Founder Note

Episode 131 is a conversation with Kathy Farrington, Digital Buildings Lead at Google. This is the 4th episode in our Google series, which unpacks different facets of their global smart buildings program and dates back to 2020. This one with Kathy is probably where we should have started because as she shares, she was involved from the beginning when it was just a side project she focused on with her 20% time.

The Network Layer is a vital part of a smart building's infrastructure. It is: ...a dedicated layer with its own hardware, software, standard operating procedures, and key stakeholders who take responsibility for doing it right. It should be converged, monitored, maintained, and have redundancy.

The access control industry is in the midst of a transformation. This transformation is the difference between a $10B industry, which focuses just on security, and a $100B+ total addressable market.

"For us, it's simpler to work with applications that go on top of the BOS because we can control the information being accessed. Without the BOS, transparency is limited, which limits the number of use cases.By adding this data layer, we're dramatically increasing transparency and the possibilities of what else can easily be added on top."

Hey friends, Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you ti

As we celebrate the holidays and start to wind down the year, I'm reflecting on the progress in our industry in 2022. One definite area of progress is defining the specialist roles needed to make smart buildings successful. In this series, we're summarizing five vital roles that every smart building program needs on the team.

“The tools that have always been successful at instigating change are benchmarking and performance standards. Let's use those tools and evolve them to better fit the needs of today's definition of a high-performance building, which includes the carbon aspect, grid interactivity, and occupant responsiveness."

One definite area of progress is defining the specialist roles needed to make smart buildings successful. In this series, we're summarizing five vital roles that every smart building program needs on the team. We talk a lot about the flashy new technology required for smart buildings. But we must always remember that when we're changing how things are done, it's people that make it happen. Here are the five roles we're going to cover:

“The grid is starting to look a lot like the internet. These IOT devices are distributed, digital, user owned and operated nodes. They can buy from the grid, they can sell from the grid, they can respond dynamically.

We talk a lot about the flashy new technology required for smart buildings. But we must always remember that when we're changing how things are done, it's people that make it happen. Here are the five roles we're going to cover: The Smart Building Champion The Design Consultant The Master Systems IntegratorThe Network ManagerThe Commissioning Agent

“Don't spend your time with the laggards who don't yet see the need for (smart building technology). When they see it they'll find you. Go find owners with a need and then meet that need."

The word “decarbonization” was everywhere. The green building community is undergoing two shifts: (1) from valuing energy efficiency to valuing the amount of carbon emitted and (2) from valuing “green” materials to valuing the amount of carbon emitted to get them in the building. The decarbonization push is underway beyond that conference… It's industry wide. Let’s focus on the first shift today: What does it mean to shift from energy to carbon?

“There is another use case for smart building systems and for BAS, and it is critical input data for designing low-carbon systems for your building that if you don't have that data, you are not going to design your systems properly. They will probably be oversized and a lot more expensive than they need to be compared to as if you had good data to design on."

It's been a month since we launched the Nexus Labs Syndicate and I'm excited to announce our first investment!Xeal provides hardware and software to real estate owners looking to provide EV charging as an amenity for their tenants. We're honored to join Keyframe Capital, ArcTern Ventures, Moderne Ventures, and others in Xeal's $40M Series B round.

“A building can only run as efficiently as its engineer knows how to run it. Unless you have an engineer-first mindset, none of your energy efficiency efforts is ever really going to reap the rewards."

Hey friends, Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you ti

A big shift is happening in financing for decarbonization projects in the United States. In my private conversations with real estate sustainability and ESG leaders, I've learned this is one of the top things on their minds.

“We can have all the technology in the world but dropping it into a building doesn't magically transform it. It ultimately is a tool. Your people can be empowered by this tool but it will never do everything for you. You have to set objectives, lean in and embrace the technology. You have to train your people and build the organization in a structure that supports it."

So I decided to seek out some expert guidance from outside the core Nexus audience—what might people be missing by dismissing M&A as a transformational force? Enter: Proptech Bankers. They believe consolidation is inevitable; it will play a key role in fixing the current technology fragmentation in the smart building market; and any landlord or proptech company not currently in consolidation conversations is missing an important opportunity to control their destiny.Their answer as to why M&A will be key in fixing fragmentation is at the link below, along with feedback on what's happening around M&A in the current market and what startups should expect in the near and distant future.Why M&A will be key in fixing fragmentation

TL;DR: We spoke to Proptech Bankers about the current state of proptech M&A. They believe consolidation is inevitable; it will play a key role in fixi

“There's definitely still venture capital money out there looking for great companies, especially in the smart building space. As long as you have a clear thesis and value proposition and your tech addresses a need of a building owner/operator, you're going to pass this deeper diligence with flying colors."

Hey gamechangers! Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few words as poss

“It’s not first to market that wins, it’s the first to cross the chasm.”—Geoffrey Moore

"Real estate owners buy and sell assets and drive yield. So we needed to reframe little "e", the discussion on electrons, and expand into big "E", environmental social governance. Doing so helped the real estate owner understand not commodities, but yield and risk in return."

“Step one (of 3) on reducing embodied carbon emissions is to start thinking about if we have to build a building at all. So if we just stopped building right now, there's plenty of empty space for us to put all that square footage into that we say we need. And beyond that, we have more than we need."

What's the most important type of data for creating smarter buildings?I'd argue that for every type of building except data centers, it's occupancy data.

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss.These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.Enjoy.

Disclosure: Nexus Labs Syndicate is an investor in WattCarbon. “They're doing the same thing they did last year, but now it's called decarbonization. But the reality is, is that they are decarbonizing buildings. The work that we've been doing for 20 years is the right work to be doing we just don't have a metric to measure ourselves against and a way to value that work."

Today we're launching a new project here at Nexus Labs. Some of you will say, "What took you so long???". Others will say, "WTF?". This newsletter answers both of those questions, plus it invites you to participate in the fun. Commercial buildings owners are now required to digitize, decarbonize, protect the health of occupants, and provide those occupants with a great user experience—all while realizing the business results of each of the stakeholders involved. And all of this change is only happening faster and faster. 🤯They need to level up.

“We see an expansion of robots doing 80% of a job in the service sector, allowing humans to do what's complex." —Greg Scott Welcome to Ne

Before I shut down my consulting practice earlier this year, I had the opportunity to support one last building in Manhattan. This building has more submeters per square foot, per floor, per system, and per tenant than any building I've ever seen. AND, perhaps predictably, all that data is barely being used. We've talked before (most recently here) about how important utility data is for decarbonization and ESG goals. Figuring out how much carbon you emit today is the vital first step on the road to emitting zero.

“There's a lot of complexity that goes into building a technology that simplifies things for people." —Aaron Block Welcome to Nexus, a ne

This edition of the Nexus Newsletter is brought to you by enVerid Systems and Montgomery Technologies. Hey friends, "Grid-interactive efficient buil

“We can accomplish both sustainability and IAQ, but we need to think holistically. And we need to think in terms of layered strategies and framewor

As Passive Logic's CEO Troy Harvey said recently, buildings are the most complex things humans make. Complexity is one of the reasons why the intelligence of buildings lags behind more simple objects.

“In the beginning of their journey to a smart building, many of our clients are wondering what they need to buy to check the box. We've flippe

Longtime listeners to the Nexus podcast know my favorite question: Why is the technology in buildings so far behind? I love asking it because I keep getting different, but insightful answers, which help us understand the obstacles we need to collectively overcome to make smarter buildings. However, after asking it dozens of times, there’s still one answer I believe in but haven’t yet heard: Our industry is behind because we don’t yet have enough API-first companies.

“My 80/20 rule is that it's 20% of technology—and there are a lot of technologies in a smart building. And it's 80% about people and human engineer

Each month, the Nexus Pro community comes together for our member gathering. Think: dozens of smart buildings nerds networking on Zoom! 🤓At our June 2022 member gathering, Andrew Knueppel of Cushman Wakefield presented his thoughts on procuring vital master systems integrator (MSI) services for a client. This presentation resonated with lots of our members (including me!), and today I want to share Andrew's insights more broadly. As a reminder, there are no certifications or standards or minimum qualifications to be an MSI. You simply submit a bid on MSI work and if you win, you call yourself the MSI. For buildings owners, this can be confusing!

“I don't know as much as a tax consultant by a long shot, but for most cases with TurboTax, 90% of the cases, I was good. The 10% of the cases, I'm

Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news. (Normally, these deep dives are exclusive to members of Nexus Pro. Enjoy!)For Volume 10, let's talk about Sparkfund's acquisition of EPX Group. This acquisition has not been previously publicly announced, meaning this is BREAKING NEWS brought to you by Nexus Labs! How exciting…Volume 10 post brings together our recent coverage of M&A activity in decarbonization software and continues our series on the growth and importance of platform business models in the digitization and decarbonization of the buildings industry.

> “Why isn't everybody that's using energy accurately collecting data on the source of their energy and also the use of their energy? And then saying,

A wide gap has grown between (1) what technology is capable of and (2) what the average building automation system (BAS) is capable of. Simultaneously, building owners are demanding better performance out of building systems—a level of performance that’s extremely rare, perhaps impossible, with the old technology. Consider a few use cases from recent conversations and projects:

> “Complacency is no longer a viable option. If you're looking around and you're seeing your third parties getting carte blanche access to your networ

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

We've been building up our Lore (a body of traditions and knowledge) on the subject of smart building technology for the last 2+ years. I know this because our (particularly) nerdy terms and acronyms—IDL, ASC, etc—are gaining steam and showing up in specifications, investor pitch decks, and conference agendas around the world.Part of my job as the founder of this amazing community is to help define and curate our Lore. So today, I'm sharing our white paper on the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, and in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.

> “I was building buildings. I was running a large portfolio. And the number one brick wall I kept running into was technology silos. There were 8 to

Hey friends, Last week, I asked my LinkedIn followers a difficult question: "What is a Building Operating System?" [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/

> “In 1973, the value proposition was to keep bad people out. If no one has been shot in your building, it's working. That still remains, but the indu

> “One perspective is I don't see wires anymore. Still, in the backend, there are lots of wires and there are lots of different wireless connectivity

“This framework is incredible for understanding the difference between technologies.” —Nexus Foundations student Hey friends, In Module 4 of the

> “The environment that we've been in for many years and that we are currently in and heading into is very relevant for what's going on in the space,

Today, we're wrapping up our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2!

> “As we draw down the operational carbon side of things, our embodied carbon piece of the pie is going to be closer to 50% of overall carbon emission

Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2!

Hey friends, Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you ti

> "I like the buildings industry because it's a physical manifestation of our values. A building that is truly net zero, set up to have composting, el

Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom. If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2! Let's jump into Part 8, the sexiest building block...

> “The reason why less than 10% of the commercial building market actually use building automation can be summarized by just one factor. I could show

Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom. If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2! Let's jump into Part 7, our nerdiest building block...

> "Why would you get something that tracks consumption but doesn't include fault detection and diagnostics? Something that doesn't also include predic

Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few words as possible. For past editions, check out Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, Vol. 7, and Vol. 8. For Volume 9, let's talk about Arcadia's acquisition of Urjanet.

Hey friends, Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcas

> “In the landscape of proptech there is such a lack of data and lack of access to our own data and our potential ability to make better investment an

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

Hey friends, Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcas

> “One of the things that COVID showed us is that so many people's buildings are not responsive to occupancy. So no matter how well you designed the b

Let's continue our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore.

> "Virtual engineering is an inevitability. It's not a, 'there may be a breakup of this vertically integrated stack, this monolithic stack that everyb

Let's continue our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom. If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore.

Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few bullet points as possible. For past editions, check out Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, and Vol. 7.For Volume 8, let's talk about Measurabl's acquisition of Hatch Data.

> “The current state of climate reporting is a bit like choose your own adventure, but also grade your own paper." —Tegan Keele Welcome to Nexus

Let's continue our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore.

> “When I ask my team to put together an energy efficiency project, it's their job to get off the energy island and go get integrated into the other c

The Oxford Dictionary defines 'Lore' as: "A body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth."We, the Nexus community, are a particular group. That might be the understatement of the year...

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss.These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

Since around 2015, I’ve been keeping an Evernote notebook of smart building vendors’ products. Whenever I see a new startup, an event that seems to occur on a weekly basis, I throw it on the list. When one company buys another, I update the notebook. When I see a product demonstration, I create a page in my notebook and add screenshots, capabilities, strengths, weaknesses.The list has been growing and growing—there are now 100+ vendors! And since we’re mostly focused with building optimization and performance at Nexus, this only includes a small portion of everything underneath the broad and ambiguous “smart buildings” umbrella.

> “I read a great quote last night, 'Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.'" —Louise Monger Welcome to N

I love online courses—and not just because I teach one. I'm also an avid student. With our world moving so fast, I see online courses as the best way to learn frameworks that help us make sense of all this change. Right now, I'm taking the Platform Strategy Sprint by Section4.

> “Joe Allen made this very clear business case around cognitive function that any real estate sales person with a pulse could pick up and say, 'Hey,

Last week, the Nexus Pro community came together for a subject matter expert workshop hosted by Pro member Mike Brown, Co-Founder and CEO of LogCheck, a company acquired last year by Building Engines which was then acquired by JLL. After watching it (and chatting with Mike while I was in NYC), I felt like the lessons buried in LogCheck's story should be shared more widely. They're applicable to the whole industry—even if you think maintenance is boring. Especially if you think maintenance is boring. Let's jump in.

> “The big caveat is that it's a fully vertically integrated stack, but it's composable and open." —Corey Clarke Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter

In last week's newsletter, I shared an article titled “Give it away, give it away, give it away now”. That same day, I serendipitously met the author, Rick Zullo of Equal Ventures, at a happy hour in NYC.Because I have a knack for saying awkward things at social gatherings, I told Rick the article wasn't funny (as he had hoped) but it was damn sure insightful. If you haven't read it, allow me to quickly summarize...

> “Just knowing about real estate in the real estate industry is now necessary but it's not sufficient, because fundamentally the industry is moving f

Hey friends, Greetings from NYC! I'll be doing some sightseeing while I'm here and one of the sights I was most looking forward to was... you guesse

> “Carbon neutrality is a big lift and technology is a cornerstone of that. The way we look at our assets now is from a supply and demand perspective.

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss.These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

Hey friends, Over the past few months, I've had a front row seat to an inspiring trend: there's an exodus of folks leaving big tech to focus on clima

In our Nexus Live series, we host industry-shifting conversations in front of a live audience. These sessions are education-driven, they cut through t

Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podcast for smart people applying smart building technology—hosted by James Dice [https://www.nexuslabs.online/jame

Hey friends, Our industry has been talking about digitizing maintenance for a few decades now. Whether we call it predictive, condition-based, data-

> “We realized that we needed to go out to tender nationally for our BMS and HVAC service contracts. We needed to transition these contracts from what

Hey friends, We have all these computers running our buildings—many panes of glass. The 'rolling chair integration'Not to mention all the software,

> “Our mission is to make the built environment people-aware. Our vision is to replace passive infrared. That, by definition, is a horizontal vision.

> This is possible. Yes, it is heroic. Yes, the timeline is now. A good climate outcome is, we do this in 15 to 20 years, a terrible climate outcome i

TL;DR: Read on to learn all about the course. We're currently closed for enrollment. To get notified when the next Cohort opens, sign up here: New

Hey changemakers, Since I sent out the news about JCI suing upstarts [https://www.nexuslabs.online/jci-sues-upstarts-nexus-newsletter-116/], I’ve re

> “By making controls simple and transparent every day and for every building, you massively increase energy efficiency without even talking about ana

Hey friends, Sometimes this newsletter is more letter and less news. Usually I'm feeding you my thoughts and reactions to today's trends. But today I

> “The fragmentation is a very real issue. I don't see it necessarily resolving anytime soon, just because of a lot of these other trends in the marke