Vivin Hegde

Boutique ventures firms are mostly smaller and therefore have less defined functional separation between team members. This gives you the ability to get exposure to the different aspects of venture capital - whether it be deal flow, diligence , portfolio support or even fund ops at times. Lean into these and you'll have an enriching experience. The smaller teams can use all the help they can get and they usually welcome you taking on more responsibility!

Ideally the market sizing method should comprise of a couple of different approaches. The Top down approach helps establish that the market is large enough if the entire vision plays out and the bottom up approach showcases that you have a good understanding of the immediate segment that you are attacking. For the top down approach , it's helpful to have it backed by verifiable data (research reports / validated assumptions etc) and for the bottom up approach , it's important to be clear on target customers / approximate ACVs etc.

The use of both drones and robots is rapidly accelerating in construction. The adoption of drones is more advanced as of today as the cost of deployment has dropped dramatically, the use cases (image capture/progress monitoring) are clear and handling of equipment is uncomplicated. Robotics on the other hand is still early in its adoption (if you exclude Prefab shops / 3D printing) but has immense potential. Today adoption is mainly targeted at single point use cases like layout, painting, finishing, brick laying etc. but we do expect more multi faceted robots to emerge in the medium term considering the rapid advancement in the technology stack. More here - https://zacuaventures.com/construction-robotics-the-new-frontier-in-construction/

The factors influencing adoption are very dependent on the stage of technological adoption in the company. There are typically three types of readiness that you want to keep in mind - cultural readiness, technological readiness and economic readiness. Without paying attention to all of these, innovation strategies are seldom successful. Take small steps initially, get the easy wins on select projects and then scale up over time. We have shared some thoughts on this space at https://zacuaventures.com/%f0%9f%8f%97%ef%b8%8f-the-evolution-of-technology-adoption-in-construction/

Automation in general (and drones and robotics in specific) have become increasingly important for construction jobsites due to the increasing shortage of high skilled labor. Currently most of the adoption here is for specific use cases like layout, progress monitoring , painting , finishing etc. but with the advancements in computer vision and increased off the shelf availability of both sub components as well as software platforms, we should soon see more multi-skilled robots on jobsites as well. For those interested, we've written a primer on this space as well - https://zacuaventures.com/construction-robotics-the-new-frontier-in-construction/

For me the sharing of findings typically doesn't just happen at the end of the project. You want to co-create the solution with your client so that every aspect of the solution is tailored to the client context , and iterate as needed to ensure that the final recommendation captures all of the nuances. The final end product needs to be concise, actionable and easily understood. Ideally you would also want to understand what it would take to get buy in for the actions at the different levels of the organization.