Yard Call | Dec '24

CRETech, Community, and More

AuthorAuthor

Ryan Mitchell & Daniel Dart
December 04, 2024

Friends of Rock Yard!

Hope the turkey treated you well and that you’re having a productive run-in to the holiday season! Here’s what the team at Rock Yard has been up to:

Headlines - more info down below:

  • Daniel Hits the Main Stage at CRETech: Grit, authenticity, and intention.

  • Rock Yard in New York: More Roundtables with more friends!

  • Rock Yard Reads: Are we facing a “Technology Trap”?

  • Team Travel & Events:

  • Dec 3-8 / San Francisco, CA: 

    • Attending: December 4th - Daniel will be attending the 2nd Annual Rackhouse Holiday Party

  • December 13th / Houston, TX:

  • January 26-30 / Miami, FL

    • Speaking: Daniel will be speaking on the main stage at Global Alts at the Miami Convention Center.

Daniel Hits the Main Stage | CRETech NY ‘24

Daniel hit the main stage at CRETech’s flagship conference in New York to share his life story - from prison to PropTech VC - and the lessons he learned along the way.

In his keynote, he highlighted three key insights from his life:

  1. Grit is a Superpower: Sometimes the only way to make it happen is to put your head down and work.

  2. Authenticity is Your Greatest Currency: Not everyone is gonna like you or believe in you, but if you’re true to who you are, and you find your believers, it’ll take you far.

  3. Be Intentional with Your Efforts: Work to be even a little better everyday. Work hard, and put those efforts toward big goals. The path to huge outcomes is paved in small, intentional efforts.

For most of us, there’s no way to hack your way to success, no shortcuts, tips, or tricks. you have to be ready and willing to put in the hours and improve inch by inch when people don’t believe in you.

CRETech's Emily Wright, captured in best in LinkedIn post recounts Daniel's words best:

If you are not terrified to say what you really want, you are not dreaming big enough. And you are not growing. Full Stop. If you fail — who cares? If I asked you what Taylor Swift’s three worst-performing songs are, I bet you couldn’t tell me. No one cares about failures.”

Daniel Dart

Check out Daniel’s post on the keynote here.

Rock Yard in New York

We kept the community ball rolling in New York, hosting two more Rock Yard Roundtable Events.

We shared deals and built relationships with other VCs at our VCs & GPs Dealflow Dinner — s/o to our co-hosts, the good people at Stifel Venture Banking.

We followed that up with an Emerging Manager Dinner with our friends at Carta and Keyframe, where we brought together some of the best and brightest newcomers to the VC scene to talk all things firm building.

We host these events because we know that VC is not about what you know; it’s about who you know. And that community is the best way to build firms, find and grow great companies, and get a free meal while you're at it.

Stay tuned for more in the new year! We’re just getting started!

Rock Yard Reads: The Technology Trap

This month we had a chance to read Carl Benedikt Frey’s The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation.

Quick Summary: There is no disputing that technological process has been the key driver humanity’s development. But the emergence of new technologies — especially those that replace workers — means there will always be winners and losers in human progress. This is the core idea of Joseph Schumpeter’s conception of “Creative Destruction”: that innovation is a net positive for humanity, but it will often cause significant upheaval in the short term as jobs and entire industries are replaced or profoundly changed. While these episodes of upheaval are short in historical terms, the affected workers have often faced decades-long declines in quality of life which affect them and their children.

In The Technology Trap, Frey draws parallels between the Industrial Revolution and the present day, highlighting the disruptive effect of technology, particularly artificial intelligence.

Frey concludes that innovation is a positive force, but argues that proactive measures are needed to minimize the economic and social displacement that comes with it. These measures range from reskilling and education programs to tax policy and unemployment safety nets. He argues that if these measures are not taken, the broader innovation economy faces the risk of a “Technology Trap” where public resistance to labor-replacing technology will slow innovation more broadly.

Our Take: The questions and challenges posed in this book are particularly relevant for us here at Rock Yard. Our job is to invest in transformational technology companies serving the construction, manufacturing, and supply chain spaces — some of the industries most impacted by labor-augmenting and labor-replacing technology.

Our portfolio companies will help customers improve their business. These improvements could lead some to cut their workforce and others to grow it. It can go either way.

For example, a trucking company that automates bookkeeping may reduce clerical roles. However, the cost savings can also enable the company to reassign staff to higher-value tasks and hire more drivers, increasing revenue and growth. Rather than a job lost, technology has allowed the same trucking company to grow its revenue and its workforce.

There is also an opportunity to help the replaced clerical worker. Frey’s prescribed reskilling and education programs hint at corporate initiatives or public policy, but there is also an opportunity for innovators to build a solution. We’re already seeing a generation of companies coming to market with solutions attacking this opportunity.

It’s an exciting time to invest in this space.

Where You Can Find Us

Here’s the latest info on events and where the team will be traveling in the coming months.

Reach out to Daniel, Ryan, or Lavina - we’d love to chat!

That’s it for now! ‘til next time.

- Rock Yard