Handle.com, a proptech startup providing construction payment compliance, today announced closing a $10 million Series A led by Energize Ventures and Ironspring Ventures, according to a press release shared with FinLedger.
The company says it will use the funding to escalate customer interest and expand its support, engineering and sales teams across the country.
Backed by Y Combinator, the company’s payment compliance platform enables companies to simplify, and “handle,” the long payment cycle, compliance, trade credit and deep layers set up between providers and payers that exist between suppliers and contractors.
“Handle is solving one of the most critical and complex workflows in construction: payments. It all starts with protecting your payment and lien rights. Handle simplifies this process for companies across all parties involved in construction projects,” stated Patrick Hogan, CEO of Handle, in the release.
The company has increased its revenue almost 500% in the past 12 months, and says it is now bringing on new investors to support rapid growth. Handle has also managed to secure a number of large construction clients, including CRH/Oldcastle (the largest supplier in the U.S.), U.S. Concrete and Apogee Enterprises.
It says that it will leverage the funding to increase the number of large clients it serves, but also noted it serves mom-and-pop builders and midsized businesses as well.
The company is also hopeful to see positive rippling effects from the bipartisan infrastructure bill recently passed by the U.S. government, saying that it will create more construction and in turn help Handle grow its business.
“There’s just lots and lots of construction going on, even during COVID time, and the infrastructure bill is just going to add even more building on top of that,” Hogan told FinLedger.
Looking ahead, the CEO also noted that the company plans to begin actually tackling handling of payments, as opposed to just providing the framework between payers and suppliers.
“Right now what we’re doing is we’re connecting to the accounting system, or bringing in all the invoices, and then we’re taking care of all the deadlines and we’re actually helping them with sending out the notices. We plan to in the future, which is actually what we’re working on right now, is accepting the actual payment and that does require some complexity,” Hogan said.
While that piece is, like Hogan said, complex and will take some time, the company says its immediate goals are scaling its sales and marketing teams and working to provide its payment compliance product to the most clients it can.
“We’ve solved payment compliance, and we’re going to continue to grow that with our current sales. But we do want to start to get into other areas. We haven’t defined those areas yet, but we do want to start to get into more of payment flow,” said Chris Woodard, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Handle.
In other recent proptech news, Nova Credit and SafeRent partnered to offer cross-border credit checks to migrants seeking housing. Reigo Investments also secured a $13 million Series A and closed a $100 million securitization for its bridge loan product.