$500M Acquisition Could Level Up Southeast’s Construction Tech Scene

Since Gretchen Lynn joined as Levelset’s employee #1 back in 2011, she’s been part of making sure those in the construction industry never “lose a night’s sleep over payment.” 

The New Orleans-based SaaS platform has scaled over the last decade to help contractors get paid for a job quickly and efficiently. “The mindset we have in everything that we build is how can it help our industry get paid, track their payments, know what risks they have on payments…and actually be able to receive payment or receive capital to help them that fund their projects,” added Lynn, who now serves as Levelset’s VP of Customer Experience. 

That focus on protecting contractors from sleepless nights led to recent acquisition news most startups dream about. 

California-based construction software giant Procore (NYSE: PCOR) announced plans to acquire Levelset for $500 million. 

“There’s a lot of alignment in our two visions,” added Lynn. “[Procore] has a mission to connect everybody in construction on one platform, and we have a mission to empower everyone in construction to always get what they earn.” 

Levelset has partnered with Procore since 2018 with an integration of the platform’s lien waiver tools. Lynn said Levelset will continue to operate “business as usual” throughout the rest of this year and all of 2022. 

The acquisition news is the culmination of a decade of growth for the New Orleans startup. The team has added offices in Cairo, Egypt and Austin, Texas, and most recently closed a $30 million Series C round at the end of 2019. 

 

State of ConstructionTech

Procore raised $635 million in its IPO earlier this summer, which was one of the bigger ConstructionTech headlines in an already busy year for the industry. 

28 startups in the Southeast ConstructionTech space raised well over a total of $352 million in venture capital funding over the course of the last two years, according to Hypepotamus’ analysis of Crunchbase data. Most of those focused on 3D building, construction finance, or SaaS products specifically for contractors and subcontractors. 

Major deals on the region this year included North Carolina’s Prescient $190 million round, North Carolina-based Higharc’s $21 million Series A, and Chattanooga’s Branch Technologies $11 million funding round.

Levelset’s acquisition is a major win for the overall New Orleans startup space, which Lynn sees as an opportunity to grow the entire city’s tech ecosystem.  

“This acquisition is the second-largest venture-backed construction software exit in history,” Lynn said. “The fact that bullet point is coming from a company founded in Louisiana doesn’t seem to statistically add up. But it did. This is an opportunity for a lot of jobs, it’s an opportunity for more people to have access to venture capital because [New Orleans] is on the map now in a really big way.”

 

Get news like this delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for the Hypepotamus newsletter! 

Photo by Ricky Singh on Unsplash