Bridgit Bags its Own VC Bundle

by JOHN GREGERSON | April 28, 2016

There's seemingly no stopping Bridgit.

After closing out 2015 with a big win at Google's Entrepreneurs Demo Day - Women's Edition, the four-year-old Kitchener, Ontario-based construction technology provider has garnered $1.7 million in seed investment from Hyde Park Ventures, with participation from Vanedge Capital.

Best known for Closeout, its mobile app-based deficiency management tool, Bridgit plans to use the new funds to hire more engineers and sales personnel to target and service more U.S.-based customers. “The construction industry has been slow to adopt new technology, but as we talk to residential and commercial builders, it’s clear they are hungry for technology that lowers cost, simplifies processes, and make it easier to get their jobs done,” said Bridgit CEO and co-founder Mallorie Brodie. “We’re excited to partner with Hyde Park and Vanedge, so we can put Bridgit’s solutions into the hands of more people who need them”

The timing couldn't be better, now that more and more rank-and-file trades are equipped with tablets and Smartphones, providing them access to multiple mobile apps that promote swifter, less hectic responses to deficiencies identified during the punch list phase.

Closeout allows commercial and residential builders to employ mobile app to assign and track different tasks. If work is not completed correctly, the contractor can snap a photo and transmit it with relevant notes directly to subcontractors, thereby ensuring correction are made without delaying other work.

To date, more than 100 contractors have employed the app, with Bridgit consistently achieving double-digit, month-over-month revenue growth.

The results have captured the attention of Fortune, which recently profiled Bridgit and its recent cash infusion. Before launching Closeout, Brodie and co-founder Lauren Lake, now both 24, “would interview workers — builders, managers, contractors [on site] about what frustrations they encountered when trying to get a job done,” Fortune reported.

“They weren’t surprised that we were women,” Brodie told the magazine. “They were surprised that anyone at all was coming to help them with their everyday life. They were very open to it — and open to referring us.”

As they traveled from site to site near Kitchener, 100 km west of Toronto, the pair discovered that, according to Forbes, “contractors were keeping track of to-do lists on sticky notes, and nailing scribbled plans to walls. The more organized (members) of the bunch kept spreadsheets of different tasks, then emailed or phoned in requests to the appropriate subcontractors. There was plenty of room for improvement."

And Bridgit has been working diligently ever since to seize that opportunity.