5G, smart and IoT technologies have the potential to revolutionize our lives – from healthcare and transport to energy and social engagement
However, to realize smart and connected societies, a vast amount of equipment – antennas, EV charging stations and digital kiosks, to name a few – must be deployed.
Enter Asset Market, a digital platform that connects installers of EV chargers, telecoms and IoT devices with owners and operators of the land, building and structures where the devices will be placed. Thanks to Asset Market’s B2B platform, businesses can reduce costs and time associated with finding a suitable location by 80 percent – and that means accelerating the path to a smarter, connected and more sustainable society.
In April, Asset Market won a $150,000 investment from a cohort of angel investors through Vancouver Economic Commission’s Angels for Climate Solutions program. The program provides climate technology startups with the tools, training and confidence to develop and communicate business plans, with the goal of successfully pitching to investors and raising seed capital.
Angels for Climate Solutions 2023 Winner
Founder & CEO: Jeff Davis
Below, we chat with Jeff Davis, CEO of Asset Market, who has over 20 years of experience in energy resources, financial services and telecoms. Jeff holds a GMP certification from Harvard Business School and a mechanical engineering degree with honours from the University of British Columbia. Throughout his career, he’s held GM, COO and CFO roles in multiple engineering services and SaaS companies.
How was your experience with the Angels for Climate Solutions Program?
It was a very positive experience. The program was well organized, and provided useful content, good mentorship, and helpful engagement between the startup founders and angel investors.
What did you learn through the program that you didn’t already know?
Angels for Climate Solutions helped us improve how we tell our stories to investors. The program leads and investors asked a number of thoughtful questions about our vision, business model and plans to execute, which allowed us to simplify how we describe Asset Market, address common questions, and think through additional risks and challenges. Also, the program helped us get our data room ready. We now feel better prepared to reach out to investors and complete our round.
We also learned a good deal from the other companies in the competition. It was interesting to compare business models and investment cases, and we learned from their ambitions and how they told their stories.
Finally, we learned from our investor due diligence team. These individuals had a helpful range of business experience and provided useful insights.
What’s next for Asset Market, now that you’ve secured the Angels for Climate Solutions prize investment?
We’re full steam ahead on our commitment to reduce carbon emissions by accelerating the deployment of EV chargers – and hence accelerating EV adoption.
In practice, this means that we will work hard in sales to sign up charging firms and landowners seeking charging capacity. We’ll also support them in using our tool to plan and deploy chargers at scale where they are most needed.
In addition, we’ll continue to invest in our data and analytics. Our EV charging demand models currently cover Canada and parts of the US and UK. We plan to increase the geographic coverage and detail in our model to provide full coverage of each country this year. This will enable us to become a natural go-to tool for charging firms and landowners seeking to deploy chargers across multiple regions.
Backed by angel funding, how will your solution amplify efforts to combat climate change?
We use our analytics to identify where chargers are most needed and pick specific sites that are in-demand and convenient for EV drivers, so they will have high utilization – meaning fewer chargers are needed to provide the required charging capacity.
At the same time, customers use our platform to identify charging sites that are cheaper to build, reducing the amount of pavement digging or upgrading electrical capacity. Lower deployment costs mean more chargers for their money. Our aim is to reduce capital costs by 30 percent.
Finally, our platform supports an efficient digital process to agree leases and deployment details between charging firms and landowners. Currently, this is time-consuming and can take over 12 months – we seek to reduce the time and admin cost for site acquisition by 75 percent.
By providing access to chargers that are better used, less expensive to deploy, and can be deployed faster with less red tape, we hope to accelerate charger delivery by three years in the communities where we operate – translating to faster EV adoption and lower emissions. As we support large-scale charger deployment, our goal is to reduce carbon emissions by 13 million tonnes by 2030.
What’s next for Asset Market?
Beyond the short term, our ambition is to digitize tens of millions of roads, buildings and parking lots suitable for charging. We’ll run AI-based analytics to identify where chargers are needed and will automate matchmaking between charging firms and landowners to spur charging investment – all at a fraction of the cost and time we see today. Our technology provides similar capabilities for digital connectivity and IoT. Collectively, this will enable us to accelerate the delivery of critical network-based infrastructure globally by reducing the cost and time to deploy millions of devices, and to make our communities greener, more sustainable and better connected.
Learn more about Asset Market by visiting www.asset-market.com. For more information about the Angels for Climate Solutions program, visit the Vancouver Economic Commission website.
