Montreal-based Billdr, a startup building the AI-native operating system for construction, is relaunching its platform as an all-in-one operating system for small and mid-sized general contractors (SMB GCs).
In late January, the company announced it had secured $3.2 million USD in new seed funding towards its new business model, led by White Star Capital with participation from One Way Ventures, Desjardins Capital, asterX, and Formentera Capital.
The firm’s journey began as a home renovation marketplace, which connected homeowners to contractors in the U.S. and Canada. But, after supporting thousands of projects and over $100 million USD in construction spend, the Billdr team realized that the real bottleneck was not demand, but rather the lack of modern software for contractors to manage their businesses efficiently.
“The horizontal software tools SMB contractors use were never built for the construction industry – we saw this firsthand in our early years in the trenches with GCs,” said Bertrand Nembot, founder and CEO of Billdr.
The issue is pressing: 75% of SMB GCs run their back office with a combination of Excel and accounting software like Quickbooks or SAGE. Each workflow – including estimating, scheduling, invoicing, cost tracking, and client management – lives in a different spreadsheet; none of these files communicate with each other, creating operational chaos and wasted hours.
In 2023, the company switched to focus completely on building a vertical SaaS that could handle everything from estimates to sales, contract management and invoicing in one place. The result was Billdr PRO.
“For over two years, we focused on building software, one feature at a time. We gained trust from GCs, one customer at a time. Today, we serve hundreds of construction businesses across the US and Canada,” Bertrand added.
And, while since its launch 18 months ago, Billdr PRO has grown to serve hundreds of general contractors across the U.S. and Canada, reaching seven-figure annual recurring revenue, it plans to use the new funding to launch a suite of fintech products – including bill pay, corporate cards, lending and insurance.
Additionally, it will also launch a materials procurement module that embeds live materials pricing from multiple construction suppliers directly into the estimating workflow, expand its engineering and go-to-market teams, and develop and AI receptionist for GCs to capture leads.
“Construction is one of the largest and least digitized sectors in the economy,” said Sanjay Zimmermann, General Partner at White Star Capital.
“With a focused product, Billdr really stood out to us with a platform designed exclusively for the backbone of the industry: SMB GCs. They’re building a product that understands their workflows deeply and leverages AI to eliminate friction, not add complexity.”
Featured image: Courtesy of Billdr
Disclosure: This article mentions clients of an Espacio portfolio company.