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Eduardo Gomez is looking for content partners.
As the head of CRH Ventures, the investment arm of content of the construction of construction materials based in Dublin CRH, Gomez is looking for founders to associate and work together to reach the market.
The VC has made seven investments, including the SUBLIME SYSTEME SUBLIME CENTER MANUFACTOR and the Carbon Cool Planet Technologies Carbon Company, with more than they will come. It also manages three different accelerator programs for startups, water, roads and sustainable construction materials.
Here, Gomez talks about the immersion of the construction on which, in particular, the firm seeks to startups, the results of previous accelerator cohorts and what he considers to be the large areas of construction technology to see in 2025.
Publisher Note: This interview has been published for brevity and clarity.
Construction Division: As a CRH corporate investment group, which companies do you invest?
Eduardo Gomez: We raised our first $ 250 million fund. We use this money to invest in water companies, decarbonization, circularity and productivity spaces.
We are looking to identify fantastic companies that we can collaborate with and our idea is not only to think of investing in companies, but in a wider way, how do we collaborate with these companies? We think that investment is one of the ways to do it.
For example, we love when we can provide financial support to the founders and management through an investment in capital, but also where we can bring this solution to the market.
Eduardo Gomez
Permission granted by CRH Ventures
Ultimately, all of this keeps our operations focused. Our portfolio is very well connected to our business and, therefore, with our customers. Everything we do keeps the customer in the core. So we are excited when we see that this comes to life.
How do accelerators fit in your investment strategy?
As part of our investment process, we look for ways to identify and collaborate companies. In addition to investing, we like to establish commercial relationships with the companies we collaborate with. The accelerator program is a good example of this.
We are now in our third cohort of accelerator programs. We started with our first program in the water space. Then we made one on the roads. We are now in the middle of our third cohort, around sustainable building materials. It is very connected to our different businesses in Europe and the Americas.
The idea is to facilitate the commitment between the founders and the startups with great strategic players in different spaces. And from there, many things can happen.
We identify opportunities to pilot and help companies accelerate their climb process and validate their solutions and offers with our teams and partners.
How did the above accelerator cohorts results?
All of them went well, so we keep doing them.
Every time we seek to improve, learn what we can do better and different.
But the main head of each program has been a great commitment from the startups. The application is quite simple, it is not heavy. For applicants, they are very excited to see that when we connect, we bring our full team – CRH – on the table.
Not only is it the part of the adventure, but we have people who are experts in their fields, who connect with them, giving them ideas, validating their solutions.
Pilots, as you can foresee, do better than others. We have invested in some companies in these programs. But in general, we are very pleased and very excited to see the advances we have made.
What are the great technologies you watch in 2025?
There is a great opportunity with new materials and that is why we launched this program. We believe that this space still has a great area for interruption, and there are still great opportunities for new players to enter space, whether they are circularity or decarbonization. The demand is there.
In other spaces, we think that everything around robotics will continue to develop -when you look at some of the great topics in our industry. Labor shortages are still a problem. Demand is growing and, therefore, we think that robotics can accelerate the way we think of our construction process.
Whether at the workplace or next to the hiring, we think that robotics will play an important role and we will see, possibly, some migration from other industries that have already adopted robotics, much more than we have.
Consider what we have seen in the automotive industry. I think some of this can be moved to our space.
