Carley Hill thinks her startup could have customers across the world.
Before she gets there, she wants to make sure the pieces are in place.
Hill is the Buffalo-based founder of Cahill Tech, a mobile training tool for companies and workers in the construction industry.
This week it was one of 10 startups that entered the three-month Techstars Iowa accelerator program, which also includes a $120,000 investment from Techstars into the company.
The hybrid program gives Hill a big-name backer in the startup world. It will also give her specific expertise as she seeks to complete product development work and rounds out the team.
“These things will open the door for us to work with larger companies and other, non-native English speaking populations,” she said. “Operationally, we need to make sure we have all the pieces in place to serve those types of markets.”
Hill grew up in her family’s West Seneca-based business, Union Concrete and Construction Co. She launched Cahill in 2019 with its flagship app, aQuiRe. During the pandemic, she merged the training with management tools for the daily tasks that are necessary on a construction site.
Hill now serves more than 40 customers and has a 100% retention rate. She has raised about half of a $1 million seed round with support from investors such as Launch NY. Her company has about nine employees after the recent hire of client success, sales and marketing strategy personnel. The next big hire: a chief operating officer.
Cahill’s software-as-a-service model will require support for each company to make sure they are using software in a way that works and supports their businesses. It’s the early days of a grand plan.
“We plan to soar nationally and even multinationally, and to do that we need to have a real operations team in place,” she said. “We’re using Techstars to lay the foundation, take what we’ve learned and leverage key new employees so that we can be successful in the building blocks we’re putting in place.”
