The construction industry has long been plagued by the fragmentation of software systems. Many of the most popular construction software solutions were developed 20 to 40 years ago, and as a result, they often don’t communicate with each other seamlessly. This lack of integration leads to additional work for building teams, who must manually transfer data between different applications.
A Unified API: Agave’s Solution
Enter Agave, a startup that aims to solve this problem with its unified API, which connects with more than 30 software systems. Founded by four co-founders—Tom Reno, John Zucchi, Pooria Azimi, and Samantha Zhang—who met while working at Graphiq, the data analysis and search engine startup acquired by Amazon in 2017.
From Procore to Agave
The team’s first encounter with the construction industry was while working on an internal skunkworks project for Procore, a publicly-listed construction management software company. They built a natural search language tool to embed within Procore to help its users but didn’t get to release it publicly until after Amazon acquired Graphiq.
Experience at Amazon
After five years at Amazon, the four co-founders left to start Agave, combining their experience working with Procore and building out Alexa’s question and answer capabilities. They realized that one of the most frequent pain points in the construction industry was the lack of communication between software systems.
"That signaled an opportunity," said Reno. "Based on our experience building thousands of data integrations at Amazon Alexa, we thought it seemed like a pretty good fit for our skill set. Let’s attack that problem and solve it for both groups of people."
Agave’s API: Connecting 33 Software Systems
Agave currently connects with 33 software systems, including popular solutions like Procore, PlanGrid, and Autodesk. The company has quadrupled its revenue year-over-year and now boasts 65 customers.
"We’re very open and transparent with what we’re building," said Reno. "There’s no other second or third highway system. There’s one highway system with a single standard."
Funding and Future Plans
Agave has received funding from Y Combinator, which will be used to hire new software engineers, continue adding new integrations, including new systems and endpoints, and scale Agave’s operations.
The Future of Construction Software
As the construction industry continues to evolve, it’s clear that seamless integration between software systems is crucial for efficiency and productivity. Agave’s unified API is a step in the right direction, providing building teams with a single platform to manage their data.
"Construction tech is one of the most exciting areas I’ve seen," said Reno. "We’re just getting started."
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Topics:
- Accel
- Agave
- Construction
- Construction tech (ConTech)
- North America
- Startups
- United States
- Y Combinator
About the Author:
Catherine Shu is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, covering startups in Asia and breaking news. Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times, Taipei Times, Barron’s, Wall Street Journal, and Village Voice.
Disclosure:
None
