Why Brick & Mortar Ventures is opening a European office

Why ConTech in Europe needs local investors.

This article is written by Guillaume Bazouin, a Partner at Brick & Mortar Ventures where he focuses on EMEA investments in revolutionary architecture and engineering startups. Prior to joining Brick & Mortar, he led Startup and Intrapreneurship Programs at VINCI, forging essential relationships between the corporate giant and innovative startups to advance the field of construction and infrastructure. Before VINCI, Guillaume made key contributions to sustainable building solutions as Director of Product and Innovation at BONE Structure.

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Back in 2018, construction tech (now hiply coined “ConTech”) in Europe looked very different.

I had just returned to France after a decade in the US, where I helped drive product innovation at a startup building a novel steel construction system.

It was time for a new challenge and I was to lead the Open Innovation and Startups program of Leonard, the newly minted innovation hub for the VINCI Group, which is the largest construction company in France.

But what I found surprised me.

The startup ecosystem across Europe was still embryonic. The now well established startup ecosystems in countries such as Germany, France and the UK were only just starting to set up.

This made setting up the program a challenge. The ecosystem needed nurturing, and local expertise in ConTech was still rare. There were no widely deployed funds focused on ConTech. Just a few corporates and accelerators who recognised this was the future and we had to be prepared.

So when we started our SEED and CATALYST accelerator programs aimed at investing in early stage startups and deploying new solutions across VINCI, we looked abroad working closely with US based funds like Brick & Mortar, Building Ventures and Blackhorn to bring their knowledge and expertise to catalyze our local ecosystem.

Now, 7 years later, the ConTech and startup landscape is very different.

The first generation of ConTech founders have successfully exited and the idea of a startup or becoming a founder has been normalized within the business landscape.

Additionally we now have the full scope of construction venture capital based in Europe including:

• Pre-Seed funding
  Coming from exited founders, construction focused angel investors and accelerators such as Leonard or Urban Odyssey, corporates like Bouygues Construction Ventures and public funding (BPI France).

• Seed and Series A funding
  From ConTech, PropTech and Climate Tech funds with an increase in interest from generalists.

• Series B funding
  This is lacking at scale (similar to the US) but will likely be filled with generalist investors who are increasingly interested in construction.

What I have observed is that the European construction ecosystem is at an inflection point. Our nuances and unique opportunities mean that investing here requires local expertise and this realization led me to join Brick & Mortar Ventures as a Partner.

In this article, I’ll share why Europe now needs ConTech investors who are embedded in the region, and how the key differences from the US market create both a necessity and a competitive edge for geographically specialized investment firms.

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Contents

• ConTech in Europe vs the US

  • Fragmentation

  • Regulatory Environment

• Market Orientation & Regulatory-Driven GTM

  • Top-line Focus in Europe

  • Regulation as a Wedge: Turning Compliance into Adoption

• Unique European Opportunities

  • Green Materials

  • Electrification of Job Sites

• Why we are in Europe

Reading Time: 9 mins

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ConTech in Europe vs the US

When compared to the US market there are three key differences:

1. Fragmentation
   Europe is not one country, it’s a combination of markets.

2. Regulation
   European regulation tends to be more top-down and harmonized at the national or EU level.

3. Growth Orientation
   European construction firms often prioritize top-line growth over margin expansion.

Let’s break this down.

Fragmentation

The European market is diverse and segmented due to cultural, language and regulatory differences.

For example, the German market differs significantly from the French one. A startup expanding across borders in Europe must invest heavily in localization, far more than a US startup moving from Florida to California.

Rather than a single market, Europe consists of subregions like the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), the Nordics, or the UK. This fragmentation raises a key question for investors:

Is the home (or primary) market large enough to support a unicorn ($1B+ valuation)?

The answer depends on the country and the application. Larger countries such as Germany and France can theoretically support the emergence of unicorn sized startups. However, many startups need to expand across multiple regions or become transatlantic to reach venture-scale potential ($1b+ valuation). This makes the founding team’s composition such as language fluency, cultural familiarity, and go-to-market experience, a key risk factor.

This fragmentation doesn’t just impact where startups expand, it affects how they build and scale their products. The nature of the product often determines how much adaptation is needed to succeed across regions.

Broadly speaking, products fall along a spectrum:

• Universal products
  These address problems that are consistent across regions, like communication, task management, or site documentation. For these, localization needs are often limited to translation or minor UI adjustments as the underlying user behavior doesn’t vary much from country to country, enabling broader and faster scaling.

• Regulation or context-specific products
  These tackle problems shaped by local standards, compliance requirements, or workflows such as permitting, payroll, or bidding processes. Startups in this category often need to tailor product features, pricing, and sales approaches to each target market. This makes simultaneous multi-country expansion possible, but resource-intensive, as success depends on achieving localized product-market fit in each region (as the product may be different in each region).

In Europe, fragmentation forces startups to either solve universal problems with low localization needs or embrace complexity with region-specific go-to-market strategies. Most fall somewhere in between, adapting as needed, based on the nature of the problem they’re solving.

Regulatory Environment

The EU’s regulatory environment is more stable and directive compared to the US where policy can swing significantly with each election cycle or vary dramatically from city to city.

In Europe, long-term trends such as sustainability have been less affected by political turnover.

Take the Ukraine War, for example. Despite a significant rise in military spending and the rearmament of many countries, investment in decarbonization has not slowed. In Germany, defense spending rose to €90.6 billion, a 55.4% increase over two years. Concurrently, they enshrined their goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2045 and are supporting this by establishing a €500 billion infrastructure and defense fund, allocating €100 billion specifically for climate action and energy transition projects.

This policy continuity in Europe means that funding for renovation, renewable energy, and green infrastructure is less vulnerable to short-term political shifts. As a result, European investors face lower geopolitical and policy risk when backing solutions aligned with long-term regulatory goals.

In Europe, a new executive order or the climate actions of a major tech company are less likely to abruptly redirect funding or reshape national priorities.

Market Orientation & Regulatory-Driven GTM

Top-line Focus in Europe

In Europe, construction leaders have tended to prioritize top-line growth such as expanding market share, regional dominance, and new revenue opportunities.

This is in contrast to the US where there is often a stronger focus on bottom line optimization, margin improvement and operational efficiency.

As a result, the first wave of ConTech startups such as Procore and Plangrid, often focused on project management tools and margin-based value propositions, struggled to gain traction in Europe. But this created an opening for a new generation of startups better attuned to the region’s strategic priorities.

Regulation as a Wedge: Turning Compliance into Adoption

One increasingly common go-to-market strategy in Europe is to use regulation as a wedge. With new rules around carbon reporting, circularity, and waste management adding operational burden on job sites, startups are building products that ease compliance pain while setting the stage for long-term platform growth.

A typical approach looks like this:

1. Start with a wedge

   Launch a simple, focused solution to help contractors comply with new regulatory requirements.

2. Integrate into workflows

   Use the compliance entry point to capture broader operational processes like documentation, reporting, or coordination and become embedded in day-to-day tasks.

3. Expand the footprint

   Once trusted and embedded, expand the product into adjacent workflows such as procurement, logistics, or quality, turning a single-use tool into a broader platform.

For early stage startups, this approach is becoming increasingly common as they:

• Map the value chain and identify the market entry point.

• Launch with an offensive product that alleviates regulatory friction.

• Layer on defensive features to increase stickiness and expand within the organization.

While initial value creation may be modest, this approach builds trust, proves utility, and earns the right to grow, turning small wins into long-term relationships with potential for scope expansion.

Unique European Opportunities

As mentioned, the European market has generally lagged the US ConTech market due to development of the startup ecosystem. However there are areas we are leading globally driven by regulatory and government focus. Two examples are:

• Green Materials

• Electrification of Job Sites

Green Materials

Some of the largest construction materials companies outside of China such as Knauf, Saint Gobain, Holcim, CRH or Heidelberg Materials are based in Europe.

As companies operating in Europe, they must comply with EU-wide sustainability targets and emissions reporting requirements, alongside additional national regulations. For example, in France, we have RE2020 which is the latest set of environment and energy regulations governing new buildings in France.

It came into effect on January 1, 2022 setting a limit on the embodied emissions of building materials. It sets an emission threshold per m² with the staged decreases over time.

This poses a major challenge for incumbents. They’re under pressure to innovate and update or develop new low-carbon product lines.

For the last few decades, R&D investments in this field have been more focused on improving the performance of existing materials than on inventing sustainable alternatives from the ground up. That’s why some of the earliest corporate venture capital (CVC) arms and accelerators in construction emerged from this sector, including:

• Nova by Saint Gobain (est. 2006)

• Cemex Ventures (est. 2017)

For these companies, innovation is no longer optional, it is becoming an existential imperative. They’ve had to build new capabilities to scout startups, pilot emerging technologies, and scale successful solutions internally.

Given the high cost and risk of in-house R&D, many have found additional benefits in supporting the startup ecosystem and pursuing strategic acquisitions. While still early, we expect M&A activity to accelerate.

A possibility is that the relationship between startups and materials giants will echo that of Big Pharma, where large incumbents routinely acquire promising early-stage biotech firms to stay ahead of market and regulatory demands.

Electrification of Job Sites

Norway is leading the world in developing fully electric construction sites driven by regulation mandating decarbonization.

These regulations leave no room for diesel-powered equipment, from excavators to generators powering the site shed. The result is a forced transition toward all-electric or zero emission fuel operations.

While Norway is a relatively small country, its high GDP allows it to absorb higher construction costs and support early-stage technology development. In effect, it has become a regulatory testbed, accelerating innovation across the ecosystem.

Large incumbents from telecommunications to utilities to local startups are developing new technology to deliver solutions for the industry.

As a result, products are being built, tested, and deployed in months rather than years, giving Norway a technological edge in jobsite electrification. And as similar regulations take hold globally to meet climate targets, these solutions and the learnings behind them will increasingly be exported.

For us as investors, this is about identifying early edges and underwriting the timing of regulatory tailwinds to back the right startups at the right moment.

Why we are in Europe

Construction is an industry that requires multiple specialists in every region. Localization isn’t just a nice-to-have, it demands deep geographical expertise and a global understanding of trends.

Europe is unique because of its market fragmentation. But within that complexity lies an opportunity to identify high-potential innovations and use proven frameworks to help them scale across borders.

To me, it’s never been more exciting to be in the sector. The talent pool in construction is expanding rapidly, and the volume of new startups being founded signals a clear inflection point.

The market and the investment climate are more receptive than ever before.

That’s why we opened a European office.

By embedding ourselves locally, we can better identify founders with an edge, support them through the complexity of cross-market growth, and bring global capital and experience to a region poised for breakout success.

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Guillaume is an accomplished professional straddling the realms of venture capital, construction, and scientific innovation. As a Partner at Brick & Mortar Ventures, he focuses on EMEA investments in revolutionary architecture and engineering startups.

Prior to joining Brick & Mortar, he led Startup and Intrapreneurship Programs at VINCI, forging essential relationships between the corporate giant and innovative startups to advance the field of construction and infrastructure. Before VINCI, Guillaume made key contributions to sustainable building solutions as Director of Product and Innovation at BONE Structure.

A noteworthy segment of his career was dedicated to fusion science at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, where he designed and operated experiments on linear particle accelerators. His work there entailed the collaboration with a team of esteemed physicists and engineers, making strides in nuclear fusion research. While at Stanford, he was a Project Coordinator for The Solutions Project, focusing on data-driven paths towards a renewable energy future.

An avid lover of the outdoors, Guillaume relishes in sailing, kayaking, and hiking during his leisure time. His work in sustainable technologies and renewable energy reflects his deep-rooted respect for the natural world.