Shovels

High-Level Overview

Shovels is a data platform startup founded in 2022 that aggregates and normalizes over 100 million building permit records across thousands of U.S. jurisdictions, using AI to provide actionable intelligence on contractors, projects, and construction activity.[1][2][5] It serves construction technology companies, building material suppliers, energy and climate organizations, real estate firms, and home service providers by enabling them to identify active contractors based on location, project type, volume, inspection pass rates, and completion times, while offering verified contacts and real-time market tracking to boost sales and marketing.[1][2] With $8.25 million in funding from investors like Coelius Capital, 27 employees, and initiatives like Project Storm adding 10 million new permits in three months, Shovels demonstrates strong growth momentum in addressing construction's data opacity.[2][5]

Origin Story

Shovels was founded in 2022 by Ryan Buckley and Luka Kacil in Walnut Creek, California, emerging from Ryan Buckley's vision to solve the construction industry's lack of data transparency on active projects and contractor performance.[1][2][4] Buckley, drawing from past experiences with commoditized data, identified a gap in public building permit and inspection records—millions of fragmented datasets across jurisdictions that no one had comprehensively analyzed.[1][4] The idea crystallized into "Shovels" as a novel database akin to "Pitchbook for construction," starting with scraping permits, associating them with contractors, and enriching with inspections, tax assessor data, B2B info, and ad tech for a full market view.[1][4] Early traction came from targeting office-based decision-makers already online, avoiding field-level resistance, and rapidly scaling to 100 million permits while securing initial funding.[1][2][4]

Core Differentiators

• Comprehensive Data Aggregation: Scrapes and normalizes building permits, inspections, timelines, and enrichments from thousands of U.S. jurisdictions into a unified dataset exceeding 100 million records, providing contractor performance metrics like pass rates and completion times that don't exist elsewhere.[1][2][5]
• AI-Powered Intelligence: Turns fragmented permit data into "shovel-ready" insights via AI, including project predictions, real estate transaction links, and verified decision-maker contacts for direct sales outreach.[1][4][5]
• Flexible Access and Usability: Offers web app, API, parquet files, or private shares for Snowflake, Databricks, or BigQuery; priced by geography for banks, builders, and aggregators, emphasizing ease over manual government site searches or cold calls.[1][2][4]
• Targeted Focus and Expansion: Prioritizes sales to online decision-makers in construction-adjacent sectors; Project Storm accelerates coverage by partnering with 350+ offline jurisdictions, adding 10 million permits quickly.[2][5]
• Lean Growth Model: Ties engineering (data harvesting) directly to sales, avoiding premature scaling pitfalls, with a path to $10M ARR through original data no competitor has built.[4]

(Note: Shovel Technologies, a separate real estate title abstract firm in Pennsylvania, is unrelated.[3])

Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Shovels rides the construction tech (ConTech) wave, where the traditionally analog $1.8 trillion U.S. industry increasingly adopts data and AI for efficiency amid labor shortages, supply chain issues, and sustainability demands.[1] Timing is ideal as post-pandemic building booms generate permit surges, yet data remains siloed in local governments—Shovels bridges this by creating the first nationwide, predictive contractor database, empowering suppliers and real estate players without disrupting field ops.[1][4] Market forces like rising energy/climate focus and home services digitization favor it, as users gain transparency to target high-performing contractors and active projects.[2] By enabling better sales pipelines and market tracking, Shovels influences the ecosystem as the "intelligence layer for the built world," potentially accelerating ConTech adoption and commoditizing permit data for downstream AI applications.[1][5]

Quick Take & Future Outlook

Shovels is poised to dominate ConTech data infrastructure, scaling nationwide coverage via Project Storm and API integrations to hit $10M ARR as outlined by its founder.[4][5] Trends like AI-driven predictive analytics, climate-resilient building, and proptech convergence will propel growth, especially with 27 employees and $8.25M backing enabling aggressive jurisdiction onboarding.[2] Influence may evolve from data provider to ecosystem enabler, powering apps for automated bidding or risk assessment—watch for enterprise deals with suppliers and aggregators. As the go-to for permit intelligence, Shovels turns construction's murkiest gap into a competitive edge, revolutionizing how the built world connects.[1]