Procore is building a strong reputation in the construction industry. The SaaS company produces the most popular software app in construction, a $1 trillion industry in the United States which makes up nearly a tenth of the economy. The app’s popularity continues to rise and it recently landed the number five spot on the Forbes Cloud 100 list.
The app can manage the budget of a project, track worker schedules, facilitate questions and answers between contractors and employers, and a number of other services. The service is subscription based, and often gets recommended in conversations between job site professionals.
One factor that may contribute to Procore’s success is that it has aggressively pursued high profile clients like Mortenson, a Minnesota based powerhouse that can afford to pay a seven figure sum to keep upwards of 2,000 of its employees on the app each year.
Procore was founded in 2002 by current CEO Tooey Courtemanche. The Southern California based company now employs 1200 people and counts many popular celebrities as customers, including Eddie Murphy, Barbara Streisand, and Ben Stiller.
Courtemanche has a unique background. Prior to founding Procore, he bounced around from job to job, including long stints in construction before eventually becoming a software engineer and later a tech executive. When he noticed that many construction sites he had worked on were lagging technologically, he saw an opportunity and took it.
Procore encountered some hardship in the early days because many construction businesses weren’t ready to deal with an influx of technology in the work site. However, Courtemanche’s faith that tech would eventually be a major factor in building was proven right.
Procore had been on the market for over a decade when sales began to dramatically increase in line with the financial recovery in 2014. The company was rewarded for the hard work that same year with a $15 million round of investment in 2014 led by Bessemer Partners, followed by a second, $30 million round of funding less than a year later which included Bessemer and Iconiq Capital. All told, the company has amassed a war chest of approximately $180 million since it began receiving funding four years ago. By 2016, the company was valued at $1 billion.
