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BEFORE WE START…
Breaking The $10m ARR Wall - A Path To $100m+ Revenue

Before we dive into this week’s deep dive insight!!

We’ve just finished a lengthy mini-series on Go To Market within AEC tech, interviewing the top GTM leaders who have built and scaled sales teams to the hundreds of millions.

The episodes will be released from 22nd April 2025 and will be accompanied by a GTM guide to help you:

• Master the "land and expand" strategy that scaled PlanGrid from $5M to $100M in 4 years

• Implement the GTM approach specifically designed for construction's unique buying cycle

• Access battle-tested frameworks for identifying champions and building winning business cases

• Avoid costly hiring mistakes that drain capital and waste critical market timing

• Learn directly from executives who've built billion-dollar construction tech companies

Over the next few weeks on this newsletter, we will be releasing some eye opening stories, frameworks and lessons taken from the insights contained within the guide.

»» If you’re interested in receiving a copy of this guide once released. Let us know below ««

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

TLDR - The $10M Revenue Wall

Most construction tech startups flatline at ~$10M ARR.

We spoke with Kevin Halter (ex-PlanGrid, now at OpenSpace) — the guy who helped scale it from $5M to $100M — to understand why.

Here’s what we learned:

• 🚫 Project based deals won’t get you to $100M — enterprise sales will

• ⏳ Start expansion plans 9–18 months before renewal, not 90 days before

• 📊 The only metrics that matter: labor productivity, risk reduction, and payment acceleration

• 🔥 Don’t hire for pedigree — hire hungry reps who own the full customer journey

If you want your startup to break through the $10M wall, here’s some handy advice:

The $10M Revenue Wall: Why Construction Tech Companies Get Stuck (and How to Break Through)

Most construction tech startups hit a ceiling at $10 million in annual recurring revenue and never break through. We recently interviewed Kevin Halter (not yet released), who scaled PlanGrid from $5 million to over $100 million ARR in just three years, leading to the company's acquisition by Autodesk.

"There's a graveyard in this industry of companies with great technology that didn't prove out enough revenue to get the next round of funding. Then they no longer exist," Kevin told us.

Having guided multiple construction technology companies through explosive growth phases, Halter has a battle-tested playbook for breaking through the revenue wall that kills most construction tech startups.

1. Master the Project-to-Executive Translation

The fundamental challenge for construction tech companies is connecting project-level value to executive-level priorities. Most startups focus on landing many small project deals but fail to translate that success into language that resonates at the enterprise level.

The secret is in asking the right discovery questions to uncover what truly keeps executives up at night:

• Ask project teams: "What are your biggest challenges on site? What keeps you up at night? How often does this problem occur?" This builds your understanding of ground-level pain points.
  

• Ask operations leadership: "How do you measure success across projects? What's the impact when projects fall behind? How do you track performance?"
  

• Ask executives: "What are your top three business objectives this year? What would it mean to improve [specific metric] by X%? How does this connect to your competitive position?"

Halter shared a powerful example:

That simple discovery question uncovered a $40 million opportunity hidden in plain sight.

"The dollars are much bigger than you think," Halter notes. "When you ask those questions, the dollars that are at risk is always bigger than you believe."

The three areas that truly matter to construction executives:

1. Labor productivity (combating the never-ending labor shortage)

2. Risk reduction (minimizing insurance claims and litigation)

3. Payment acceleration (getting paid faster for work completed)

Most startups focus only on the first one, missing the bigger financial picture.

2. Fix Your Expansion Timeline

The strategy that propelled PlanGrid's growth was a disciplined "land and expand" selling motion, but with a crucial twist most companies miss: they started the expansion conversation 9-18 months before renewal.

"We put in a model of landing multiple projects or paid pilots and quickly getting that into enterprise agreements because the project dollars are small," Halter says. "If you can't prove the value in a reasonable amount of time – two weeks, 30 days, 90 days – you may run out of money as a startup."

Most construction tech companies wait until 90 days before renewal to start expansion conversations. By then, it's too late to build a compelling business case for a substantial increase.

"The best renewal is no renewal," Halter explains. "Close a three-year agreement, expand it realistically, and get into an enterprise agreement even if it's just a portion of their business initially."

At PlanGrid, they focused on quantifying value in customers' terms – not made-up ROI metrics. This approach secured multi-year enterprise agreements that grew substantially with each renewal.

3. Hire the Right Team (Hint: Not Who You Think)

The team that gets you to $5 million likely won't get you to $50 million without significant changes. But most founders make a critical mistake when hiring sales leaders.

"Don't hire enterprise reps that expect all these resources, which are extremely costly," Halter advises. "Hire someone that can do the work – land accounts, transact, expand, and support clients post-sale."

The ideal profile? "Hungry, humble, smart with a fire in the belly to get up in the morning and do something special," says Halter.

He avoids candidates from tier-one tech companies who might rely on established brands rather than building relationships from scratch. "If you've been in a large publicly traded company for 10, 15 years and you've been just kind of riding off this brand, that's not my profile."

Counterintuitively, Halter found that reducing the number of accounts per rep dramatically increased revenue. One top performer doubled his contribution after Halter shrunk his account list from 100 to just 20, allowing him to go deeper with each customer.

"A rep cannot handle 200 accounts or provide world-class customer service," Halter explains. "They can probably support five to ten enterprise accounts as true partners."

Breaking Through Your Own Revenue Wall

If your construction tech company is approaching the $10M ceiling, implement these four changes immediately:

1. Connect project success to enterprise value: Translate project-level ROI into business outcomes executives care about.
   

2. Start expansion conversations early: Begin building the business case for expansion 9-18 months before renewal.
   

3. Speak the language of construction executives: Frame your value around labor productivity, risk reduction, and payment acceleration.
   

4. Hire for hunger over pedigree: Look for salespeople with grit who are willing to be on-site with customers and own the entire customer lifecycle.
   

The construction tech graveyard is filled with great products that couldn't scale their go-to-market approach. As Halter puts it: "You've got product-market fit, it's 'build and sell.' And if you build the product, that's the first step. But if you don't learn how to sell the product and go to market, it's never going to work."

By adopting these strategies, your company can be one of the few that breaks through the $10M wall and reaches its full potential in the construction technology market.

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