Information Technology
Brick and Mortar Invests in Latin America CM Software Platform Buildpeer
Buildpeer's construction collaboration platform includes project photos, plans, other documents and a daily log of the progress made and work accomplished.
Screenshot courtesy of Buildpeer
Buildpeer, a construction management and collaboration platform secured $2.5 million in seed funding Dec. 18, led by Brick & Mortar Ventures. The Monterey, Mexico-based startup, which says it has over 5,000 users across 900 job sites in Latin America, plans to consolidate further growth in Mexico and to expand to more countries. Conexo Ventures and Inception LLC also contributed to the funding round.
While startups in Latin America such as Construex, Licify and Tul focus on marketplaces and streamlining procurement and payments within a region's construction supply chain, Buildpeer has instead focused on communication.
Mauricio Valdes and Ernesto Gonzalez launched Buildpeer in 2022, after the former repeatedly faced challenges communicating with providers and subcontractors while working on large projects. Valdes was previously 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 all with a focus on collaboration. Contractors can buy licenses per project or for a number of 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 skill level get trained or better understand concepts such as sustainability credits.
As near-shoring gains momentum, Mexico's position continues to attract foreign direct investment, surpassing $36 billion in 2023. This growth has heightened demand for effective cross-cultural communication, a need that Buildpeer addresses by streamlining collaboration across project teams.
"When I came back to Mexico [in 2018] I saw potential since there was no software in the industry ... and the big [sofeware] companies from the U.S., were starting to enter the market. Procore started to expand in Mexico and [Latin America]," Valdes said, adding that despite large projects for hospitality and and industry sectors being built, people were using WhatsApp for communication, and Dropbox and Google Drive for sharing documents. "I was seeing other companies, big contractors, starting to use general project management tools like Monday, Asana and ClickUp, but there was not a construction management software made for the Mexican market," he said.
"We created a really 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."
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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 able to get to scale," said firm partner Kaustubh Pandya, "One of the fundamental reasons is the level of service is hard, and it's hard for any large, established players to do that, primarily because the cost base is not there."
Buildpeer went through Brick & Mortar Ventures’ accelerator program Formworks in 2022.
Pandya said recruiting talent and the ability to quickly grow revenue since 2018 also drove the investment.
