Digs announces $7M seed round to power its collaborative homebuilding software
Summary
Thats the thinking behind Digs, a two-year-old Washington state-based startup that offers an online, secure, easy-to-use platform for homebuilders to collaborate with clients the homeowners on the designs for their abode throughout the conception and building phases.It also appears to be the thinking of its investors at Oregon Venture Fund (OVF) and Legacy Capital Ventures, as well as Fuse, Flying Fish, Betaworks, PSF, and Deepwater Asset Management, all of which have contributed to a new $7 million seed funding round for Digs announced today, bringing the total with pre-seed funding raised by the young startup to an even $14 million.Moreover, Digs announced the hiring of Jef Holove as Chief Operating Officer. At Digs, he will oversee operating business functions and its marketplace.The company, co-founded by CEO Ryan Fink, was born out of his own frustration with a homebuilding project.Its a time where all of the home information flows freely, but then after the build, the majority of that valuable information that existed on the home is lost into the ether, he explained to VentureBeat via email.During that process, Fink, formerly the CEO and co-founder of augmented reality service knowledge startup Streem (acquired by Frontdoor in 2019), had what he calls his a-ha moment for Digs: We could apply our background in AI to help solve challenges during the build process, like collaboration between parties, capturing all the decisions, organizing all the PDFs like blueprints and change orders to then generate a true semantic understanding of the home without requiring anyone to scan it or physically capture data points. All while enhancing the existing workflow for builders, not change it.In addition, Fink told VentureBeat that the idea for the company happened to be a perfect fit for my co-founder and chief product officer, Ty Frackiewicz. He also was passionate about figuring out a way to build the API of the home Once you have the semantic understanding of the home, making it accessible and shareable to products and services around the home.Since then, Digs has grown into a lean, highly performant team of 25 employees.Described as simply as possible, Digs is essentially a Google Docs combined with Figma, the collaborative design platform, for homebuilding plans and information.Users be they builders, subcontractors, suppliers, or homeowners can upload architectural blueprints, drawings, floorplans and other related building documents and all see them in the same centralized, shared, yet secured account for that particular address. Were excited to partner again with Fink and team who are using AI to solve real pain points that millions feel every day, whether youre a builder or a homeowner.