Sydney-founded startup Sitemate, which offers no-code software tools for built world companies, has raised $5.2 million on the back of accelerated growth.
The round was led by Blackbird, with participation from existing investors Shearwater Capital and angels including Eucalyptus founder Tim Doyle and Propellor Aero founder Rory San Miguel. The terms were not disclosed.
Built world companies include those in the mining, construction, oil and gas, manufacturing, energy, power, utilities, transport, agriculture and facilities management sectors.
These sectors are some of the last to be experiencing disruption of traditional workplace processes by software. In early 2020, McKinsey noted that the COVID-19 pandemic would accelerate the sector’s investments in digitalisation, which lagged behind other sectors.
That is consistent with Sitemate’s experience, co-founder Hartley Pike says. A graduate of the Startmate accelerator program, Sitemate has grown from a handful of customers when it left that program in 2017, to around 100 in 2019 before the pandemic hit. Two years later it’s approaching 1000 customers. Pike attributes that growth to both the pandemic, and the continued growth of the Sitemate team.
“The pandemic really forced these companies to explore these kinds of platforms,” Pike said.
“(Our team) went from just raw industry experience, to raw industry experience and world-class product strategy, and then over the last two or three years we layered on world class engineering and execution and it all started coming together.”
Sitemate’s no-code platform allows built world companies to digitise and streamline their operating procedures like site diaries, site reports, inspections, permits and more. Around 75% of Sitemate’s customers have not been using any digital tools for the problems Sitemate solves, the other 25% have previously used competing software.
“It feels like we haven’t even scratched the surface yet,” Pike said.
“If you compare how sophisticated some of these companies operating in the built world, with their tech stacks, versus how we have our tech stack is set up. We’re talking maybe a 10-year difference, and it was 20 before COVID-19.”
Pike says the sector had been slow to take up digital tools prior to the pandemic, not because they are Luddites, but because the problems hadn’t been understood.
“The 5% of the industry that are early adopters are starting to think like tech companies. Everything is data based. Everything is integrated. Everything is connected,” Pike said.
“We get a lot of inspiration from that bleeding edge section of the market. The ones that really push us to the limits. And that’s what drives a lot of our strategic thinking.
“There will be a series of best in class tools. They’ll all be seamlessly integrated. They’ll all have world class UI and UX. They’ll all be commercially friendly with monthly or annual options, no long contracts and expensive add ons.
“Our belief is that in five to 10 years a lot of these industrial companies working in the built world will operate the same way that tech companies operate today.”
A shared belief in that future, along with Sitemate’s solid fundamentals, led Blackbird to lead this round, Blackbird principal Tom Humphrey says.
“It’s one of the most capital efficient I’ve seen to date, just in terms of how much they’ve raised, how much they’ve spent to get to where they are today,” he said.
“In terms of money invested to ARR (annual recurring revenue). It’s been a profitable business for some time, which obviously we don’t see a lot of in our line of work.”
Despite built world companies’ obvious need for digital tools, there hasn’t been a lot of startups that have been able to capitalise on that need, Humphrey says.
“The biggest challenge has been that it’s really difficult to construct a go-to market in terms of product-led growth and trying to reach the market in capital efficient ways,” he said.
“What attracted me to Sitemate, they are one of the few companies I’ve seen in this space that have somehow figured out how to crack the code. They’ve got a beautiful SAAS-like go-to-market, they’ve got best in class SAAS metrics, and I just have not seen that very commonly in this space. The opportunity in this market is huge.”
Kye began his career at a Fairfax daily on the North-West Coast of Tasmania. He has since taken his belongings, and keen interest in technology, to Melbourne. He has a bachelor of Arts majoring in Political Science from the University of Tasmania and a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from RMIT University.
