Punching time by Collaboration
Cloud and Mobile technologies are shifting the way we do business and most importantly the way we communicate with team members, suppliers and final clients. Collaboration is key.
The software creation industry has been able to address these issues with software tools such as Slack and Yammer. However, a market that hasn’t seen much uptake is construction. This sector has not always been an early adopter of new software technologies.
In spite of this, a new wave of startups is disrupting this space and showing interesting results. The momentum and traction these startups have gained has resulted in institutional investor rounds and lots of attention drawn to them.
CB Insights picked up on this trend and built a map of the tech companies taking on the construction space.
Construction is expensive. It’s key to understand the final delivery cost of the product. That’s why data is so critical. The more figures we can calculate the better judgement we can exercise when making business decisions or having conversations with investors and shareholders. In many cases traditional banks are involved as financial backers.
Having precise visibility into who is working where and on what job is key to a number of people in the food chain.
At the inception of a project, it’s valuable to have a process and a method of gathering as much data around a project as possible.
There are 80,000+ construction companies in North America.
The traditional way project managers (in many cases owners of the construction company) communicate with the team is using a phone. They call and co-ordinate which resource belongs on what site, and so on.
As you can imagine, calling people multiple times a day to have visibility into what they’re working on is not only tedious but inefficient and time consuming.
Two years ago I was fortunate to meet and recruit Punchtime into the first cohort of the L-SPARK accelerator. For those that don’t know, L-SPARK is an Ottawa/Kanata based SaaS accelerator program we created circa 2.5 years ago.
Punchtime (now a portfolio company) is a local Ottawa based early stage startup founded by local entrepreneurs who maintain a passion for technology and are solving real world problems.
Let me first talk about the team which is very versatile because every members brings something unique to the table.
Yves is the source of the company’s domain expertise. As a founder of a construction company, he experienced first-hand the pain points his tool solves.
He struck up a partnership with Chris, another co-founder, who has built his reputation in software development. His shop focuses on creating Front End Design (UI/UX).
Lucas, the third founder of the company, has been a serial entrepreneur building and successfully exiting a marina business.
Most importantly, the three have been friends and have worked together on past projects, a strong and good indication of team “resistance”.
They all have a passion for technology and are product obsessed.
Their collaboration sparked the creation of Punchtime.
Punchtime is part of the Collaboration SaaS, Productivity/Scheduling stack. It is a time tracking tool that allows an hourly wage employee or contractor to quickly communicate and give visibility on where they are and what they are working on.
The software integrates with Quickbooks, Wave and a variety of other software packages to inject data around time tracking. This data is key to have visibility on who has worked on what, and allows the project owner to calculate a project cost. Combined with a real time communication component, Punchtime allows the project owner to communicate and collaborate on a project.
The goal of the company is to become a dominant player in the construction industry and leverage that experience to address industries that have hourly wage staff.
The company has recently integrated with 3rd party software solutions and continues to build partnerships with leading companies.
The company has validated the product, is growing its MRR and has successfully built a customer onboarding process. This is a key indicator to look for a channel partner that will allow them to scale, and this is what the team is working on right now.
