Contech Firm Heave Raises $7M Series A as It Plans to Expand

Contech received another endorsement Wednesday when Heave, an online marketplace that connects construction companies with on-demand independent heavy equipment mechanics, announced it had raised $7 million in a Series A round.

Outsiders Fund led the round, with continued support from FJ Labs, Long Journey Ventures and Slow Ventures, bringing Heave’s total funding to $13 million. The Tampa-based proptech company plans to use the latest funding to add sales people in the field and engineers for its platform, said Alex Kraft, the CEO and founder of Heave.

“It’s always been important for our company to staff appropriately so that there’s a personal touch with our customers,” said Kraft. “I think customers are naturally distrusting of something if they perceive it to be 100 percent online. Part of the fundraise is to scale appropriately as our business increases, so that we have people touching the customer. And to continue adding engineers to push out product and stay at the forefront of what we’re doing.”

With experience as a heavy equipment dealership executive for 17 years, Kraft saw that traditional service models could be slow and expensive. He started Heave in mid-2020 as a heavy equipment rental and sales marketplace — “Like Expedia for customers who wanted to rent or buy equipment,” he said.

Failing to gain traction in that area, Kraft pivoted Heave in late 2022 to an online marketplace for independent heavy equipment mechanics and construction companies to come together. “It’s like Uber for heavy equipment mechanics,” said Kraft. “Once we switched to repairing the equipment, that’s when it took off.”

The new capital will support Heave in growing beyond Florida and into other states in the Southeast and along the East Coast. The company also operates in Texas and plans to expand to the Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta and Nashville, Tenn., regions in particular.

Heave offers companies access to certified, vetted mobile mechanics. Customers can access technicians on-site in less than 24 hours, versus waiting days or weeks, according to the company. To date, Heave services more than 600 machines per month and has more than 300 active mechanics in its network out of a nationwide pool of 850.

“Alex and the team at Heave are seeing incredible early success in a highly complicated and fragmented market,” George Easley, a partner at Outsiders Fund, said in a statement. “Their thoughtful approach to solving the logistical and monetary pain of heavy equipment dealer service is positioning them to be a category-defining leader in construction tech.”

Heave claims to boost the earning potential for heavy equipment mechanics, with some technicians seeing up to a 600 percent increase in earnings.

“One of the things that powers our marketplace is that [1099 heavy equipment mechanics] are in short supply, so it’s a labor force that has leverage,” Kraft said. “With us, they can earn close to the market rate. As we continue creating brand recognition, we can improve the overall ecosystem and help more people into the industry, because they can earn so much more money. So, it’s one of the more powerful things about what we’re doing and something that our team is really proud of.”

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.