We are pleased to announce TMV’s newest investment, CANOA, the first scaling platform for sustainable design and construction in commercial real estate.
Founded in 2019 by Federico Negro, former Global Head of Design at WeWork and founder of digital consultancy Case, CANOA aims to transform the outdated field of design and construction, while reducing the industry’s carbon footprint. The platform leverages a variety of applications, from ghost kitchens to COVID testing clinics, to provide access to human-centered design at the commercial scale. CANOA’s easy-to-use automation tools, customizable designs and network of expert support enable operators to quickly expand or shrink their real estate footprint. This unique approach to integrating sustainable thinking into the efficient reuse and renovation of real estate is good for business, and good for the planet.
As we have all experienced, COVID has dramatically changed how people perceive spaces, in terms of work, health, and leisure. In quick succession, we have seen suburban shopping malls become last mile logistics centers, hotels change to housing, office buildings turn to training and education centers, parking lots to COVID testing facilities and more. CANOA understands the difficulty of managing, updating or expanding a portfolio of physical locations and has built a platform to make a difficult process user-friendly, if not entirely intuitive.
CANOA and TMV: Reimagined Sustainable Solutions
At TMV, we invest in purposeful start-ups reimagining the future, which means founder companies who are developing solutions to address some of the world’s most important challenges. We maintain 4 key areas of focus: reimagined sustainable solutions, the care economy, the future of work and blue tech. CANOA aligns fluidly with our thesis; the company has built a new, effective and sustainable way for brands to offset their carbon footprint, while increasing productivity and efficiency. Moreover, as work increasingly moves off-line, we will need a myriad of ways to rethink physical space, including corporate space. The technology that CANOA has developed makes it possible for large-scale real estate developers and landlords to rethink how they set up the built environment to support these new needs.
The CANOA team represents a new generation of designers, technologists, psychologists, data scientists and others who are bound by a responsibility to reject a broken status quo, and bring ingenuity, research, and healthy practices to a dated industry.
CANOA’s pledge is to the planet, first, providing complete transparency regarding its supply chain, sourcing and servicing processes; it strives to be among the first Spatial Design companies to achieve this milestone. The company is also designing circular economy principles into the core of its business in order to: a) design out waste and pollution; b) keep goods in the economy longer; and 3) replenish natural resources.
Now, with a new round of seed fundraising, (led by TMV, with additional investments from Building Ventures and Gemini Ventures), CANOA will amplify its efforts to decarbonize the built environment bringing scalable, transparent, and low-carbon design frameworks to the commercial real estate sector.
CANOA’s vision helps real estate owners and occupiers maximize their physical spaces. In a post-COVID world, this is especially valuable as companies demand adaptable, modular spaces to satisfy the needs of their customers and employees. As a result of this work, the CANOA team is setting an industry standard when it comes to achieving a lower carbon footprint. We are looking forward to continuing our partnership and helping CANOA create meaningful change throughout the ecosystem.
Thanks for reading,
Darshan Somashekar
Venture Partner, TMV
(If you are building an impactful business of the future or if you are an investor who believes in the power of community and operational commitment, we want to hear from you. Find us at hi@tmv.vc)