[civeng]

I am squarely in the business and there are successful and failed startups everywhere. It is dynamic, challenging but there is defintely no shortage of people succeeding. Perhaps the startups just dont have the buzz or respect?

Many successful ones are already mentioned, like Procore for example. There are many more focusing in the data collection and modeling space including BIM. For example, there are still tremendous opportunities solving little problems with data collection and selling to Trimble. Or automating tasks in software and selling to Autodesk. Or add CAD like tools to a PDF reader and sell that for a hundred million (BlueBeam). The list is pretty endless, no shortage there. I believe the shortage is perhaps the humble humans that understand construction thoroughly AND understand technology to a level that would allows a bridge between the two to be constructed.

My favorite failed unicorn startup in this space that I believe demonstrates the difficulty of construction is Katerra. I personally dealt with them as a vendor and immediately knew they would fail even before Softbank gave them a billion dollars. The hubris was off the charts. A bunch of tech people that tried to hire people in the business but just couldn't understand the scale of difficulties or challenges. I must admit they generated a fair amount of schadenfreude in me.

[mustacheemperor]

Interesting note on Katerra, if you visit DPR’s headquarters in Sacramento, there is a vision statement on the wall from around 99 stating their intent to become to construction what HP had been to computers - winning by driving the cutting edge with smart innovation. Not so different from the Katerra pitch, except that DPR is run by seasoned construction professionals who want to leverage lessons from tech - not technocrats who think the building industry needs to be told what to do.

[kbrownlees]

I am in horizontal construction (in Australia) and it is pretty much the same story. The key is having a person who can relate to both the corporate & project people, and has the understanding to translate that into a useful product. Quite rare it seems.

[quickthrower2]

> immediately knew they would fail even before Softbank gave them a billion dollars.

That made me chuckle :-)