Alice, thank you for the great insight. I believe the ultimate goal for any tool is to be a contractual requirement. It took me awhile to realize that; we have been always focused on making our tool work for the contractors (we should always continue doing that), but we noticed that some contractors resist using the tools despite of the clear ROI and it wasn't always clear why at the time; however, we found later that we were either approaching the wrong person or coming at the wrong time when it's too late for the project. We have been making a "good" progress with contractors but this doesn't compare at all when you become a contractual requirement; the growth is at least 10x faster (yet to realize exactly the figure with everything going on).
As for the owner, I remember exactly when the first contractor reached out to us for a mega projects they're bidding on; it didn't make sense to me at the beginning but then we got over 5 more contractors (some of which we tried working with before with no luck) asking for a quotes of the same project. Then, we realize that we have became a mandate by one of the largest owners in the region. This is when it hit me, and we realized that we have enough traction that lead us to where we should be aiming organically; a contractual requirements for all the upcoming projects. Since then, we updated our GTM strategy to target the owners and despite it's a longer sales cycle (some contractors take even longer than owners), it has been much more effective to scale. It has been less than a year since we did that and we are already seeing good results. My advice to every founder is to never neglect the main stakeholder who could make your life much easier; however, the end user should always be your most important stakeholder to serve.
One other thing that worked for us as well is overcoming the compliance to adopt to technology by tapping into an already mandated PPEs. This made it much easier to convince the owner (and many contractors) to mandate our solution under HSE requirements since it has a clear safety element as well as improving efficiency & most importantly higher transparency of site operations for an advanced progress monitoring.
Thanks again for the great piece Alice, and I'm always happy to chat and exchange ideas.
Great article! I totally agree with the trojan horse. I also feel like there might be a barbell strategy for tech investment similar to other markets. With greater investment in copy-paste technology with some minor tweaks, low risk but not sexy, and tech that promises industry-wide change, sexy but high risk, with minimal investment in the middle. The middle, in my mind, has become a limiting factor on both ends of construction tech investment. The middle gives context to both ends and makes recognizing good ideas for what they are easier. As it is, if you are building a truly innovative idea that no one has seen before, better dress it up as something they have (trojan horse). The sad part is that it takes extra effort and time to do that; for me, it is also sucking the oxygen out of the more innovative ideas.
Love the trojan horse example. We did exactly that with health and safety. In Australia, regulations have tightened over the last 10 years and industry awareness in SMEs is only just catching up. We've been riding the wave of increasing awareness of a builders obligations, with our simple health and safety tool being our trojan horse. Our customers our now benefitting from QA, project management and health and safety in one streamlined platform!
Alice, thank you for the great insight. I believe the ultimate goal for any tool is to be a contractual requirement. It took me awhile to realize that; we have been always focused on making our tool work for the contractors (we should always continue doing that), but we noticed that some contractors resist using the tools despite of the clear ROI and it wasn't always clear why at the time; however, we found later that we were either approaching the wrong person or coming at the wrong time when it's too late for the project. We have been making a "good" progress with contractors but this doesn't compare at all when you become a contractual requirement; the growth is at least 10x faster (yet to realize exactly the figure with everything going on).
As for the owner, I remember exactly when the first contractor reached out to us for a mega projects they're bidding on; it didn't make sense to me at the beginning but then we got over 5 more contractors (some of which we tried working with before with no luck) asking for a quotes of the same project. Then, we realize that we have became a mandate by one of the largest owners in the region. This is when it hit me, and we realized that we have enough traction that lead us to where we should be aiming organically; a contractual requirements for all the upcoming projects. Since then, we updated our GTM strategy to target the owners and despite it's a longer sales cycle (some contractors take even longer than owners), it has been much more effective to scale. It has been less than a year since we did that and we are already seeing good results. My advice to every founder is to never neglect the main stakeholder who could make your life much easier; however, the end user should always be your most important stakeholder to serve.
One other thing that worked for us as well is overcoming the compliance to adopt to technology by tapping into an already mandated PPEs. This made it much easier to convince the owner (and many contractors) to mandate our solution under HSE requirements since it has a clear safety element as well as improving efficiency & most importantly higher transparency of site operations for an advanced progress monitoring.
Thanks again for the great piece Alice, and I'm always happy to chat and exchange ideas.
Great article! I totally agree with the trojan horse. I also feel like there might be a barbell strategy for tech investment similar to other markets. With greater investment in copy-paste technology with some minor tweaks, low risk but not sexy, and tech that promises industry-wide change, sexy but high risk, with minimal investment in the middle. The middle, in my mind, has become a limiting factor on both ends of construction tech investment. The middle gives context to both ends and makes recognizing good ideas for what they are easier. As it is, if you are building a truly innovative idea that no one has seen before, better dress it up as something they have (trojan horse). The sad part is that it takes extra effort and time to do that; for me, it is also sucking the oxygen out of the more innovative ideas.
Love the trojan horse example. We did exactly that with health and safety. In Australia, regulations have tightened over the last 10 years and industry awareness in SMEs is only just catching up. We've been riding the wave of increasing awareness of a builders obligations, with our simple health and safety tool being our trojan horse. Our customers our now benefitting from QA, project management and health and safety in one streamlined platform!
We intend to own the flow of materials from delivery to assembly, so my trojan horse is a crane lift plan.