Materially 🚛

Digitizing construction material mangament

Author

Brett Perlmutter
October 31, 2023

Setting the Scene

  • Despite living in a digital era, the construction materials industry remains so archaic, it hardly needs Wi-Fi.

  • When materials are purchased:

    • Builders place orders on the phone— bound for miscommunication. 📞

    • Material suppliers manually track sales, orders, and management. 📠

    • Upon delivery, haulers collect easy to loose, physical paper tickets that are critical for billing and tracking fulfillment. 🧾

  • This process leads to poor communication, errors, and plenty of billing disputes.

  • This week’s company offers an end-to-end platform to digitize the construction supply chain, eliminate errors, and push this industry into the 21st century.

Divider

In a Sentence


Materially is a construction material management platform that streamlines efficiency and communication between suppliers, buyers, and haulers.

  • Suppliers: Materially’s paying customers utilize the platform to digitize sales, track orders, manage analytics, dispatch, and more.

  • Buyers: Building companies use the app to order materials as well as track dispatch and billing, which limits order disputes.

  • Haulers: Truckers use the digital platform to increase efficiency in drop-offs, leading to higher productivity.

Bulleted version: Materially is like the Shopify for construction materials, digitizing, centralizing, and managing the buyer and supplier experiences. 🛒

Divider

The Basics

  • Industry: Vertical SaaS, Fintech

  • Headquarters: NYC

  • Year founded: 2021

  • Employee count: 4 FTEs

  • Investors: Picus Capital, various angels

  • Amount raised: $2.5M pre-seed

  • Materially is currently raising: $1.25M bridge round

  • Business model: B2B SaaS, charge suppliers a software fee

  • Early traction: 3 paying customers (suppliers), 35 active builders (buyers), $10M GMV, 60% MoM volume growth, 23k+ truckloads delivered

Divider
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

  • Are you a startup founder or CEO looking to grow the business but stuck doing all the administrative and operational work yourself?

  • Oceans is the best solution to get back all those lost hours. Hire full-time, highly experienced executive assistants, sales, marketing, and finance professionals from a global talent pool.

  • The best part: hiring talent through Oceans cost 80% less compared to US-based candidates.

  • We are talking about professionals with 5+ years of experience working for global brands such as HSBC, Unilever, The World Bank, Morgan Stanley and more.

Divider

Due Diligence

WHAT WE LIKE

  • 💥 Disrupting the market: The bulk construction materials industry is massive, yet one of the most overlooked verticals in construction with suppliers, buyers, and 3rd party truckers relying on legacy software, phone calls, and paper tickets.

    • Materially is well positioned to accelerate into the market due to a GTM strategy focusing on one of the largest categories in bulk materials called aggregates.

  • 👩‍💻 Customer acquisition: By onboarding suppliers as clients, Materially is able to acquire the other two sides of the marketplace with little CAC.

    • Materially looks to focus on mid-sized aggregate producers, tapping into a sector that's large enough for significant revenue potential, yet nimble enough for shorter sales cycles.

  • 📊 Expansion Strategy: Materially's roadmap includes leveraging AI for truck route optimization and expanding into waste management, demonstrating a forward-thinking approach to scaling its platform's capabilities and market reach.

POTENTIAL RISKS

  • ↪️ Learning curve: Materially faces the challenge of educating a traditionally non-digital market, requiring significant time and training.

  • 🤔 Market resistance: The conservatism and existing relationships in the construction industry could hinder rapid adoption.

  • 🏗️ Reliance on the supplier: Since Materially doesn’t monetize as a marketplace, the success of the company hinges on growing the customer base rather than transaction volume.

Divider

Founder Profiles

To request an introduction to the founder, respond to this email.

Divider

Comps

Why Materially: By digitizing the antiquated construction materials supply chain and offering a unified platform, Materially is breaking new ground in how suppliers, buyers, and haulers interact. 🚧

📌 Bulletin Board

  • 📰 This week in venture: A great article on a tremendous driving force in venture: immigrants.

  • 💡 The innovation situation: Adobe acquired Figma nearly a year ago, yet it is still unclear if the deal will go through.

🗳 Cast Your Vote

Would you invest in Materially?

Cast your vote below and tell us why:

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Last Week Today

  • The results are in: MRGN, an AI-powered platform designed for SMBs to simplify financial analytics and guide business decisions was slightly favored by subscribers.

  • Subscriber feedback: “MRGN provides the most comprehensive solution while retaining the least intensive UX; this will put it over its competition.”

✍️ Written by Brett