Commercial construction bidding platform looks to invest in its product suite to better serve its customers and towards future management team expansion.
West Palm Beach, Florida (October 20, 2020) – PlanHub, a project bid marketplace for the commercial construction industry, today announced receiving an investment of $41 million from Mainsail Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in fast-growing, bootstrapped software companies. PlanHub provides a cloud-based SaaS platform to connect general contractors, subcontractors and suppliers during the pre-construction phase of a project. With this growth capital, the company intends to expand its management team, invest in product and customer success, and bolster its sales and marketing efforts.
“Our explosive growth and the numerous sets of opportunities in front of us has created a welcome challenge for our company,” said Kevin Priddy, Founder and CEO of PlanHub. “We felt now was the right time for us to bring on an experienced partner to help us capitalize on those opportunities and scale our organization to support the growth we continue to experience.”
Priddy began his career in construction over 15 years ago as a concrete general and subcontractor. In 2010, Priddy teamed up with construction-industry veteran, Kyle Conlan, to develop a solution to streamline the tedious nature of the pre-construction bidding process. “As we’ve gotten to know Mainsail over the past year, we are confident that we selected the right partner to benefit our employees, customers and partners in this next phase of growth,” added Conlan.
Today, PlanHub is a project and bid management app, free to general contractors. Through the app, general contractors gain access to a network of subcontractors, resulting in higher bid coverage, fill rates and more competitive bid prices. Subcontractors obtain access to additional project opportunities. Suppliers have visibility into potential sales opportunities, including material needs and decision-makers for local projects. In addition to this data and network, PlanHub’s software provides connectivity and workflow efficiencies to all user groups. Today, the company collectively has approximately 300,000 subcontractors, general contractors, and suppliers in its network with thousands of new construction projects added to its platform each month.
“Mainsail Partners has a track record of teaming up with entrepreneurs who launch software products for the industry in which they have meaningful work experience,” said Vinay Kashyap, Partner at Mainsail. “PlanHub’s founders, Kevin and Kyle, have a deep and specific understanding of the pain points of the commercial construction industry, so the solutions they present are designed to resonate with their customers in a meaningful way.”
Kashyap continued, “We believe PlanHub is positioned to disrupt and transform the commercial construction bidding process, through a high velocity, low friction business model and purposefully designed products.” According to the 2019 U.S. Census Bureau, the commercial construction industry represented approximately $800 billion of spend in the U.S. However, according to McKinsey’s Industry Digitization Index, the industry ranked second from last in digitization across all major sectors. “We see this as a massive opportunity market, primed for a SaaS solution,” said Kashyap.
PlanHub and Mainsail have already begun to build out the executive team, adding Cameron Darby as the company’s Chief Growth Officer. Darby was previously the COO for DealerSocket, a SaaS company serving the automotive industry, and currently serves on the board of Aspire Software, another Mainsail Partners portfolio company.
Kashyap will join the Board of Directors at PlanHub, along with Jason Frankel, Mainsail Vice President.
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About PlanHub
PlanHub is a cloud-based construction plan room and bidding software. Built with tradespeople in mind, PlanHub is designed around the user workflow to help boost productivity, maintain deadlines, increase revenue and build relationships for general contractors, suppliers and subcontractors. Through the app, users can easily post projects or submit bids with anytime, anywhere collaboration for every commercial construction trade. For more information, visit planhub.com.
About Mainsail Partners
Mainsail Partners is a San Francisco-based growth equity firm that invests exclusively in fast-growing, bootstrapped software companies. The firm has raised over $1.2 billion and invested in more than 50 growing companies since 2003. Mainsail prioritizes investments in enterprise software companies with compelling business models in growing markets. The firm’s approach to driving value creation is anchored in a dedicated Operations Team that is purpose-built to help founders scale their businesses and accelerate growth. These women and men include former software company operators who leverage real-world experience, well-established best practices, and a true partnership ethos to support management teams. For more, visit mainsailpartners.com