BuildDirect CEO Jeff Booth talks about the company’s $30-million raise

This morning, Vancouver-based BuildDirect announced it had secured $30-million in Series B financing in a round led by Silicon Valley’s Mohr Davidow Ventures, an A-list firm that has invested in companies such as Brocade, Rocket Fuel and Shutterfly. The round included high profile Canadian investors, including BDC Venture Capital.

BuildDirect, which is almost single-handedly bringing the building product marketplace into the future, has been one of Canada’s most highly sought after private companies, so it’s really no surprise that a big-time U.S. VC would be interested.

Mohr Davidow General Partner Katherine Barr, who will join BuildDirect’s board, explained the reasoning behind the investment.

“Despite its multi-billion dollar size, the home improvement product supply chain is fragmented and inefficient. In the past several years, BuildDirect has achieved phenomenal growth by effectively leveraging sophisticated predictive analytics to address gaps and inefficiencies in the home improvement products industry,” she said. “With this latest round of funding, BuildDirect is well poised to fulfill its goal of transforming the home improvement industry by leveraging its innovative data analytics and technology platform.”

Cantech Letter caught up with BuildDirect CEO Jeff Booth for his reaction to today’s news.

Jeff, congratulations on raising $30-million. How are you feeling today?

Feeling great. Really excited that we were able to bring other top technology investors to the company. For 15 years, we have been relentlessly focused on the hard problems that plague the building industry and that focus has provided a platform that gets better every day. This round signals to the market that this is much more than an e-commerce company.

What will this cash injection allow BuildDirect to do?

We’re using the capital to build out other product categories, enhance our platform and hire an additional 300 people to accelerate our growth.

I know a lot of investors out there are interested in BuildDirect. Why did you choose to go with Mohr Davidow Ventures and the Canadian investor group they led?

With the growth we’re experiencing and the runway in front of us, there was no shortage of investors. We wanted to choose great technology investors but also great people that matched our culture. We also wanted to ensure that we had representation from our largest market which is the United States. We feel we achieved exactly what we were looking for with this investor group and have complete alignment on our vision of the future.

What’s next for BuildDirect? What do you hope to accomplish in the next 12 months?

Without revealing too much……I can say that the next 12 months are going to be pretty exciting.

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