Growing up surrounded by the construction business, Alex Rodriguez knew from a young age he wanted to help out the industry. After finding an interest in tech in his senior year of high school, he became involved in the Twin Cities startup community, with the idea of combining his two interests to solve construction-related problems.
“There are so many inefficiencies in construction,” Rodriguez said. “It’s really behind in terms of tech.”
He initially started to form his idea as a private management tool, but after discussing with those he was trying to help, pivoted towards what WorkMand is today: a B2B marketplace for contractors to find subcontractors.
“Everybody we talked to talked about how they needed subs and workers,” Rodriguez said of the process of creating and perfecting WorkMand. “It became so repetitive, and we thought, if no one else is solving it, why don’t we?”
WorkMand, a website where general contractors can post projects and subcontractors can bid on them, officially launched in April 2018. Most companies they have worked with have been residential contractors, Rodriguez said. Contractors can learn about subs and build trust from their profiles, which include documentation, photos, and insurance information.
In the near future, WorkMand plans on expanding to another state this winter, in western or southern markets like Texas and California. Rodriguez also mentioned a general goal of hitting over 100 projects by the end of the year. “We just want to help as many contractors in the Twin Cities [as possible] between now and the end of the year,” he said.
The startup is also working to address the construction labor shortage. “We are continuously thinking about it,” Rodriguez said of his efforts to figure out how to directly help subcontractors find laborers. A big part of the industry is actually acquiring people to work in the trade, which can be difficult according to Rodriguez. “There has to be a new way to trade tradespeople,” he said. With WorkMand, he wants to be the marketplace for this as well.
The current site is a free setup, with “winner’s fees” as a commission model. In other words, it’s free to bid as a subcontractor, and “if you win a project we get a commission cut,” Rodriguez explained.
Rodriguez is a former entrepreneur in residence for The CODE2040 program, which is powered by Google for Entrepreneurs that supports software engineers from minority backgrounds. He also founded Graveti – a network for underrepresented populations in the local tech community. With over 500 members, Graveti essentially started as small group happy hours and evolved into the “first community of color in tech startups” in the Twin Cities, Rodriguez said.
Moving to bi-monthly events to focus on quality, Graveti is also planning a youth workshop sponsored by Target in September. The organization is also trying to work more in the St. Paul area, and will potentially be involved with the national Blacks in Technology Inaugural Conference held in the Twin Cities during Twin Cities Startup Week.
Both WorkMand and Graveti will be involved in Twin Cities Startup Week this October, Rodriguez said.
