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Gearflow pitch deck to raise $3m Seed round

This is the Gearflow pitch deck to raise a $3m seed round in 2021.

About

In an industry where costs have doubled and margins are tight, there can be no lapse in productivity. With equipment downtime being a contractors largest cost, there is an enormous amount of productivity wasted due to the pains that come with parts procurement.

At Gearflow, we are on a mission to address construction’s productivity problem, one that we have experienced first hand, by digitizing equipment parts procurement and eliminating the pains that come with it.

We set out to empower all of the small and mid-sized businesses that make up the construction industry by building a marketplace that works for them.

A marketplace where vetted part suppliers can easily become an e-commerce enabled business and build their business’s brand online. A marketplace where equipment owners can find the parts they need from suppliers they can trust so they can get back to work.

Who are we?

We are an eclectic, diverse group of thinkers that are all energized by this massive problem we are tackling for construction’s underserved majority.

On the surface, we are all very different. And that is what makes our days so fun.

We are a group of low ego, high impact individuals where thought leadership is not defined by a hierarchy.

Construction productivity hasn’t budged in the last 30 years.

Digitization brought by property technology, or proptech, companies has completely transformed the process of buying, selling, financing, and closing on a home. But the amount of time construction workers spend on a project results in the same amount of building — or even less — than it did three decades ago.Venture capital and startup founders are paying attention: Some new, well-funded firms are transforming the way we put up new buildings, while others are creating tech tools that monitor construction sites to catch issues or project-manage massive commercial complexes.

Now construction-parts marketplace Gearflow is targeting an unlikely suspect in the name of boosting construction productivity: replacement components for heavy equipment like cranes and bulldozers.

“In the context of construction, contractors need their equipment to get their jobs done,” Ben Preston, Gearflow’s chief marketing officer, told Insider.”When it breaks down, that leads to downtime on the job, which is their single largest cost.”

A broken piece of equipment costs a contractor an average of $350 an hour, Preston said, but a broken crane on a massive commercial construction site could lead to a $1 million-an-hour loss.

Right now, contractors have to call different local equipment dealers and search sites like eBay and Amazon to see if anyone sells the right part. Gearflow, on the other hand, partners with networks of suppliers and dealers to create a marketplace that connects vendors selling equipment directly with contractors who need parts. It taps directly into the suppliers’ own inventory, and ships the parts — often for free — to the contractors, taking a cut of slightly less than 10% of the order as its own revenue.

By partnering with sellers already in business, Gearflow avoids the expensive and challenging process of setting up a centralized supply-chain business from scratch.

The company’s main competition in the digital equipment-parts marketplace is the e-commerce giants eBay and Amazon.

Amazon’s history of creating generic, private brands of its own whose items rival those of existing manufacturers can spook vendors, according to Preston. Amazon has already launched a division of its commercial-focused Amazon Business label to try and meet the manufacturing, repair, and operating supplies needs of industrial and construction businesses.

“We know Amazon is coming for construction,” Preston said. “There is a drum being beat.”

Preston added that suppliers take this as a sign that Amazon may be looking to compete with them, which can drive them to work with Gearflow as an alternate e-commerce platform designed by and for the construction industry.

Gearflow recently raised a $3 million seed round led by Watchfire Ventures, with additional funding from Newark Venture Partners, Liquid2 Ventures, Path Ventures, and Harvard Business School Angels. The company also received a strategic investment from massive construction equipment and vehicle manufacturer CNH Industrial to onboard their own dealers onto Gearflow.

The partnership with CNH is just one example of how existing construction-industry giants are using Gearflow’s digital platform to compete against a behemoth like Amazon.

Preston walked us through the pitch deck that Gearflow used to raise its seedround.

Funding rounds

Announced Date	Transaction Name	Number of Investors	Money Raised	Lead Investors
Jun 24, 2021	Seed Round – Gearflow.com	7	$3M	Watchfire Ventures
May 20, 2020	Pre Seed Round – Gearflow.com	1	$162K	—
Oct 1, 2019	Pre Seed Round – Gearflow.com	6	$1.6M	—