See the pitch deck that lured investing powerhouse Tiger Global to lead a $30 million round for a startup trying to revolutionize construction spending


Briq CEO Bassem Hamdy

  • Briq makes construction finance automation software that aims to reduce spending on a job site.
  • The startup recently raised a $30 million Series B round led by top proptech investors Tiger Global.
  • CEO Bassem Hamdy walked us through the deck the company used to raise the money.

Bassem Hamdy is not who you’d expect to run a construction tech startup that just raised $30 million. 

The closest Hamdy, CEO and cofounder of Briq, has come to working in Silicon Valley was a three-year stint construction software company Procore, with its HQ about 300 miles south of the Valley along the California coast. Before that, he spent a whopping 16 years working CMiC, a Canadian firm that’s produced construction accounting software since 1996. For comparison, Airbnb is only 13 years old.

But Briq, the construction accounting software company Hamdy founded in 2018, caught the attention of Tiger Global Management’s hyperactive investors. Tiger Global led the firm’s $30 million Series B round this year, joined by previous backers Eniac Ventures and Blackhorn Ventures, to bring Briq’s total money raised to $43 million.

Briq’s product is deceptively simple, Hamdy told Insider. Many construction firms run their accounting through Microsoft Excel, so Briq was designed to look like a spreadsheet.

“At first, they don’t realize anything changes,” Hamdy said. “It’s like a cloud-based version of Excel, but the magic is when the messages start popping up.”

Those messages are machine learning-generated insights into how the firm could save money in their operations, for example, or alerts sent when projections could be too rosy.

The construction industry has what Hamdy calls “amnesia.” Instead of using historical data to learn from previous mistakes or best practices, the complexity of the construction process means that accountants and project managers usually start over with a blank template for each job.

Briq’s projections come from their customers’ own historical accounting data and are intended to help contractors keep their spending on track in an industry infamous for overrunning its costs.

“No one ever says, ‘That ended up on budget,'” Hamdy said. “It’s never exactly how much they expected to spend.”

Within three to four months, Hamdy said, customers convert the software’s suggestions and projections into real-world actions — and start to see real savings. 

Recently, the company launched a construction payments platform called BriqCash. Customers who use it to solicit payments automatically have their invoices uploaded into Briq’s construction forecasting platform.

The idea for BriqCash stemmed from the need for more information about typical construction revenue and expenses so that Briq can make more accurate projections based on a wider array of data. The numbers gathered from some clients is error-ridden because of a sometimes-lackadaisical attitude towards accounting Hamdy has observed on construction sites.

“The numbers were wrong because there’s a bunch of invoices in a guy’s pocket or the back of a trailer,” Hamdy said.

Briq’s research found that a third of actual construction spend isn’t actually taken into account until 60 to 90 days after it’s spent. For a forecasting software to work its best, it needs real-time data. The company provides both physical and virtual debit and credit cards to ensure that the data it gathers from customers is as up to date as possible.

All of this serves Briq’s greater goal of automating as much of construction accounting as possible. Its lofty goal is to take over 80% of the accounting workflow in construction, focusing on mid-sized contractors with complicated books but without the money to onboard large accounting teams of their own.

Check out the deck Hamdy and Briq used to raise their recent round below.

The first page doesn’t even mention construction explicitly. Instead, it touts Briq’s core functionality as a smart accounting tool.



Briq


The company projects that if it were to manage 80% of automation of construction financials within ten years, it would become the largest construction tech company of all time.



Briq


Construction’s complicated processes and old-school accounting tools dig into contractors’ already decreasing profit s.



Briq


Briq’s solution is to build a “financial operating system” that streamlines operations and gives helpful suggestions. It also can reduce staff needed to handle accounting.



Briq


The front end of Briq’s software looks a lot like Microsoft Excel. It automates a lot of the workflow and highlights when projects are going over budget or could be streamlined.



Briq


This slide shows off both the savings and increases in accuracy that Briq’s customers see.



Briq


Briq’s goal is to become the centralized system for construction financials.



Briq


This slide shows off customer testimonials, a big deal in a business where you’re selling to thousands of mid-sized contractors.



Briq


Briq also pitches itself as a startup without competitors, something that gets investors salivating.



Briq


The company has a pretty typical software as a service (SaaS) model of per-user pricing, and also offers a range of modules that customers can purchase on top of their base subscription costs.



Briq


This slide summarizes Briq’s value proposition to the construction industry, and why it should be a slam dunk for investors.



Briq


The final slide thanks potential investors and shows off the iconic New York skyline.



Briq


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