Contech, circularity, and pointless AI-washing

A check-in with Nordic PropTech Awards 2024 jury member, Jacob Kjeldgaard Olsen, Head of Venture Engagement at VELUX, by PropTech Denmark Head of Communications, Aya Fabricius.

Generative AI on the move

Nordic PropTech Awards 2024 is on and for the past weeks, the jury has been busy rating 24 proptech startups from across the Nordics. As we are waiting on the finale results - awards handed out in Copenhagen on February 1st -  we caught up with jury member and Head of Venture Engagement at VELUX Jacob Kjeldgaard to get his latest insights from the final pitches. 

Hello Jacob! First of all, thank you for joining the jury of Nordic PropTech Awards 2024. Super excited to have you contribute. First of all, I wanted to ask you how it’s been diving into all these new proptech solutions - anything that stood out to you?

GenAI (Generativ AI, red.) is on the move. Solutions that generate design proposals for office layouts or multistory residential building layouts just to name a few examples. This is promising for improving productivity in design - but also for building material suppliers to remove design/advise obstacles at scale for building owners on their way to creating healthy buildings or transforming existing spaces.

Circularity is not easy, though necessary

Maybe we should mention, being from VELUX, you naturally judged the Contech category. Can you give us some more insight into some specific contech trends or solutions that excited you? 

The building industry badly needs to innovate - with 40% of CO2 emissions coming from buildings and with no or limited productivity gains happening. Startups and tech are crucial to this development, and the traditional players are starting to see the need to keep up or take the lead. 

Circularity therefore also clearly has the attention of startups. This is encouraging but making a business out of circularity is still not easy. In the contech jury, we saw a promising solution to making design with reclaimed products and materials more scalable by making BIM models of actual components available to designers in a platform sourcing materials across reused material suppliers.

Real solutions to real problems

Now, having seen what the upcoming proptech and contech innovators have to offer, how do you imagine VELUX could utilise these innovations? 

VELUX wants to contribute to a healthy proptech and contech ecosystem. With our origin in Denmark, a Nordic program is natural. Sitting in the jury we can help to draw attention to the most promising startups representing the ecosystem, while at the same time seeing solutions that might be relevant for us to clients with or to invest in. 

We also engage in pilots where we test solutions on real-life use-cases. We progress our problem-solving by doing so, and the startup gets access to deep expertise and real-world use cases that help progress their solution. There are so many smart and driven people in startups and the proptech/contech ecosystem. We want to collaborate even more as client partners or investors.

Lastly, any advice for startups looking to engage in corporate pilots or to fundraise right now?

Be aware of “greenwashing” and “AI-washing”. We see through it, if not at first pitch, then eventually. As a company, we are looking for real honest solutions to real problems for us and for our customers.

Thank you Jacob! We will see you on stage at BLOXHUB this Thursday! 🎉