DALLAS · TX
The Downstream Profile
Zachary Irwin
He looked at the least glamorous corner of construction - the dumpsters, the porta-potties, the phone tag - and saw a marketplace hiding in plain sight.
He looked at the least glamorous corner of construction - the dumpsters, the porta-potties, the phone tag - and saw a marketplace hiding in plain sight.
The pitch fits in a sentence, and Zachary Irwin knows it. "Using Downstream Marketplace is like ordering a pizza - only instead you can get a boom lift, a dumpster, and a portable toilet to your job site with just a few clicks." He repeats the line because it is the whole company. Real-time pricing. A phone in your hand. No faxes, no voicemail roulette, no waiting for a callback that decides whether tomorrow's crew has a machine to stand on.
Irwin is the co-founder and CEO of Downstream, a Dallas-built marketplace for the modern job site. Contractors upload a project, get three or more quotes instantly, and book equipment, waste hauling, and site services with credit and no money down. The homepage now promises something even bolder: "AI agents that procure autonomously." The catalog runs past 100,000 listings across 23 categories - dumpsters, temporary fencing, portable toilets, storage containers, boom lifts, the unglamorous machinery that makes buildings possible.
In November 2025, the bet got funded. Downstream announced an $8 million Series A, co-led by Brick & Mortar Ventures and Moneta Ventures, with continued backing from FJ Labs and Victorum Capital, at a reported $34 million valuation. Austin Yount of Brick & Mortar put the thesis plainly: construction rental "has seen little innovation." That is not a complaint. In venture, a sleepy market is an invitation, and Irwin had already RSVP'd.
What makes the story worth telling is where he came from. Irwin did not grow up in heavy equipment. He came to it from hospitals.
Renting equipment shouldn't be a hassle. Contractors don't have time to call around, chase down quotes.
Irwin studied biology, chemistry, and sports medicine at the University of Northern Iowa - a resume that points toward a lab coat, not a hard hat. His first career was in healthcare informatics: he became an Epic consultant, one of the specialists who wire hospitals into the software that runs modern medicine. He built oncology protocols across 22 states, held certifications in Epic Beacon, EpicCare Ambulatory, and Willow, and did the deeply unglamorous work of rebuilding infusion-center and pharmacy workflows so hospitals stopped hemorrhaging revenue to bad configuration.
That is a useful thing to notice about him. The through-line from cancer-treatment software to construction dumpsters is not the industry - it is the instinct. Irwin is drawn to systems that quietly leak money and time because nobody bothered to fix the plumbing. Hospitals had it. Job sites had it worse.
The company that became Downstream started under a name no one would put on a term sheet: Trash Gurus. It began with commercial waste and valet trash - hauling garbage from apartment communities, the definition of a business investors politely ignore. Founded in September 2022, it reached $1.1M in gross merchandise value shortly after launch, with a 117% net retention rate and 148% average quarter-over-quarter growth. The trash was real. So was the traction.
Somewhere in the hauling, Irwin saw the bigger shape. Waste was one line item on a job site drowning in line items, each one ordered by phone, each one a small tax on a contractor's day. So Trash Gurus grew up, changed its name, and aimed at the whole thing. Downstream stopped being about trash and started being about procurement.
Before the boom lifts: a biology degree, an Epic badge, and a valet-trash route. Not the origin story you'd script - which is exactly why it works.
Contractors upload a project list or rollout sheet. Downstream maps the locations and the needs - no spreadsheets emailed back and forth, no re-typing.
Real-time pricing and availability across vetted suppliers, nationwide. Three-plus quotes per job, the comparison shopping the industry never had.
Schedule delivery and use credit with nothing upfront. Book-now-pay-later financing - for a forklift. The Downstream Forge program returns up to 5% cash back.
The whole design philosophy in one line: if ordering a pizza is easier than renting a dumpster, the dumpster industry is doing it wrong.
Healthcare informatics consultant at Bryan Health and Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Epic Beacon consultant at Renown Health and Trinity Health - building oncology and pharmacy systems across 22 states.
Co-founds Doorside Waste and launches Trash Gurus, a commercial waste startup in Dallas.
Hits $1.1M GMV with 117% net retention and 148% average QoQ growth.
Rebrands and expands into Downstream - equipment, waste, and site services, 100,000+ listings.
Raises $8M Series A co-led by Brick & Mortar Ventures and Moneta Ventures.
A founder who came to heavy equipment sideways, and made the detour the whole advantage.
Downstream stopped being about trash and started being about procurement.
There is a version of the founder story that only ever chases the shiny problem - the consumer app, the AI copilot, the thing that photographs well at a demo day. Irwin went the other direction. He chased the fax machine. He chased the phone call a superintendent makes at 6 a.m. to find out whether a lift is available. He chased the invoice nobody can reconcile.
That is the quiet bet underneath Downstream: the industries everyone finds beneath them are exactly the ones still running on paper. Construction spends enormous sums renting equipment, hauling waste, and servicing sites, and for decades that spend moved through calls, faxes, and relationships rather than software. When an investor says the sector "has seen little innovation," a founder like Irwin hears a market with no incumbent standing in the doorway.
He also brought an operator's discipline to it. The early metrics - net retention above 100%, take rates near 18%, triple-digit quarterly growth - are not the numbers of a company chasing headlines. They are the numbers of someone who learned, inside hospital pharmacies, that the money is in the plumbing. Fix the workflow, and the growth takes care of itself.
Where it goes from here is the interesting part. "AI agents that procure autonomously" is a large promise for an industry that still prints delivery tickets. But the ambition is coherent with everything before it: take the human out of the tedious loop, leave them the decisions that matter. If Irwin is right, the next generation of contractors will never learn to chase a quote, the way a generation stopped learning to read a road atlas. They will just tap, and the machine will show up. Like a pizza.
Zachary Irwin is the co-founder and CEO of Downstream, a Dallas-based marketplace that lets contractors book equipment rentals, dumpsters, portable toilets, and site services with a few taps - the way you might order a pizza. Started in 2022 as 'Trash Gurus' and rebuilt into an AI-driven procurement platform with 100,000+ listings, Downstream raised an $8M Series A in November 2025 co-led by Brick & Mortar Ventures and Moneta Ventures. Irwin came to construction's least glamorous corner from an unlikely place: years as a healthcare-software (Epic) consultant building oncology and pharmacy systems across 22 states.
Last updated: