Darren Bechtel

Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of Darren Bechtel launching construction technology venture capital firm Brick & Mortar, promising at the time to winnow the vast array of emerging companies in the field down to “standout performers.”  

The San Francisco-based firm is on a mission to find and invest in construction industry disruptors, like Rhumbix, which provides builders with digital tools to streamline how they collect data in the field. 

Soon after Brick & Mortar launched, it joined Blackhorn Ventures and Greylock Partners to participate in an early funding round for Rhumbix. The company has since grown by leaps and bounds, raising $53 million from investors to date.

“You’ll see humans and machines working hand in hand to make safer, more productive job sites,” Bechtel predicted in a 2017 speech at the BuiltWorlds Venture Conference.

Two years later, Brick & Mortar announced the close of a $97.2 million fund — its first foray into institutional capital and the largest-ever venture fund to focus exclusively on the construction industry, according to the firm. 

There’s a huge need for seed funding in this arena because the global construction market comprises 13 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, yet has historically been slow to adopt new technology, according to Brick & Mortar.

Bechtel studied mechanical engineering and business administration at Stanford, which helps him keep a foot in both worlds. 

Plus, he’s been around engineers his whole life. Bechtel’s great-great-grandfather, Warren Bechtel, founded a global engineering firm called the Bechtel Group 125 years ago, and the family still runs the company today.

As for Brick & Mortar’s future, that appears to continue to hinge on what Bechtel described in a November 2021 interview with Commercial Observer as opportunistic investment in soothing the construction industry’s pain points.

“You know, even a blind squirrel can find a nut every now and then,” he said. “I think most VCs will say that good outcomes are a mix of some decent judgment, but some luck too. We can’t predict the market, but we make it our business to really intimately understand and know, and in some ways live, the pain points of the industry.”