A start-up Canadian construction technology company has found a US foothold by securing a five-year contract with the New York City’s Department of Buildings (DOB).
Saskatoon-baed myComply (with offices in Brooklyn) has secured $5.6 million CAD ($4.5 million USD) and the support of construction industry angel investors to expand the presence of its construction workforce compliance and management platform across the United States (US), the Canadian technology site Betakit reported on April 6.
The published report said the business initially experienced difficulty in selling its construction tech solution to Canadian contractors. So it turned south and tackled “the path of least resistance” by targeting large US markets, myComply co-founder and CEO Mark Wolff was reported as saying.
“We went to New York because, just like going to prison, you go into the yard, you find the biggest guy, you knock him out, and then you’re a somebody.”
Wolff described the DOB contract as the company’s “growth hack”.
MyComply’s solution combines IoT hardware and software to help general contracting firms verify safety training and reduce risk on construction sites.
MyComply isn’t the only Canadian construction tech startup to face the challenge of finding early customers in its own market. Brampton-based software company SmartBuild encountered the same barriers and took a similar approach, Betakit reported.
Since establishing a foothold in the US, myComply has seen demand for its solution rise in Canada. “We’ve started to have uptick in Canada, but it was really driven by our success with large federal contractors in the US,” said Wolff.
“The mission surrounds empowering general contractors to ensure a verified workforce on all job sites,” said Wolff. “Once you’re able to do that, in an individual worker profile-centric way, you can do a lot of different things.”
