Enabling the Betterment of Our Built Environment

In a nutshell: In order to make their mission clear to investors and entrepreneurs—as well as refresh their look and transition to WordPress—Boston-based VC firm Building Ventures linked up with Temper and Forge.

Services provided: Development, server migration, analytics, SEO

There’s more than one way to measure the success of an investment. The basic goal, of course, is to drive a return. That being said, if you were to invest in a firm that improves the energy efficiency of commercial buildings, a reduction in carbon emissions would indicate a successful investment. Monetary returns aside, you could feel confident that your hard-earned money had been put to good use.

At Building Ventures—a venture capital firm headquartered in Boston, Ma.—the vision is simple: By investing in startups that change the way we design, build, operate, and experience the built environment, we can initiate a profound impact on communities across the world.

The brand new Building Ventures website, proudly crafted by Temper and Forge, recently went live. Let’s dive deeper into the Building Ventures mission and the reasons behind their decision to overhaul their online presence.

Take a look at the new Building Ventures homepage and you’ll notice that there’s quite a bit to appreciate: illustrations, animations, photos, and videos. Combining all these different elements on one single page—and doing so cohesively—requires working with a multitude of vendors. Even for the most skilled project managers, collaborating with those vendors and holding them accountable for their deliverables is a daunting task.

“One of the biggest selling points of Temper and Forge was that I trusted Nate’s ability to manage the project. I needed him to be the leader—to coordinate all the vendors and to hold me accountable when necessary. I manage our investments full-time, so it was important that I was able to relinquish control. Nate made that possible.”

Bolstered by their updated look, the Building Ventures team is excited to continue supporting entrepreneurs who change the physical world for the better. You can check out their brand new website here.

Helping tech firms improve the built environment

Each of the startups that partners with Building Ventures falls into one of four buckets: design, build, operate, or experience. Building Ventures, in other words, has committed to investing in companies that change the ways in which we create and interact with physical structures.

enVerid, for example, leverages proprietary technology to improve the energy efficiency and air quality of commercial buildings. Elsewhere, Join makes it easy for contractors, designers, owners, and suppliers to collaborate and make decisions during the preconstruction phase.

Several things need to happen before Building Ventures can empower companies like these with capital and connections; for our purposes, we need only focus on two of them. First, the firm’s limited partners—i.e., the folks who give them money to invest—need to understand the vision. Second, investment-seeking entrepreneurs need to determine whether they fit the Building Ventures profile.

As it turns out, there’s a way to accomplish both of those goals simultaneously: Redesign the website such that the Building Ventures brand story is communicated in a clear and concise manner. If it’s easy for investors and entrepreneurs who land on the site to understand what the firm does—and why—then it follows that symbiotic partnerships will emerge.

According to Heather Widman, a principal at Building Ventures with an extensive background in both tech and marketing, clarifying the firm’s vision and story was the primary objective driving the redesign. Plus, she and her colleagues wanted to replatform to WordPress, and they knew they needed a website that was more visual in nature.

With these objectives in mind, Building Ventures partnered with Temper and Forge.

Putting ideas into action

On paper, clarifying the vision that drives your company seems relatively straightforward. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that in the case of Building Ventures, we’re talking about a venture capital firm—a firm that’s tasked with both investing people’s money and helping companies grow. That, frankly, is an immense amount of responsibility. In order to earn the trust of stakeholders—investors and entrepreneurs—the Building Ventures team needs to provide quite a bit of information.

This leads us to a crucial question at the heart of this case study: How do you keep stakeholders informed while trying to be concise? How do you tell your story in a way that’s both succinct and authoritative?

“There’s a lot that both investors and entrepreneurs want to learn when they visit a VC website,” says Heather. “We needed to find a way to put information out there without making the experience overwhelming. Nate helped us communicate essential information in a way that’s clear and easy to navigate.”

As important as it is to make a website easily navigable, one should never assume that each and every visitor is going to poke around; the fact of the matter is that many stakeholders will simply skim through the homepage and continue on their way.

“You’re only going to have people’s attention for so long,” Heather pointed out. “Towards that end, I think our new homepage is a huge improvement. Nate really helped us think through how someone could get the gist of our story without clicking through to another page. The longer scroll format, for example, is definitely a plus.”

Take a look at the new Building Ventures homepage and you’ll notice that there’s quite a bit to appreciate: illustrations, animations, photos, and videos. Combining all these different elements on one single page—and doing so cohesively—requires working with a multitude of vendors. Even for the most skilled project managers, collaborating with those vendors and holding them accountable for their deliverables is a daunting task.

“One of the biggest selling points of Temper and Forge was that I trusted Nate’s ability to manage the project. I needed him to be the leader—to coordinate all the vendors and to hold me accountable when necessary. I manage our investments full-time, so it was important that I was able to relinquish control. Nate made that possible.”

Bolstered by their updated look, the Building Ventures team is excited to continue supporting entrepreneurs who change the physical world for the better. You can check out their brand new website here.