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

Equal Ventures was founded to enable the entrepreneurs transforming society and industry. At the core of our investment approach is a thesis-driven philosophy for investing across markets. Although we are a generalist fund, we allocate much of our research time and efforts to a few key markets that we have developed expertise in. We refer to these as our ‘Majors’.

It’s impossible to understate the transformative impact Amazon has had on the modern supply chain landscape. As Amazon increasingly takes ownership over its logistics stack, players across the industry have been forced to modernize their systems to meet customer parity. By mid 2019, Amazon was managing over 45% of its own shipments, up from 15% at the start of 2017, spending over $25 billion on fulfillment in the first 6 months of 2020. It has additionally launched its own digital freight brokerage with rates significantly lower than those in the broader market.

Our interest in the care economies is focused around two segments of dependent care: childcare and eldercare. On the childcare side, the associated costs have become an increasingly large burden on dual-income families. 32% of families spend over 20% of their annual household income on childcare, with costs continuing to rise. Costs for nannies and sitters rose 25% between 2013 and 2018, with in-center costs rising almost 15% during the same time period. The industry also faces concerns as leading marketplaces such as care.com come under fire for the lack of vetting of care providers. While birthing rates have dropped, some theorize that we’ve seen a permanent shift in birthing age (from late twenties to early thirties) that is specific to millennials, which ultimately could lead to a surge in demand for childcare in the years to come. These concerns are only amplified by COVID which has resulted in significant closures of legacy centers.

It’s impossible to understate the transformative impact Amazon has had on the modern supply chain landscape. As Amazon increasingly takes ownership over its logistics stack, players across the industry have been forced to modernize their systems to meet customer parity. By mid 2019, Amazon was managing over 45% of its own shipments, up from 15% at the start of 2017, spending over $25 billion on fulfillment in the first 6 months of 2020. It has additionally launched its own digital freight brokerage with rates significantly lower than those in the broader market.

Trucking is one of America’s most critical and vital industries. Not only is it one of the US’s largest labor categories (employing greater than 3 million individuals), but COVID has served as a harsh reminder of the vulnerability of our nation’s supply chain and our reliance on these workers. I was first acquainted with the trucking industry in 2015 when I met Doug Waggoner and the team at Echo Global Logistics, a publicly-traded freight logistics company co-founded by my bosses at Lightbank. Over the next several years, I spent hundreds of hours getting to know brokers, dispatchers and the drivers they work with. These drivers represent some of the hardest working, yet most underestimated workers I’ve ever met.