Welcoming Cornerstone to the Genesis Portfolio
On behalf of Genesis, I’m excited to announce our investment in Cornerstone. Cornerstone is driving innovation in the residential construction space through an easy to use, all-encompassing project management platform designed specifically for residential contracting firms.
— Alex Yelverton (Venture Partner), Anuj Jajoo, Anirudh Sudarshan
The Problem
Digital transformation in the construction industry has been asymmetric across commercial and residential development, specifically in the application software sector. Companies like Procore and Autodesk have launched full-stack software platforms for document, job, and financial management for commercial-scale projects, but this level of innovation has lagged in the residential sub-sector.
Small to midsize residential firms are often plagued by decentralized job management (i.e. contractor-client communication, project updates) solutions that delay projects and force contractors to rely on handwritten or verbal communication, while commercial solutions are either too costly or too complicated to apply to residential mass market contracts. Additionally, these firms are forced to piece together job processes (i.e invoicing, scheduling) with multiple different offerings — increasing the propensity for user error and project liability. To combat these issues, David Willson and his team founded Cornerstone — an all-in-one project management tool built specifically for residential contractors.
The Founders
Cornerstone was founded in 2021 by David Willson (B.S. Neuroscience, UT ’24) and Kalen Bhakta (BBA Finance, UT ’24), two friends and business partners with extensive experience in design, people management and the construction industry. The idea for Cornerstone came as a spin-off from a previous idea David had to create a platform for “uberized” home services, before eventually pivoting into the bespoke, centralized project management platform that Cornerstone is today.
Since its inception, the team has doubled in size to include two technical co-founders: Ishaan Grewal (B.S Computer Science, UT 2024) and Aniruddh Sriram (B.S Computer Science, UT 2023).
David Willson (CEO, Co-Founder): David is a sophomore at the University of Texas studying Neuroscience. He has extensive experience in the residential construction industry, having founded his own general contracting firm in high school. He currently leads the Cornerstone team and oversees everything from business development/marketing to customer discovery.
Kalen Bhakta (Co-Founder): Kalen is a sophomore in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas studying Finance. He brings a swath of design experience to the team and currently oversees UI/UX design, accounting/finance and platform development.
Ishaan Grewal (Technical Co-Founder): Ishaan is a sophomore at the University of Texas studying Computer Science. He’s previously held SWE roles at Shree Infosoft and Thomson Reuters. He and Aniruddh share many of the same responsibilities, including technical ideation, frontend/backend development and database management.
Aniruddh Sriram (Technical Co-Founder): Aniruddh is a junior at the University of Texas studying Computer Science as a part of the Turing Scholars program. He’s previously held SWE roles for multiple startups (Explorastay, DevRev) and Research roles with Wolfram. Like Ishaan, he oversees technical ideation, frontend/backend development and database management.
How’re They Doing?
Since applying to Genesis in early 2022, the Cornerstone team has been hard at work. They’ve been accepted into both the Forty Acres Founders program and Momentum’s student-run accelerator, as well as having garnered interest from Keller-Williams: one of the world’s largest real estate firms. They’ve recently kicked off their first round of beta testing with contractors and homebuilders around Austin. The team is looking to grow the size of this initial testing cohort to 50+ in the coming weeks and are actively seeking to have conversations related to their product. If you would like to get in touch regarding this, please sign up directly on their website.
Why I Led This Deal by Alex Yelverton, Venture Partner
The Cornerstone team has demonstrated a high degree of passion and coachability throughout our entire due diligence process, and the founders’ vision for the company is both ambitious and admirable. Their core product was built by a highly capable team employing a tried and true customer-centric approach, and is poised to disrupt a billion dollar sector that has yet to match the pace of technological innovation seen in other areas of the construction industry. This reality coupled with the team’s unique ability to communicate the product’s value-add to a variety of stakeholders (general contractors, subcontractors, homeowners, etc.) has established Cornerstone as a venture that is truly positioned to impact millions involved in the homebuilding and home renovation process. This team is one of the scrappiest and most aligned I’ve had the privilege of meeting, and I can’t wait to see what they’re able to accomplish in the future. The Genesis team couldn’t be more excited about investing in Cornerstone and I’m eager to see where this partnership takes us.
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Written by Alex Yelverton (Venture Partner @ Genesis, UT Finance ‘23)
