Inside the pitch deck that netted an oversubscribed $20 million Series A led by Insight Partners for construction tech company Versatile during the pandemic


Ranand Meirav Oren_Photo by Miri Ekshtein

  • Versatile, a construction tech startup, raised an oversubscribed $20 million Series A earlier this year, led by Silicon Valley VC giant Insight Partners.
  • The company uses a crane-mounted camera to analyze a job site as if it were the manufacturing floor of a factory. 
  • The goal is increased speed, lower costs, and safer working conditions.
  • CEO Meirav Oren walked Insider through the pitch deck that netted the company major funding during the pandemic.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

When the pandemic hit, Versatile, like many other startups, took a hiring freeze.

CEO and cofounder Meirav Oren told Insider that the hiring freeze was her “biggest regret” of this year, as the company, and construction tech as a whole, saw a major boost in business. Contractors that may have been hesitant to adopt digital tools before now had to rely on them to get work done. 

“The people we serve have accelerated their interest in tech because of the sheer notion that change is needed just to assist with the new challenges,” Oren said. 

The company uses a crane-mounted camera to surveil a whole worksite, capturing and analyzing data about how long each process takes. the numbers and locations of on-site materials, and overall progress on the job site. That data can then be used to streamline processes, prevent redundant work, and improve job site safety.

Oren said the idea is to treat construction like manufacturing and break each process down into its constituent parts to make it more efficient and safe.

“Construction is truly manufacturing, and job sites are factories but haven’t undergone the same change as other manufacturing industries,” Oren said.

The pandemic was a major boost for Versatile, as the company’s ability to track work progress remotely became more important than ever during lockdown. Oren said the company decided to raise a $12 million to $15 million round to meet demand, but ended up closing on a $20 million Series A because investor demand was so high. 

The $20 million round was led by Insight Partners, Silicon Valley giants who’ve invested in Workforce, Twitter, and Shopify, among others. It also included funding from Leigh Jasper and Robert Phillpot, the founders of Aconex, a construction tech company that was bought by Oracle in 2017 for $1.19 billion, Entree Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Root Ventures, and Conductive Ventures. 

The company had previously raised $8.5 million in funding since being founded in 2016. It is the second construction tech company Oren has founded, after a short run with a company called Valorisys. Oren started her career at Intel, and told Insider that she was the “black sheep” of her family, because of her family’s extensive construction background. 

Versatile was founded after a conversation Oren had with her brother, a contractor, following the death of a worker at one of his worksites from a fall off scaffolding. This is common in the industry, which accounted for about 20% of worker fatalities in private industry in 2019, according to OSHA. 

By extracting data from a worksite, and analyzing it as if it were a manufacturing floor, Oren said that eventually, processes can be completed much more quickly and much more safely. 

“When you have an extra minute, it changes the sequence of events,” Oren said. “That’s where technology plays a role.”

Oren walked us through the pitch deck the company used to raise its most recent round, which includes an addendum specifically about the company’s response to the coronavirus.

The deck begins with a clear statement of purpose: the company plans to change construction into manufacturing, with all of the added benefits of a manufacturing model.



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Construction has actually seen losses of productivity since the mid-’70s, making the industry ripe for tech transformation.



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The main thesis behind Versatile is that by gathering data about the worksite, the company can make small improvements that pay big dividends. This slide shows three results the company has seen from its clients.



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Oren said the company’s success comes from its ability to integrate into a contractor’s workflow. They chose the crane because it’s “a center of productivity,” Oren said. “Customers say you live and die by the hook.”



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This slide explains how Versatile’s service works. Oren said it takes longer to explain than to deploy.



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This slide has been updated to omit actual numbers but shows the company has seen a big uptick in customer acquisition in the pandemic.



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This slide highlights positive feedback from customers and the press, including a 2020 designation as a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum.



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This slide was edited to remove some future product plans, but notes that at many job sites, Versatile is replacing manual use of a stopwatch.



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This page highlights the leadership team at the company and the successes of some key advisors.



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The company’s plan with this round is to focus on the US, but it sees a huge potential market for the product around the world.



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This slide shows the camera in action, attached to a crane.



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As a result of the pandemic, the company began to make all of its deployments totally touchless and remote.



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This slide, and the video it linked to, highlighted how quickly Versatile’s crane-mounted camera can start working and providing feedback.



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