Behind the Acquisition: How Construction Tech Startup Ladder Scaled to Success

Read Time: 3 minutes

Tech Topics In This Article: construction tech, Atlanta startups, startup acquisition

Atlanta-based Founder and CEO Alex Stewart built his first tech startup Ladder during the height of COVID,  bringing the startup through Y Combinator’s first remote cohort as a platform for electricians and electrical engineers to create a profile, validate their skills, and apply to opportunities on new construction sites within minutes.

Along the way, he built up the platform of users that included over 100,000 professionals and 200 companies. Now after five years of scaling Ladder, Stewart has reached another impressive milestone for a first-time founder: A successful acquisition.

In December, BuildForce announced it acquired Ladder, allowing the Texas-based company to expand its reach into the Southeast as it looks to “modernize construction staffing processes.”

Building Up Ladder In The Construction Tech Space

Stewart graduated from Georgia Tech in 2012 with a mechanical engineering degree and started his career in the construction space with Holder Construction Company. He told Hypepotamus he was drawn to the construction industry because of the “sense of fulfillment” that comes from bringing a project to life.

“Construction is really ripe for innovation and technology, there are tons of opportunities that I saw when I was on the ground there. It’s still very much an industry that’s supported by paperwork and spreadsheets,” he added.

Early on, Stewart worked on big data center projects as they were breaking ground. When he was out on construction sites, he quickly learned that the construction industry almost universally faces a hiring problem. That is particularly true when companies are trying to hire skilled trades people and craftsmen, like electricians.

“When I was managing construction projects, we were always telling our trade contractors that they needed to increase the labor force out in the field so we could keep up with the schedule. And the response was also that we’ve hired everybody that we could find.”

He jumped into the startup world with BuildZoom, a San Francisco and Y  Combinator-backed construction tech company. It was at the startup that he met the person that would come and to be his co-founder at Ladder.

Following the acquisition, Stewart has joined the BuildForce team as a Senior Account Executive. The two platforms will remain independent while the teams figure out how to merge the two platforms together over the next year, Stewart told Hypepotamus.

Stewart first connected with BuildForce’s CEO several years ago and was struck by how the company thinks about the future of the construction space.

“[BuildForce] is extremely special and different and way more efficient than any traditional staffing agencies, to the point where I would say it’s really not one. It’s a true labor marketplace,” he added.

Get stories like this delivered to your inbox by signing up for the Hypepotamus newsletter! We send you curated startup stories and events twice a week. Sign up here