We dive deep into our sectors. Our research drives our insights and thesis-driven approach.

Back in 2020, our team started to see a seismic shift in brand/retailer balance sheets as supply chain constraints and demand forecasting challenges mounted, resulting in unprecedented levels of excess inventory and returns. The theory was that we could see up to $1T of excess inventory a year if these challenges were left unaddressed, resulting in losses of as much as $761B a year. We called this the Inventory Apocalypse (see more on our work here).

One of the most emphatic transformations we’ve seen across the sectors we invest in has been the acceleration of ecommerce penetration, rising from 11% of all purchases to 15% from 2019 to 2021, representing ~20% per year growth. COVID pushed this transformation forward by at least 5 years. Shutdowns and quarantines forced consumers, some for the first time, to turn to digital channels in order to purchase groceries and household necessities. Many consumers flocked to retailers with larger assortments and existing brand recognition — Amazon’s sales were up 44% yoy Q1 of 2021, and newer entrants like Target’s and Walmart’s 3rd party marketplaces also put up astonishing numbers of 3x yoy and 2x yoy respectively. Grocery, the largest category of consumer spending after housing and transportation, experienced a once in a lifetime shift in digital penetration, and U.S. adoption skyrocketed to 43% in 2020 from 24% in 2018. Over 600 grocers turned to Instacart as their lifeline to consumers; the tech platform drove 50%+ of overall digital grocery growth in 2021.

Equal Ventures is looking to bring on an Associate to focus on researching industry themes, sourcing opportunities, analyzing investments and working alongside our founders. This role will primarily focus on opportunities in Insurtech, working closely with the founding partners and other team members to support our investment activity in the space. This role is open to Pre or Post MBA candidates.

The note below was one shared with our team and a select group of LPs on 11/15/2021. Little did we know that the time of this writing would represent the NASDAQ all-time high. While perhaps it’s a bit late to avoid some of the negative consequences of the downturn, we wanted to share in the interest of the lessons that firms and founders can learn from “Equal Ventures’s 5 Principles of Resiliency”.

At Equal, we have been following the challenging supply and demand dynamics within the $56B childcare industry since well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most critical driver of the U.S. child care crisis today is the lack of supply coupled with the already high and growing demand for childcare, which has led to long waitlists for care and increasingly expensive tuition rates. In October 2016, the Center for American Progress reported that 42% of American children under five years of age live in areas where there is an insufficient supply of child care centers, with the problem exacerbated for the low-middle class.