Buildpeera construction management and collaboration platform secured $2.5 million in seed funding on Dec. 18, led by Brick & Mortar Ventures. The Monterey, Mexico startup that says so has more than 5,000 users in 900 workplaces in Latin America, plans to consolidate further growth in Mexico and expand to more countries. Conexo Ventures and Inception LLC also contributed to the funding round.
While Latin American startups like Construex, Licify and Tul focus on marketplaces and streamlining purchases and payments within a region’s construction supply chain, Buildpeer it has focused instead on communication.
Mauricio Valdes and Ernesto Gonzalez launched Buildpeer in 2022, after the former repeatedly faced challenges communicating with suppliers and subcontractors while working on large projects. Valdés was a civil engineer at several contractors in Mexico and at Build Group in San Francisco.
Buildpeer is a cloud-based platform that tracks schedules, changes and other project information with a focus on collaboration. Contractors can purchase licenses per project or for multiple users. It has a translation engine for English, Spanish and other languages. The SaaS platform includes video tutorials and other information to help workers of any level get trained or better understand concepts like sustainability credits.
As quasi-shoring gains momentum, Mexico’s position continues to attract foreign direct investment, surpassing $36 billion by 2023. This growth has increased the demand for effective cross-cultural communication, a need that Buildpeer addresses by streamlining the collaboration between project teams.
“When I returned to Mexico [in 2018] I saw potential as there was no software in the industry…and the big one [sofeware] US companies were beginning to enter the market. Procore began expanding into Mexico and [Latin America]” Valdés said, adding that despite the big projects for the hospitality and industry sectors, people were using WhatsApp for communication, and Dropbox and Google Drive to share documents. “I was seeing other companies, big contractors, who were beginning to use the general project. management tools like Monday, Asana and ClickUp, but there was no construction management software made for the Mexican market,” he said.
“We built a very strong customer service team. We understand that people in Latin America need help sometimes,” Valdes said. “It can be a really informal industry, construction in this market.”
Brick & Mortar Ventures said investing in a platform specifically for Mexico and Central and South America was a good opportunity. “We didn’t see any other players being able to scale,” said firm partner Kaustubh Pandya, “One of the fundamental reasons is that the level of service is difficult, and it’s difficult for big, established players do it, mainly because the cost base is not there.”
Buildpeer went through Brick & Mortar Ventures’ Formworks accelerator program in 2022.
Pandya said talent recruitment and the ability to rapidly grow revenue from 2018 also drove the investment.
