This article, originally published on PitchBook and authored by Priyamvada Mathur, covers Fieldwire’s recent funding milestone and Menlo Ventures’ rationale behind the investment.
On Monday, construction tech startup Fieldwire announced that it had raised $33.5 million in a Series C round led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Brick & Mortar Ventures, Hilti Group, and Formation 8. Part of the funding came from Menlo’s $500 million investment fund, launched in February to back early-stage startups poised to become large-scale enterprises.
In 2017, the San Francisco–based Fieldwire was valued at $50 million. The company has built an app designed to streamline communication among team members—ranging from managers to subcontractors and laborers—in the construction industry. PitchBook spoke with Fieldwire’s co-founder and CEO Yves Frinault, as well as Menlo Ventures partner Tyler Sosin, to understand how focusing on frontline workers addresses a missing piece in construction tech.
Yves Frinault and Javed Singha (now COO) previously worked for French gaming giant Ubisoft. The duo co-founded Fieldwire in 2013.
“At the time, mobile technology and cloud computing were no longer limiting factors,” Frinault noted. “Companies were building construction software for the office, but no one was focusing on the people actually working in the field.”
Recognizing the gap between on-site workers and office staff, the founders created a platform that allows users to manage various aspects of construction projects—viewing plans, tracking progress, recording cost discrepancies, messaging, and sharing documents—all in one interface. It functions much like Trello for task management and Dropbox for file sharing.
Tyler Sosin, a Menlo Ventures partner who will join Fieldwire’s board of directors as part of the round, remarked, “Today’s new generation of construction workers has higher expectations about how companies use technology to efficiently plan tasks and track progress.”
Fieldwire’s bottom-up approach, powered by its cloud-based workflow automation software, aims to improve profit margins in an industry often plagued by inefficiency.
During the last economic downturn, the construction industry lost approximately 1.5 million workers, according to the Federal Reserve Bank. And as of 2018, 80% of U.S. construction firms still reported difficulties hiring manual laborers, according to data from Associated General Contractors of America.
Frinault said roughly 30% of a construction worker’s time is spent on manual labor, while the remaining 70% goes into coordinating tasks. Given that labor shortages drive up costs in many developed economies, technology that helps save time, effort, and management overhead has become increasingly critical.
Based on customer surveys of 10,000 users, Fieldwire reportedly saves an average of one hour per person per day.
Sosin noted that Fieldwire is focused on markets in Europe, the U.S., and Australia. The company is also conducting pilot programs in emerging markets such as India and South America, where labor costs are lower. While construction accounts for nearly 10% of global GDP, tech adoption in the sector remains in its early stages, presenting scale-up opportunities for companies with robust hardware and software infrastructure.
Frinault added, “The first phase in the industry was all about digitizing plans and documents. The current wave focuses on coordinating all parties involved in a construction project.” He believes the next phase will center on tightening the feedback loop between office teams and field workers.
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