The home renovation market is ready for a transformation — Why we invested in Weaver

The home renovation market remains remarkably fragmented and disconnected from the digital technology that is transforming broad swaths of the economy elsewhere. Housing stock is not only aging, but less than 1% of renovation bids are run online, with the various parties involved in the process (real estate owner, craftsmen & architects) transacting around a model that is both cumbersome and opaque, with little coordination from offering to invoicing.

Hence, homeowners spend large amounts of resources navigating a sourcing and pricing process trying to discover adequate, high-quality contractors for their renovation projects. Architects end up in the middle, managing an unwieldy tendering process for their customers that is often far removed from their core competency.

Against this backdrop, Weaver has built a bid management platform for homeowners and architects to obtain contractor prices for their renovation projects. Weaver also facilitates communication and coordination between the three parties, streamlining and enhancing the workflow.

From our very first meeting, the Weaver team made a convincing case, presenting both a vision for transforming a traditional market as well as a laser-focus that has generated impressive traction.

Here is why we are excited about Weaver:

🌱 Huge (green) market opportunity: The home renovation market is a vast opportunity, with recent growth being driven by (1) the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) rapid urbanization, and; (3) government tax incentives for green buildings. Real estate alone contributes around 40% to global CO2 emissions, and substantial investments will be needed to avoid irreversible climate damages and to achieve the commitments made under the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

From an ESG perspective, we believe that Weaver is well-placed to have a positive impact on the sustainable development of cities, especially focusing on promoting sustainable construction industry activities. For more information on how green building contributes to the SDGs, check out the World Green Building Council’s article here.

📊 Changing Market Dynamics: The coordination between homeowners, architects and contractors is cumbersome. Only 1% of all tender processes are held online and offline tenders still take up to three months, most of the time resulting in chaos and frustration on all sides. Digitizing the relationship between contractors, architects and homeowners helps speeding up the process, increase quality assurance and smooth coordination. Weaver helps all involved parties to focus on their work and outcome instead of tiring communication across different channels. Just imagine being a contractor working on the construction site while scheduling a meeting for next week and making a price estimate at the same time? Weaver fixes that.

👬 Impressive Team: We have been following the market for quite some time and have not seen any other player with comparable traction at this stage. The team is extremely focused and determined with deep talent to succeed. Greg, Linden, Dan and Ed are not only great players in their different positions, but they are also a strong team adding up to 4 x 1 = 6. We are convinced that Weaver is on to something special and will have a massive impact on the market.

💸 FinTech Opportunities: The possibility of embedding huge fintech opportunities into the platform further extends Weaver’s value proposition. The company is currently already offering HELOC home loans to its customers and will further extend its offering in this segment. So stay tuned!

🔮 Overall, we firmly believe that Weaver has the potential to disrupt the inefficient home renovation market. We are excited to be part of this journey and isn’t it just good to treasure existing houses, upgrade and preserve them?

🧑🏽‍💻 For more info about Weaver: check out their website https://weaver.build/

🔎 Or read more about the company at TechCrunch.

To all fellow investors and entrepreneurs: Feel free to reach out to us (johanna.junkermann@btov.vc or florian.schweitzer@btov.vc) if you are interested to learn more about our view on the market.