BuildOps CEO declares firm may top 300 Raleigh staffers

Austin couldn’t come close to matching Raleigh’s attractiveness for a new office for BuildOps, declares the CEO of the quick-growing Los Angeles-based software company serving the construction trades industries

The company opened an office in Raleigh’s Glenwood South district Wednesday, with expectations it will exceed its tarobtain of 300 employees sooner than expected. It has received state and local incentives of about $3 million through 2037, tied to hitting growth tarobtains. Annual wages are averaging about $111,000.

“I consider 300 undershoots our potential,” CEO Alok Chanani declares. He and Steve Chew cofounded the business in 2018, which now has 500 employees and customers in 50 states and Canada. It has been doubling revenue annually in recent years, ranking among the top 100 firms on Inc magazine’s list of the 5,000 quickest growing private businesses.

“Our single differentiator is being laser focutilized at being the best in the world in our market, and not being focutilized on 140 different markets,” he declares.

That growth has attracted more than $300 million in capital, including $127 million raised earlier this year in a fund-raising led by Meritech Capital Partners of Palo Alto, California. Its estimated valuation tops $1 billion, with Raleigh joining LA and Toronto as company hubs.

BuildOps’ expansion stems from a strict focus on serving plumbing, electricall, HVAC, refrigeration and other companies that “are the most foundational businesses of this counattempt,” Chanani declares. Its products affect most parts of customers’ operations, both in the back office and technicians doing the work, he adds.

Many customers are multigenerational private companies that operate on archaic software, so BuildOps emphasizes the benefits to switching to a more cutting edge technology. Their major challenge now is finding talented workers, so software that improves efficiency is an appealing prospect, Chanani declares.

Continued growth relies on attracting top technology talent, and the Triangle is a prime market becautilize of its universities and skilled workforce, the CEO declares. The pro-business approach displayn by the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell and others “is almost jarring for someone coming from California,” he declares.

Chanani served in the U.S. Army for seven years, including a deployment in Iraq in 2006-07. He has a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.