest barriers and housing? And what are technologies we could bring in to solve these barriers?
I came on to the New Story team full time to launch an R&D program. The idea was that there's a lot of innovation out there already. We don't need to start from scratch as a team. Can we convince these early-stage founders to partner with New Story and pilot new technologies for the very first time in our housing communities? So that 1) we could actually direct these founders at the earliest stage to work in the impact space, and 2) help them scale their business because now they have a proof of concept that they've deployed in a lower barrier area, let's say, rural Mexico. Then they could actually have this MVP that they could showcase to investors and to customers. An example was when we actually invested as a non-profit into is ICON. ICON is now the leader in 3D printing. Back when we met the founders, they had half of a printer in their backyard, and they said that they believed that they could build a house in 12 hours with a 3D printer. And they wanted to 3D print the very first house in history. We said, "We would love to partner with you. How can we help? How can we bring you down to Mexico, for example, and build that first community? They said, "To do that we need capital." And so we had to convince our nonprofit board to allow us to actually write the very first outside check into ICON. We were then able to permit the first 3D printed home in history and Austin, Texas then brought the printer down to Mexico where we built an entire community of homes, again for the first time in history. And what I love about this example is that we did this for the homeless. We did this for communities that are living with less than $3 a day.
What happened afterward was absolutely incredible. Apple TV did a documentary. It's in a docuseries called Home, and we're in Episode 9, the season finale called Mexico, really walking you through the journey of how a small startup and a small non-profit built the first 3D printed home in history and community. And who are we serving? Who are the end users? It's just a beautiful story. ICON just closed their series B at a huge valuation. They're doing very well from a business perspective while also driving massive impact in housing. This was truly our case study, what we did with ICON and truly pursuing this double bottom line approach, that launched the idea of Hometeam Ventures. We have about 50 R&D partners spanning all academic industries, with early-stage founders. Their number one request is they're early-stage and they need capital to actually scale. We did this with ICON. Can we do it with some other founders? Can we scale this idea of investing in innovation first for impact? We put a pitch deck together of a fundraising arm for R&D, which very quickly became the idea of Hometeam Ventures. One year ago is when we actually launched this idea and it's a $20-million fund and we'll be investing in 20 portfolio companies at the earliest stage.
Gopi Rangan: What an amazing story! We've come full circle back to how Hometeam got started.
Congratulations on launching the firm. It is a much-needed solution in the market. We need better construction solutions, better real estate solutions to bridge that gap. Good luck in finding the best entrepreneurs to invest in. I hope we find opportunities to collaborate as well. Thank you so much for sharing candid stories and real-life examples based on your investments.
Julieta Moradei: Thank you so much for having me and for creating this podcast. It's absolutely incredible to be helping underrepresented founders in this space.
Gopi Rangan: Thank you for listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur. I hope you enjoyed listening to real-life stories about early believers supporting ambitious entrepreneurs.
Please subscribe to the podcast and post a review. Your comments will help other entrepreneurs find this podcast. I look forward to catching you at the next episode.