VCs Laughed at Plumbers Buying Software. Now This Blue-Collar Startup Is Closing In on $100 Million

With BuildOps, Alok Chanani built a high-tech platform for contractors—and proved early skeptics wrong.

BY BEN SHERRY, STAFF REPORTER @BENLUCASSHERRY

As a former Army captain, Alok Chanani learned about leadership under pressure. In 2006 and 2007, he led a team of soldiers in Iraq, transporting large sums of money to remote regions to fund projects. After he returned to the U.S., he got his MBA at Wharton, and in 2012 started his own contracting company. As work scaled up, Chanani grew frustrated with the lack of quality management tools for tradespeople and contractors. He witnessed peers running their nine-figure businesses on paper invoices, text chains, and free-tier apps like WhatsApp. He felt that blue-collar entrepreneurs deserved a world-class operating system, so in 2018 he and co-founder Steve Chew launched BuildOps, a mission-control platform designed to........

© Inc.com