Y Combinator-backed company secures investment from Energize Ventures and Ironspring Ventures
Handle.com, the leading software platform for construction payment compliance, announced that it has closed $10M in Series A funding led by Energize Ventures and Ironspring Ventures. To build on escalating customer interest, Handle will leverage this funding to expand its support, engineering, and sales teams across the country.
“Handle is solving one of the most critical and complex workflows in construction: payments. It all starts with protecting your payment and lien rights. Handle simplifies this process for companies across all parties involved in construction projects.”
In the first eight months of 2021 alone, construction spending reached $1 trillion dollars, a seven percent increase from the same period in 2020. This growth, coupled with the pandemic, has put significant pressure on the construction industry, magnifying underlying cracks that have plagued businesses for decades.
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One of the biggest bottlenecks affecting the construction industry today is slow, complex payment processes. As one of the sectors expected to see a ripple effect as a result of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, construction currently faces dramatically rising Day Sales Outstanding (DSOs). From 2020 to 2021, DSO’s have increased by two weeks, from 24 to 38 days. Even with adjustments in payment terms, there is still a reported sharp increase in DSOs, specifically in construction (Artradius 2021). With Handle’s platform, companies can substantially reduce DSOs across organizations by speeding up payments and efficiency throughout credit departments.
The CEO of Handle, Patrick Hogan, who grew up in a lumber business family says, “Handle is solving one of the most critical and complex workflows in construction: payments. It all starts with protecting your payment and lien rights. Handle simplifies this process for companies across all parties involved in construction projects.”
Backed by Y Combinator, Handle already has some of the largest names in construction as customers, including publicly traded and Fortune 500 companies such as CRH/Oldcastle, U.S. Concrete, and many more. Handle’s founders include Patrick Hogan, Blake Robertson, Chris Woodard and Lucas Azevedo; who have all worked together at the previous company that Patrick and Blake founded, Tenfold, which recently sold to LivePerson.
Long payment cycles, compliance, trade credit, and deep layers between providers and payers create a complicated environment for suppliers and contractors – often leading to project delays. Customers use Handle to automate manual, repetitive tasks, saving them time and increasing efficiency across almost every role in their finance department.
“The construction industry is one of the essential building blocks for every society, but the current landscape is a massively complex, fragmented and maxed out industrial supply chain,” said Adam Bridgman, co-founder and managing partner at Ironspring Ventures. “That’s the precise reason Ironspring has chosen to partner with Handle. Patrick, Blake, and Chris collectively have decades of domain expertise and are continuously innovating and upgrading the most important supply chain component: construction. We support Handle’s mission to automate construction commerce and tackle root issues from the bottom of the payments chain and up.”
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Handle increased its revenue nearly 500% in the last 12 months alone, and is bringing on new investors to support this rapid growth.
“At Energize, we believe if you’re bullish on renewables, you’re bullish on construction,” said Juan Muldoon, partner at Energize Ventures and the newest member on Handle’s board of directors. “We’ve been closely monitoring the construction software space because we know how important this sector will be in the buildout of renewable energy infrastructure – which will require a $4 trillion investment over the next several years. Handle’s software platform solves for one of the biggest challenges facing material suppliers today, and we’re excited to partner with them in transforming the industry with more digital, traceable and sustainable payment processes.”
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