Bricks And Bytes

"$75M in 13 months. a16z just led their Series A."

We sat down with Niklas Lindgren, Co-Founder & CEO of Endra, fresh off their $50M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, taking total funding to $75M in 13 months.

Endra is building the purpose-built workspace for MEP engineering, already partnering with AtkinsRéalis, Buro Happold, WSP, Hoare Lea, Ramboll and AFRY.

Tune in to find out about:

✅ Why a16z led at Series A instead of waiting for later traction

✅ The Stripe vs PayPal analogy behind Endra's category play (and why they're not replacing Revit)

✅ The honest answer to the billable-hours paradox

✅ What this means for the next generation of MEP graduates

Watch now on Spotify and YouTube 🎧

#bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #bricksbucksandbytes #aec #construction #constructiontech #ai #vc

"You could get 60 reviews of a pizza in six seconds, but finding a new contractor takes 12 months and spreadsheets."

That's how Riggs Kubiak described the construction industry in 2011 when he started Honest Buildings as a marketplace to connect owners with contractors.

It didn't work.

The pivot? A project management platform that became so valuable, Procore acquired it.

We sat down with Riggs to talk about what killed the original idea, what saved the company, and why the phase of entrepreneurship nobody prepares for is what comes after the acquisition.

His new book "Earned" launches June 2nd. Buy it here.

The real conversation:

✓ Why dominating a small category beats chasing everyone's problems

✓ The execution hell of building two-sided marketplaces

✓ What nobody tells you about life post-exit

✓ The founder moments that don't make it into LinkedIn posts

Watch the full episode now on YouTube and Spotify.

#bricksandbytes #constructiontech #entrepreneurship #founders #aec

Our Sponsors:

BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co

Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co

Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:28 Introduction and Journey to Honest Buildings

04:49 The Evolution of Honest Buildings

11:10 Navigating the Pivot: Lessons Learned

13:41 Sales Cycle Challenges in Construction Tech

13:42 Sponsors

16:44 Sales Cycle Challenges in Construction Tech

28:45 Reflections on Key Mistakes and Difficult Times

30:57 Acquisition by Procore: The Journey Ahead

34:02 Closing the Gap in Construction Management

35:38 The Importance of Negotiation in Acquisitions

39:34 Navigating Post-Acquisition Roles

42:00 The Entrepreneurial Residence Experience

46:39 Founders Forum: Building Community

48:45 Understanding Acquisition Motivations

53:20 Reflections on the Integration Process

56:13 The Journey of Entrepreneurship

1:02:33 Life After Acquisition: The Next Chapter

Missed an episode of the Executive Briefing last month? This is your ten-minute catch-up.

Four stories from the last four weeks, what each one means for your business, and which are worth going back to in full.

Inside:

• The new kind of buyer circling construction, and why they want your firm, not your tech
• The market split the banks have started to price in
• The contractor who killed his ERP, his dispatch system and his time cards, and rebuilt on one platform
• Why AI got 280 times cheaper while everyone's bills went up

No longer form this week (I have been busy in France!! - more on that soon). Just the month that mattered, in plain English, for people who run construction businesses.

Which of the four hit hardest? Tell us in the comments on the LinkedIn post.

"80% of the decks landing on her desk had AI on slide one."

This week on Bricks & Bytes we sat down with Jennifer Davis, who recently joined Suffolk Technologies after five years as Managing Director of Techstars Boston, where she reviewed thousands of applications and ran 65+ companies through the program.

She brought the kind of pattern recognition you only get from saying no a few thousand times.

Tune in to find out about:

✅ Why the bar has risen across pre-seed, seed, and Series A — and what VCs now want to see before they write a check

✅ The co-founder mistake that kills more startups than bad ideas (and why 50/50 equity splits are a red flag)

✅ Why "not all money is created equally" — and how founder-unfriendly terms signed early can derail an exit years later

✅ What Jennifer is looking for as she takes the reins on Suffolk's Boost accelerator, and the founder profile she'd most want to back in 2027

Listen on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube 🎧

#aec #construction #constructiontech #bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #ai #vc

Our Sponsors:

BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co

Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co

Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:00 Introduction to Jennifer Davis and Transition to Suffolk Tech

04:09 Insights from Techstars Boston

07:01 Key Traits of Successful Founders

10:06 Challenges in the Startup Ecosystem

12:57 The Importance of Problem-Solution Fit

15:57 The Role of AI in Startups

18:51 Generalist vs. Vertical VCs

21:57 Navigating the Built World Space

25:08 The Future of Construction Technology

27:53 Suffolk Tech's Boost Program

31:03 Advice for Founders in the Current Landscape

33:54 Conclusion and Future Outlook

This week in construction: the official verdict on HS2 landed, and it's worse than most people realise. Cost to complete is now £87.7-102.7bn. First services delayed to 2036. Britain is paying 15-20x the European rate per kilometre for high-speed rail.

But the more interesting stories happened underneath it.

Owen breaks down what every construction executive needs to know about three things colliding this week.

One. The AI cost paradox. Per-token prices have dropped 280x in two years. So why are enterprise AI bills exploding? OpenAI just doubled its flagship rate card. Anthropic raised prices without touching the rate card at all. The pricing page is no longer telling you what your bill will look like. And Jean-Marc Shimizu, who runs open innovation at one of Japan's top five contractors, says the subsidy era is ending.

Two. The construction robotics story almost nobody outside venture capital is reading. After sixty years as the last unautomated sector, the robots are finally shipping. Bedrock raised $270m in February. Crewline took $7m as a four-person team with a $26m order book waiting. Rebar tying robots are running at 4-6x human speed. Solar piling, reality capture, and a new category of self-verifying installation robots are all generating real revenue. Plus the corrective on humanoids that most executives haven't heard yet.

Three. HS2 and what it actually means. Three reviews, twelve months, same five conclusions. And the uncomfortable question every leader needs to sit with: is your business built like HS2, or like the alternative?

If you run a construction business, this is the briefing that will reshape how you read the next twelve months.

Plus details on the in-person fireside conversation with Chetan Kotur, the ex-Polestar designer now leading the team rebuilding Laing O'Rourke from the inside. London, 3rd June, evening of Digital Construction Week. Senior exec spaces already filling.

Show notes, references, and the link to sign up for the full newsletter and our Physical AI 2026 research are below:

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1. Event: Re-Engineering The Main Contractor · Luma2. Physical AI and Robotics Report: https://bricks-bytes.com/downloads/physical-ai-robotics-2026/

3. Newsletter: https://bricks-bytes.beehiiv.com/

"Mandating how many AI tokens your engineers burn isn't a productivity metric. It has nothing to do with outcomes."

That's Dustin Devan, CEO of Ediphi and it's one of the sharpest takes on the AI spend debate we've had on the show

This week on Bricks, Bucks and Bytes we're joined by Cameron Page of ClearStory, processing $3.5B in change orders every month, and Sophia Millar of Sonnaball Instruments, catching weld defects in real time before they ever reach inspection.

Tune in to find out about:

✅ Why enterprise AI bills keep rising even as token costs fall

✅ How ClearStory is replacing email-and-spreadsheet change order chaos for 7,500 companies

✅ Why 1.3 million categorised change orders might be construction's most underrated dataset

✅ How acoustic weld detection is transforming prefab quality control

🎧 Listen now on Spotify and YouTube

#bricksandbytes #bricksbucksandbytes #aec #construction #constructiontech #ai

Our Sponsors:

BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co

Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co

Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:56 Reunion and Introduction

01:57 AI Tokens and Their Costs

07:57 Managing AI Token Usage

11:21 Balancing Speed and Customer Needs

15:13 Efficiency in AI Usage

20:21 Waymo's Customer Service Incident

21:57 Discussion on Expensive Rail Projects

22:01 The Cost of High-Speed Rail in the UK

26:03 Comparing Costs: What Could $100 Billion Buy?

27:44 Debating Income Tax and Jeff Bezos' Proposal

30:18 The Rise of Trillionaires: Elon Musk's Potential

32:07 Data Centers in Space: A Feasible Future?

35:09 ClearStory: Revolutionizing Change Order Management

42:00 Streamlining Change Order Management

45:36 ClearStory's Market Position and Growth

47:09 Leveraging Change Order Data for Insights

50:01 Innovations in Welding Defect Detection

56:32 The Role of AI in Welding Quality Control

"If you're not tinkering with AI today, it's going to be a problem for you in the future."

This week on Bricks & Bytes we sat down with David Niewiadomski from Zero RFI — KP Reddy's new venture backed by General Catalyst that's rolling up owner reps, advisory, and building data firms under one roof.

Tune in to find out:

✅ Why standalone construction tech software is dying as a business model

✅ What General Catalyst saw in Zero RFI and why services beat SaaS for industry impact

✅ Why owners should never pay a subscription to access their own building data

✅ Why owner rep firms under 50 people are the sweet spot for acquisition

Watch now on Spotify and Youtube. 🎧

#aec #construction #constructiontech #bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #ai #vc

Our Sponsors:

BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co

Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co

Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com

Chapters

00:00 Teaser

00:47 Introduction to Zero RFI and Its Founders

03:22 The Role of AI in Construction Tech

06:27 Understanding Zero RFI's Unique Approach

09:21 The Importance of Data Integration

11:10 Sponsors

14:12 Acquisitions and Their Impact on Zero RFI

17:34 General Catalyst's Investment and Vision

20:24 Building Works and Its Evolution

23:26 The Future of Construction Technology

25:33 The Evolution of AI in Software Development

26:30 Leveraging Historical Data for Current Projects

29:15 Acquisition Strategies and Scaling Opportunities

32:27 The Future of Construction Firms in a Tech-Driven World

34:53 The Role of Owners in Project Management

36:41 Targeting the Orchestration Layer in Construction

38:51 Differentiating Zero RFI from Other Tech Players

40:29 Envisioning the Future of Zero RFI

41:18 Call to Action for Industry Professionals

"Pre-construction has become less efficient than construction itself."

That is the claim Dustin Devan made on this week's Bricks, Bucks & Bytes after returning from Advancing Pre-Con. Martin, Patric Hellermann and Dustin also dug into the proposed California wealth tax, Bentley's Q1 earnings, and why VCs keep funding the 51st AI takeoff company.

Tune in to find out about:

✅ Why 80% of project cost is locked in before design is even 30% done

✅ How the California wealth tax proposal would actually value private companies

✅ Patric's case for indexing into "directionally right" early-stage bets

✅ Why takeoff is a feature, not a company

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

#aec #construction #constructiontech #bricksandbytes #bricksbucksandbytes #ai #vc

Our Sponsors:

BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co

Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co

Archdesk -  “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:35 Introduction and Overview of Topics

02:15 US Construction Spending Trends

09:52 California Wealth Tax Proposal

26:29 Advancing Pre-Construction Insights

34:38 Building Cost Infrastructure and Pricing Engines

40:30 The Role of Design in Construction Projects

45:39 The Importance of Feasibility in Design

50:46 The Impact of AI on Construction Estimation

53:25 Navigating the Takeoff Tool Landscape

57:02 Innovations in Construction Robotics 

A 350-person Canadian contractor just did what most of the industry would call insane. They put their entire business inside the same software platform that powers the CIA. They've killed their paper time cards, their dispatch system, their safety software — and now they're killing their ERP.

This week, Owen unpacks the Cavanagh playbook with their head of digital strategy and asks the harder question: is this the future of construction software, or just an expensive bet on the wrong vendor? Plus: Procore just spent $11M acquiring an AI company in January. Are we watching the start of a platform war that ends with one operating system per contractor?

Then: the 2026 recovery story just died. US inflation hit 3.8%. Construction input prices rose at a 12.6% annualised rate. Every fixed-price bid in the market is a bet on Middle East de-escalation. And data centres aren't saving construction — they're hiding how weak the rest of the market really is.

Key resources

• Cavanagh Construction and Palantir partnership case study
• Procore Technologies acquires Datagrid for agentic AI capabilities
• US April CPI release
• Construction input price data, Q1 2026
• Hill County, Texas data centre moratorium
• Gallup poll on data centre vs nuclear reactor opposition
• IEA report on AI data centre power demand growth
• US construction spending and nonresidential contraction data

"Companies are bought, not sold."That single line from Yves Frinault reframed the entire conversation on our first-ever Exited Founder Acquisition Roundtable.We sat down with four construction tech founders who collectively sold their companies for hundreds of millions:✅ Yves Frinault (Fieldwire → Hilti) ✅ Dustin DeVan (BuildingConnected → Autodesk, $275M cash + $40M stock) ✅ Mo Akbari Hochberg (HoloBuilder → FARO, ~$36M) ✅ Zach Scheel (Rhumbix → Autodesk, fresh off the deal)Tune in to find out:✅ Why Hilti told Fieldwire "we'll never acquire you" four years before acquiring them ✅ The one negotiation tactic Dustin says every founder should use against corp dev teams ✅ Why an acquisition is a "one-way door" once you walk in, and how to know you're ready ✅ The QSBS detail that decides how much of the exit you actually keepFull episode on Spotify and YouTube now.#aec #construction #constructiontech #bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #bricksbucksandbytes #ai #vct Our Sponsors:BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.coAphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.coArchdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.comChapters00:00 Intro00:46 Introduction to the Acquisition Round Table03:25 Founders' Experiences and Lessons Learned 06:31 Understanding the Role Post-Acquisition 09:40 The Importance of Timing in Acquisitions 09:56 Sponsors 12:57 Fundamentals for Being an Attractive Acquisition Target 31:06 The Exit Journey: Building Value Before Acquisition 33:14 Business Fundamentals: Attracting Strategic Acquirers 36:04 Diligence and Documentation: Preparing for Acquisition 38:56 Revenue and Customer Love: Key Acquisition Drivers 41:13 Understanding ARR: Acquisition Thresholds and Market Dynamics 48:53 Negotiation Strategies: Preparing for the Table 54:46 Lessons from Exits: Growth as a Founder 01:00:45 Defining Success Beyond Numbers 01:02:42 Mindfulness in Leadership During Transitions 01:04:22 The Importance of a Strong Executive Team 01:05:20 The Shift in Perspective Post-Acquisition 01:06:11 Reflections on Founding and Structuring Companies 01:08:37 Creating Value Over Tax Strategy 01:11:21 The Reality of Startup Success Rates 01:11:54 Choosing the Right Company to Join 01:14:48 The Value of Collaboration and Shared Experiences 📩 Subscribe to the Bricks & Bytes Newsletter: https://bricks-bytes.beehiiv.com/🌐 Visit our website: http://bricks-bytes.com/📲 Follow us: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bricks-bytes/ Twitter: https://x.com/bricksbytespod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bricksbytes/Enjoying the insights? Hit that Subscribe button to stay ahead in construction tech, AI, and the future of how we build.