In their younger days, Vancouver natives Sebastian Jacob and John Reid worked as carpenters but often lacked a reliable way to find consistent work.

“It was either going off of Craigslist, where you really didn’t know what you were getting into, or through a family friend or an uncle in the industry who knew someone looking for an extra hand,” Mr. Reid says.

In 2016, both found permanent roles with food delivery platform DoorDash – which connects local restaurants with gig economy delivery drivers – and quickly identified that construction and trade workers could benefit from a similar solution.

“We learned a lot about the marketplace model, the two-sided gig economy business model, and kind of applied that logic to the construction industry,” Mr. Jacob says.

“We wanted to give anyone a chance to find a job in construction and make it super easy to apply,” Mr. Reid adds.

After just a few months at DoorDash, the pair left to found Faber Technologies in 2017. Their platform, Faber Connect, applied the two-sided market model to the construction industry, connecting general contractors and subcontractors to non-unionized carpenters, labourers and other skilled trade workers.

After gaining some traction in the Vancouver market, the co-founders began considering opportunities to expand, and their research ultimately pointed south.

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