It’s a tough capital market for startups looking for funding, but Digs managed to secure $7 million in second-round financing on the back of its “digital twin” product that helps homeowners keep track of all facets of their homes.
The Vancouver, Washington, company’s seed round was led by Oregon Venture Fund (OVF) and Legacy Capital Ventures, and included follow-on participation from investors in the prior $7 million pre-seed round. Notable contributors include Fuse, Flying Fish, Betaworks, PSF, and Cascade Seed Fund, as well as additional investment from Deepwater Asset Management.
BUILDER spoke to CEO Ryan Fink about the investment climate, the company’s product, and how it will spend the money.
What’s the elevator pitch for Digs?
Digs is an AI collaboration platform for builders that automatically organizes documents, enhances collaboration, and enables intuitive visualizations for builder teams, their subcontractors, and the homeowner.
At the end, the builder can hand off a comprehensive and searchable “digital twin” of the home so all those details can be accessible for the life of the home. Rather than disrupt, Digs works within a builder’s existing workflow for pre-construction, design, handoff and warranty management, and beyond.
You have an impressive collection of funders. Did you find it was an active market when you started thinking about raising more capital?
The funding climate has definitely changed over the last 18 months and is much more challenging. Many investors have become considerably more conservative and require stronger business metrics than in the past, offering less grace to early-stage companies to figure out their go-to market and product market fit. The positive is that it’s a forcing function for many companies to return to the basics and build healthy companies versus growth at all cost.
We found there’s a lot of warm interest in proptech from the majority of VCs we’ve spoken to, both large and small. Many of them were extremely well versed in proptech, so there wasn’t much explaining needed. Digs also has a very straightforward pain point to address and value proposition. We’ve found, even if you aren’t a builder, you’ve most certainly felt them as a homeowner, so that made the conversations relatable and resonate with investors.
Where is the money most needed at this stage of development?
We raised our first pre-seed round of $7 million to hire an incredibly talent-dense team, which we did. Now, this seed round of $7 million is to provide us with the runway to focus on executing and growing our products, partners, and client base to build a really healthy and sustainable business.
How do you think expanding your executive suite will help your company?
Even though our company is less than two years old, we’ve seen incredible acceptance and adoption from build professionals and homeowners alike. We identified that we’re at an inflection point where scaling efficiently becomes incredibly important.
This was one of the main reasons we recruited a seasoned professional like Jef Holove. He has experience doing just that, from early startup to large-scale enterprise. Additionally, Jef brings marketplace experience. He was previously the CEO of the marketplace Drop.
Not long ago, we announced our first marketplace partnership with Thumbtack. Jef will be responsible for growing our marketplace ecosystem, and he’ll be running full speed.
When you say you want to build out a marketplace, what are you talking about?
Today, after the home build, homeowners don’t have very much information on their home. They typically receive a binder with less than 5% of the information on their home, or a link to a landing page with 50 to maybe hundreds of unorganized PDF pages.
This leaves homeowners with questions and frustrations about what products are in their homes, finding the right replacement products, maintaining their home, documenting maintenance when it does happen, getting warranty support when needed, and so on.
We believe if all the relevant information is easily accessible, it will make the homeownership experience fundamentally better ... easier to maintain, simpler to purchase the right things with confidence, faster to find services when you need them. Our mission is to “power experiences that unlock happier homes for all.” Critical to that is to ensure the homeowner has all the information, that is is accessible or searchable in a visual or natural way, and that it's digitally and securely shareable when that can improve or speed up the experience.
This is what our marketplace is all about. By working with builders, the digital twin Digs creates offers a complete understanding of the home—products, dimensions, material and fixture details, etc. That can be used by the homeowner and digitally shared with the brands and services they trust.
You need a new water filter that's right for your model of fridge? Digs can make that available at the touch of a button. Want a new bulb to match those already in your den? Digs knows the exact one. Considering a new sofa and want to visualize it in your space or confirm that it’ll fit down the hallway? See it in your digital twin. Need to hire a pro for a project or repair? Use the Digs find-a-pro feature powered by Thumbtack to access countless local pros.
You can improve the bid and speed up the whole process by giving the pro (limited) access to your digital twin, so they have all the right details before even rolling a truck. The Digs marketplace will be a curated environment with convenience and peace of mind for the homeowner as the guiding principle. And, we believe, it will completely transform how homeowners interact and maintain their life’s largest investment.
And a healthy byproduct, with all the homeowner’s maintenance being captured in Digs, much like Carfax does for your car, Digs homes should warrant higher peace of mind and resell prices than non-Digs homes in the future.
