Nashville’s most valuable tech startup has completed its first major acquisition.
Built Technologies has purchased commercial real estate management platform Nativ, Chase Gilbert, Built's CEO, told the Business Journal in an exclusive interview.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, Built previously confirmed the buy is connected to a $23.6 million capital raise the company filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month. On Thursday, Gilbert said $23.6 million was not the sale price for Nativ.
The deal is another major step for fast-growing Built, which is coming off a $125 million September capital raise. That round of funding came at a $1.5 billion valuation, launching the startup into "unicorn" territory — a buzzy Silicon Valley term for startups with a ten-digit-plus valuation.
Built — whose platform works as a middle-man for those in construction lending in an effort to simplify the way borrowers and contractors access cash from lenders and manage loan disbursements — has more than doubled its headcount in the last 18 months, now employing approximately 430 people.
The addition of Nativ expands Built’s reach beyond construction loans and into the world of real estate lending. Nativ’s platform is designed to help commercial real estate lenders make better lending decisions by providing a central hub of data for each stage of the loan, combining portfolio management with “native” work tools such as spreadsheets, monitoring loan compliance and providing portfolio analytics.
The New York City-based firm has 23 employees, according to LinkedIn. Nativ CEO Jeff Saul and cofounder Adam Kerr will join Built’s leadership team.
Gilbert said several of Built’s large clients, who operate in both the construction and real estate lending space, have encouraged the company to expand into commercial real estate lending in recent years.
“A number of our larger customers said, ‘There’s not a great solution out there. It seems very complimentary to what Built already does. Would you guys be interested in building a product?’” Gilbert said. “We want to solve problems for our customers. We are a product company, so in many cases the answer is going to be to build a product. But we never want to be too proud to be willing to explore solutions that already exist in the market that maybe the market doesn’t know exists. Where if we find an amazing team, an amazing product that we believe helps us win faster and serve our customers faster, then we should at the very least be willing to explore that. … That’s exactly how this one played out.”
Not only are Built and Nativ’s platform’s complimentary, Gilbert said, but through the courting process he said the two sides discovered how they could help each other grow together faster — Nativ by guiding Built through the commercial real estate world and Built by giving Nativ access to its existing structures, such as talent acquisition and go-to-market strategies.
It’s a message Gilbert said both sides reiterated at a celebratory dinner at Sixty Vines in downtown Nashville upon the completion of the deal.
“I told them, the burden of proof to do an acquisition versus building something is actually higher, because there’s more risk,” Gilbert said. “I told them, I believe they raise our bar. … I don’t care if they are an earlier stage company than we are, there are things we can learn from them, and we already have.”
As of September, Built’s platform had been used to manage the financing of more than $135 billion in construction projects, representing 200,000 commercial, homebuilder, land development and residential projects. Its lender clients — which now numbers more than 220 — include AllianceBernstein, U.S. Bank Housing Capital Company, Fifth Third Bank, Citizens Bank, Regions Bank and Pinnacle Financial Partners. Its contractor and developer clients include Lennar Multifamily Communities, 84 Lumber, PRG Group, Homebound, NPR and Genesis Homes.
