Skillit, which has built a specialized recruitment platform for construction workers, has raised $8.5 million in a round led by New York-based MetaProp and California’s Bow Capital. Prior investors who participated in the round included Boston-based Building Ventures.
Earlier this year, the two-year-old New York startup raised $5.1 million in seed funding from investors including Holt Ventures (San Antonio, Texas), Great North Ventures (Minneapolis), 1Sharpe Ventures (Piedmont, Calif.) and Takeoff Capital (Columbia, Miss.)
Eclectic Founder
Skillit is the third construction technology firm founded by Fraser Patterson, an eclectic entrepreneur. He has studied carpentry, anthropology and math, and worked as a contractor, too. One of Patterson’s previous startups, Onis Vida, was in Mexico and the other, Bolster, in New York.
The “industry has done a pretty poor job of providing craft workers with quality employment,” Patterson told Business Insider in an interview, amid what he calls the “greatest reindustrialization process” in the history of the United States. Besides, it has operated in the dark for decades, without any data on a craft worker. So, Skillit has created trade-specific assessments and built a data-driven platform that speeds up hiring. Data, more than anything else, can help overcome the chronic and ongoing shortage of skilled labor, maintains Patterson.
Skillit, which is free for job seekers, offers a number of metrics to show off its growth — a 10-fold jump in attracting qualified candidates, when compared with traditional recruiting methods, and 2x retention rate. This year, its worker members on Skillit have grown nearly five times, as the company expanded to 32 more U.S. cities. Skillit’s customers include Mortenson, Volumetric Building Companies, Bolster and McAfee.
Backers
New York-based MetaProp was founded in 2015 by managing partner Aaron Block and general partner Zach Aarons. Focused on real estate, it has raised $165 million from investors, and backed about 150 companies. It has exited 17. MetaProp’s recent investments include Synco, Billy and OnSiteIQ.
Commercial Real Estate
MacKenzie Companies
Law
Nemphos Braue
Financial Services / Investment Firms
Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
Commercial Real Estate
Monday Properties
Venture Capital
Blue Delta Capital Partners
Internet / Technology
Foxtrot Media
Block was previously chairman of Chicago-based BayRu, an ecommerce shopping and shipping firm and eBay.com’s exclusive shipping partner for Russia/CIS consumers. Aarons previously worked at real estate developer Millennium Partners. He has also served as a senior associate at ENIAC Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund in New York, and as an analyst at boutique investment bank PJ Solomon.
Boston-based Building Ventures was founded in 2017 by general partners Jesse Devitte and Travis Connors. Devitte previously co-founded Borealis Ventures and worked in two public application software companies, including Softdesk. Prior to Building Ventures, Connors was a part of the investment team at Borealis Ventures and a partner at Egan-Managed Capital. He has also worked at Spears, Benzak, Salomon, & Farrell, an investment management firm.
Building Ventures has raised $148 million and has invested in nearly 50 startups. It has exited five. Building’s recent investments include Owl, Clearstory.build and Hypar.
