EQUIPMENTSHARE
Founders: Willy Schlacks & Jabbok Schlacks
Headquarters: Columbia, MO
Year Founded: 2014
Year Romulus Invested: 2015
EquipmentShare is a contractor-to-contractor lending platform for construction equipment. Owners place their equipment on EquipmentShare’s online marketplace, generating income from assets that would otherwise sit idle. Equipment renters are guaranteed the lowest rental price, an easy-to-use booking experience, and seamless execution and delivery of equipment. Since graduating from YCombinator, EquipmentShare has launched in three cities with plans to expand across the country in 2017.
In addition to its marketplace platform, EquipmentShare also offers a mixed-fleet telematics platform that gives contractors access to unprecedented oversight tools and analytics data to track, monitor, maintain, and manage their fleets.
The EquipmentShare-Romulus story:
We’d been working on “collaborative-consumption for enterprise” as a theme across several portfolio companies, so it was a natural fit when EquipmentShare found us while enrolled at Y Combinator. “About 10 minutes into our first meeting, I knew the founders were special,” says Neil. “They had been entrepreneurs all their lives, starting at the school of hard knocks. Moreover, they were solving a painpoint they had personally faced as construction contractors.” As we learned more, we became intrigued by how large the industry’s asset utilization problem is and thus how dire the need for a data-driven platform for construction equipment. While the company had many competitive offers for their oversubscribed seed round at the end of YC, they wanted to work with investors who had been in their shoes and who would hustle with them. They chose to have Romulus lead the round, and Neil joined the board.
Romulus value in action: Executing. EquipmentShare’s founders are self-made construction entrepreneurs from Missouri; as such, they have always been laser-focused on achieving near-term goals in the most efficient manner possible. This execution mindset has enabled hyper-growth while maintaining highly efficient operations.