Bridgit co-founder and CEO Mallorie Brodie wants to turn the Kitchener-Waterloo-based construction tech startup into one of Canada’s women-led business success stories.
“Be deliberate about when you’re actually investing … but I would at least understand the global opportunity early on.”
Mallorie Brodie,
Bridgit
Since closing a $24-million CAD Series B in 2021, Bridgit has built out its executive team, refined its product, focused on “responsible growth,” expanded south of the border, and made moves into Australia and New Zealand.
Today, the 70-person company sells workforce intelligence software that helps more than 300 general contractors manage their workers more efficiently—including, Brodie claims, five of the 10 biggest ones in the United States (US). But she says their work is far from done.
Brodie sat down with BetaKit at TiEQuest Summit during Toronto Tech Week to share what she has learned along the way about building a company—including why other Canadian tech startups need to think globally earlier—how to mitigate risk in the cyclical construction sector, and her ambition for Bridgit to join the ranks of top women-led firms like Axonify, Knix, and Jane.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
It has been awhile since you’ve spoken with BetaKit. What has Bridgit been up to since its Series B?
That gave us the capital to go out and scale the workforce-planning product that we had developed between 2019 and 2021 … we were able to hire a more robust executive team, increase our overall marketing and sales efforts, and, of course, continue product development.
Throughout that time, there obviously has been a lot of ups and downs in terms of the economy … one thing we’ve done as a business since 2021, in addition to grow, is look at it at our efficiency … It hasn’t really been the growth-at-all-costs mindset. It’s about building a very sustainable—still fast [growing]—but responsible growth [company]. (Bridgit was not immune from the wave of layoffs that swept Canadian tech during the time).
It’s a challenging market for a lot of companies, but I do think it’s really core to our DNA [at Bridgit], and something that both my co-founder, Lauren [Lake] and I, feel like we thrive in. We were an under-resourced company for many years, and we pride ourselves on being very resourceful … I actually think Bridgit performs best when it’s not the hottest possible fundraising environment.
One of the things you spoke about during your TiEQuest Summit panel was why Canadian tech startups need to go global from the start. What did you mean by that and what has Bridgit learned about this?
The first seven-slash-eight years of Bridgit, we were focused on a punch list management solution highly targeted to the residential high-rise market, and we had this niche offering where we would leverage the warranty that is government-mandated to really extend the value of that product on these construction projects … That was very specific to the Canadian market, and was not really as important—or even the way it worked—in the US market … In the US market, yes, we did have some success selling in key residential markets, but it wasn’t the same differentiation that we had in the Canadian market.
We approached it very differently with the second product. We knew that in order to … be a VC-backed company with venture-type returns, we needed a bigger market to go after, and it was that much more important to validate a more global need upfront.
Essentially, all of our product research was done in the US market with the largest US players. Not that long after launching, we did product research in the UK and in Australia because a lot of the US customers also had offices in those regions. [This] allowed us to be successful in winning some of those largest general contractor customers in the US market, and it’s definitely been a key ingredient to our scale and growth … for companies that are starting, I would highly encourage them to be deliberate about when you’re actually investing … but I would at least understand the global opportunity early on.
How has the downturn impacted Bridgit and its customers in construction? Have you made any adjustments to your approach to better position the company and help clients?
Obviously construction is cyclical, and we wanted to make sure that we were building a product that was resilient in essentially every phase of the economy. [We made] a couple [of] specific decisions. One, our solution is sold at the corporate level, and so it doesn’t matter what type of construction a company is doing, it’s used across their entire portfolio, whereas our first product was focused on the residential market. We’ve really mitigated a lot of risk by being able to serve all types of construction … Different geographies allow us to also mitigate some of that risk, which global expansion also ties into.
When [general contractors have] to tighten things up, we can help them understand where they possibly have too many people. Construction companies really value their talent, so often for them, it’s not a matter of [advising them to lay off staff]. It’s getting ahead of it so they can focus their strategy on bidding [for] other types of work that they may not typically do, that in a great market, may not be as compelling … It’s giving them a heads-up so they can be strategic about how to better place that team, so they can retain [workers] until the market begins to heat up again.
The best of Toronto Tech Week
BetaKit is Toronto Tech Week’s official media partner. Read all of our coverage here.
Canadian ambition has been a hot topic of discussion at Toronto Tech Week, and BetaKit played its part with the release of our inaugural Most Ambitious issue. How have you been thinking about ambition lately?
During the panel, actually, we were talking about the resources that are available [for] building Canadian companies, and how much that’s changed over the last 10 years. I certainly can speak from experience that there were not as many institutional investors, there were not funds dedicated to women in technology, there were not as many accelerator programs [before] … There weren’t even as many experienced founders to learn from.
I think my call to the Canadian business leaders and startup founders is, we have all of that available to us, and it’s not hard to track down those resources at this point, so now we need to focus on winning, and how do we build very large companies in Canada? And that’s not going to be just by selling to Canadian companies. It’s by selling globally, but still being headquartered in Canada, leveraging [these] resources, and just raising the bar.
Internally at Bridgit, we have a ‘what, why, how’ document that goes through our strategy, our core values, and why we wake up every day and are excited about what we do. And one of the reasons is that we want Bridgit to be on the list of top Canadian female [business] success stories. We talk about companies like Knix; we talk about companies like Axonify that have had just incredible success. Jane is another one. We want to be on that list. It’s something that’s been really motivating and inspiring to our team.
For every company, that message is going to be different, but I think the important thing is that you do have a message around ambition, and the entire team is aligned. You’re not competing [just] with other Canadian companies. You’re competing globally. I think everyone needs to just wake up and see how fast companies outside of Canada are moving, and we need to match—if not accelerate—that pace.
BetaKit is the official media partner of Toronto Tech Week. Feature image courtesy Sean Pollock.