Construction has been booming for years in the United States, but the machines and equipment powering that growth have run into various hiccups, with pandemic-driven shutdowns at equipment giants like Caterpillar Inc. and all kinds of imported goods backed up in busy ports.
For the construction industry, that means many resources are scarce at a time when big infrastructure plans and new housing subdivisions are cropping up at a rapid pace.
A relatively new Austin startup has built a marketplace to help construction companies and individuals buy and sell heavy equipment, ranging from backhoes and cranes to dump trucks and steam rollers. The business, called Boom & Bucket Inc., just raised $5.5 million in seed funding and has already completed more than 100 sales in the past year or so, co-founder and CEO Adam Lawrence said.
The startup is operating in California, Arizona and Nevada, with Texas coming online soon. Lawrence said he's excited to expand into Texas, which has been a magnet for people and companies in the past couple of years.
"People are trying to build homes everywhere," he said. "I drove to San Antonio last weekend, and it seems like the entire stretch of I-35 is a construction zone. So there's this huge demand. People aren't getting rid of their old equipment because they can't get new equipment and there's more demand for equipment. Rental companies are at full utilization. So I tell our team if we can build a company now and succeed, we'll be able to thrive in any environment."
Lawrence has been working in the startup realm for a couple of decades. As an undergrad in the San Francisco Bay Area, he said he met Joe Lonsdale, who founded 8VC and now lives in Austin. Lonsdale hired Lawrence as the first employee at wealth management platform Addepar in 2010.
"I was a generalist, there's a little bit of everything," he said. "I did team building. I did sales. I sold in some of the biggest banks on Wall Street. ... Everybody should try to work for somebody like Joe that just challenges you to get better faster."
Boom & Bucket's seed round was led by Human Capital and Brick and Mortar Ventures. Other investors in the round included 8VC as well as Global Founders Capital, Streamlined Ventures, Quiet Capital and MaC Venture Capital.
After Addepar, Lawrence went on to found human resources-tech startup Liveli in 2014, which was acquired in 2016. He then became COO at Bay Area payments company Bolt. Soon, he started thinking about startups again.
"I wanted to get back to what I'm good at," he said.
He ended up meeting his future co-founders: Samir Shah, who had built software for his family's construction business in his formative years and went on to found a couple of business and work as head of Cat Digital Labs, the innovation wing of Caterpillar; and Aaron Kline, who had been a partner operations manager at Pinterest and COO at Yard Club, which was acquired by Caterpillar in 2017.
The founders dove in.
"So the three of us started on this journey together and talking to customers," Lawrence said. "We actually built this like 125-page document of lessons learned during that period. I took a class to learn how to inspect equipment. I took a brokerage class to learn how to be a heavy equipment broker."
A differentiator for Boom & Bucket is its inspection process, which aims to tap into the data emerging from sensors on newer equipment to provide a CarFax-like history, in addition to professional inspection reports. Sellers can get appraisals for their equipment and buyers can get detailed photos, videos and inspection reports. Boom & Bucket also manages delivery of the vehicle through third-party haulers. Its customers thus far have included SunState Equipment Rentals, Spiniello Construction and Los Angeles County.
Lawrence likes to compare it to Carvana, which lets customers review and purchase cars online and have them delivered.
"I can be in my underwear downstairs, flipping through and buy a car and it shows up to my house three days later," he said of Carvana. "That's magic, and we want that experience for this space."
Boom & Bucket has 15 employees, about half of whom are in Austin with the rest working remote. Lawrence said Austin had all the elements it wanted.
"People come here because they want to be part of the community," he said. "They want to build something. And so I think that's just magic. And for us, we've been able to hire exceptional talent, oftentimes from Texas."
