Software has eaten media, retail, banking, and taxis. It has barely nibbled construction - the largest, oldest, most physical industry there is. That gap is the entire premise of Building Ventures, a Boston venture firm that invests in one thing and one thing only: the built environment. Not the apps that sit near it, not the fintech that finances it. The actual work of designing, building, operating, and experiencing the structures people live and work inside.
The firm was formed in 2017 by Jesse Devitte and Travis Connors, two investors who had already spent the better part of two decades in this unglamorous corner of technology. Their first deal together dates to 2006. By the time they raised a fund under their own name, they were not tourists testing a thesis - they were specialists formalizing one. Building Ventures now runs roughly $148 million across two funds, and has backed more than 40 companies from a debut fund and a second raised in 2022.
01 / THE THESISThe last un-digitized trillion-dollar market
Construction is a global industry measured in the trillions, and it runs on single-digit margins, spreadsheets, and a labor shortage projected in the hundreds of thousands of workers. Projects are hyperlocal - shaped by weather, codes, materials, and available crews - which has made the industry famously resistant to the kind of software leverage that transformed everything else. Building Ventures looks at that resistance and sees the opportunity, not the obstacle.
Jesse Devitte's argument is compact: software will both bend the cost curve and make building better. The firm frames the physical world as "the next great programmable hardware platform" - meaning buildings themselves, over time, become software-defined systems rather than static objects. That is a large claim. It is also the connective tissue behind a portfolio that otherwise looks scattered.
Software will both bend the cost curve and make building better. Jesse Devitte, Co-Founder & General Partner
02 / THE MAPDesign. Build. Operate. Experience.
Rather than chase one hot category, Building Ventures organizes the world into four phases of a building's life and invests across all of them. It is a useful map - it explains why a fund can back generative design software and a battery-powered stove in the same breath. Each phase is a different set of problems, and each set has its own founders.
Seen through that lens, the portfolio snaps into focus. Dandelion Energy brings geothermal to homes. UpCodes turns building code into something software can read. Copper makes an induction range named "Charlie" with a battery inside it. BuildFactory is an AI-enabled marketplace for off-site fabrication. Each one shortens the distance between how a building is imagined and how it actually gets built and run.
03 / THE EDGEWhen your customers are also your investors
This is the part worth stealing. Every venture firm claims to add value beyond the check. Building Ventures did the arithmetic on that promise. When it raised its $95 million Fund II in 2022, more than two-thirds of the capital came from strategic industry partners - global general contractors, builders, and design firms. Names associated with the firm's LP base include DPR Construction, Gilbane, Hilti, Mortenson, Obayashi, and Thornton Tomasetti.
The mechanism is simple and hard to copy. A founder building software for construction usually spends years trying to reach the exact companies that Building Ventures counts as investors. Here, the introduction is built into the cap table. On top of that sits the Built Environment Innovation Network, a group of 100-plus senior AEC and design executives the firm's founders can tap for pilots, feedback, and distribution. Money is commodity. A warm path to your first ten pilot customers is not.
04 / THE OPERATORSFounders who sold to Autodesk, now writing checks
The credibility behind the thesis is earned, not asserted. Jesse Devitte co-founded Softdesk, AutoCAD's main applications partner, which went public in 1994 and was acquired by Autodesk in 1996. He then ran Autodesk's building group before turning to venture investing, where his broader built-world track record touches SketchUp, Newforma, Honest Buildings, and Vico Software. Travis Connors brings 25-plus years of early-stage investing and co-leads the firm's investment committee.
That history shapes how they pick. The partners say they look for founders who are "in love with the problem, not the solution," and who carry an "earned secret" about how the built world actually works. In an industry whose problems are a century deep, that is less a slogan than a filter - one designed to screen out people passing through.
Building Ventures was the first investor who committed to Dandelion - before any other investors had said yes. Kathy Hannun, Co-Founder, Dandelion Energy
05 / THE MARKETWhere a built-world fund actually sits
Building Ventures is not alone in believing buildings deserve capital, but it sits in a small club. The proptech and built-world venture landscape includes Brick & Mortar Ventures, Fifth Wall, MetaProp, Camber Creek, Zigg Capital, and Shadow Ventures. What distinguishes Building Ventures is its focus at the seed to Series A stage and its unusually deep tie to the physical trades - it invests earlier and closer to the jobsite than the growth-stage real-estate funds it is often grouped with.
There is also a climate dimension that mainstream climate investors often miss. The built environment is responsible for a large share of global carbon emissions, yet much climate capital chases energy and transportation. By backing geothermal, electrification, HVAC efficiency, and ESG data platforms, Building Ventures ends up investing where climate meets concrete - a category that is unglamorous on the surface and enormous underneath.
06 / THE ARCFrom a $53M debut to hardware bets
The firm closed an oversubscribed $53 million debut fund in 2018, followed by the $95 million Fund II in 2022. The recent activity shows the thesis stretching into physical products: in 2025, Building Ventures backed Copper's battery-integrated appliances and BuildFactory's AI fabrication marketplace. Both extend the same idea - that the frontier is not just software about buildings, but the buildings and the things inside them becoming programmable.
It is a patient bet on an impatient problem. Construction still overruns its budgets and timelines as a matter of routine. Building Ventures is wagering, one seed check at a time, that "on time and on budget" can become the rule rather than the exception - and that the firm which owns the category early owns the decade.