OMERS Ventures’ Principal Michelle Killoran has long been looking for a construction tech startup to invest in. The space is intriguing to her, but so far, she has not come across a company whose model has been compelling enough to convince her to pull out her checkbook.

Meanwhile, Jim Barrett, chief innovation officer at Turner Construction, was facing a similar challenge. There were many companies out there attempting to solve various problems within the construction industry, but not necessarily the ones his company was facing. For context, Turner is one of the largest contractors in the U.S. Founded in 1902, it notched a reported $14.4 billion in revenue in 2020. Toronto, Ontario-based OMERS Ventures is the VC arm of OMERS, the pension plan for Ontario’s municipal employees. Founded in 2011, the firm presently has about $1.6 billion in assets under management.

A few years ago, Killoran and Barrett were introduced to each other and worked together to evaluate various construction tech startups.

But early last year, in one of their regular meetings, a new idea — born out of their mutual frustration — came up.

The pair asked themselves why they just couldn’t engineer a successful software startup by designing and building one from scratch.

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