Fieldwire’s Founder Is Solving Construction Workflow Problems With a Paratrooper’s Perspective

There are many routes toward a career in construction tech, but jumping out of airplanes is one we hadn’t encountered –– until we met Yves Frinault, co-founder and CEO of Fieldwire.

As an engineering student at École Polytechnique in his native France, Yves completed the school’s traditional year of military service. He served as a paratrooper, quickly learning that a team’s performance is only as good as the efficiency and clarity of its communications.

Years later, when he was in grad school at Stanford, he found himself working with 3D and 4D modeling technology, attempting to improve building design processes. The objective was to plan the “perfect project,” says Yves. 

“I felt like the premise was wrong. Because you’re taught in the army that you can have the best plan, but it’s going to fall apart as soon as you start executing it.”

Coupled with years of experience as a product manager in Silicon Valley (and many more in DIY residential renovation), the idea for Fieldwire began to emerge. 

In 2013, Fieldwire launched with a crack team of construction and software engineers from Stanford, Berkeley and MIT. By 2016, Yves was hanging with the Crew on an early episode of the podcast . 

Since then, it’s evolved to become an industry favorite. Today, 500,000 job sites worldwide use Fieldwire, and the company has raised $41.2 million –– including a recently wrapped Series C led by Menlo Ventures.

On this episode, Yves talks about his journey from static line to bottom line. Read on for the highlights. 

All about Yves

First things first: Congratulations to Yves, who earlier this year became a U.S. citizen. 

“I came here thinking I’d stay maybe one or two years, learn English and then go back and use my skills to do business in Europe,” he says. “But I never left.”

France’s loss is America’s gain. 

Yves’ story begins sometime in the ‘80s, in la République, where he grew up in a family of ingénieures. 

“My parents are engineers. Both of my brothers and my sister are engineers as well. And my parents’ hobby was to buy houses and remodel them. So I grew up on residential construction sites.”

As he got older, Yves began helping with the construction work. Years later at École Polytechnique, he studied mechanical engineering and computer science before heading to Palo Alto for a master’s in construction management.

That’s where he started thinking about how the best-laid plans can go awry on construction sites, just as they do in the military. He recognized a few common problems, and started thinking up a technical solution.

But when he came out of Stanford in the mid ‘00s, “the market wasn’t doing too well,” says Yves. Plus, the iPhone revolution hadn’t even begun, and “the cloud was still very scary for a lot of companies. So I put that idea aside and got lured to work in the Valley.”

He spent five years as a product manager of video game developer Ubisoft, creators of Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon and Just Dance, to name a few.

“Working in that space, you learn there’s a really high bar for product,” he explains.

He also saw how startups were using software to organize their tasks and teams. Fast forward to 2013, and it was clear that smartphones were going to be ubiquitous and so was the cloud. Big companies like Dropbox were entering the construction market. 

“It felt like the stars were aligning,” Yves says. “We were like, okay, let’s bring the next generation of coordination tools to the field of construction. And we started Fieldwire.”

Bridging the ‘labor coordination’ gap 

The Fieldwire platform solves two problems, Yves says. “One is access to information –– which several other good platforms do as well: accessing your plans, files, forms and all of that. The second problem we solve … is coordination of labor at a larger scale.” 

Labor coordination is “the core of what makes us successful,” he adds. “We bridge the gap between a high-level schedule and the piece of paper in your back pocket with five or 10 items that you and your crew are working on today.”

Open + agile = success

Fieldwire, the company, is powered by … well, Fieldwire. 

That’s only natural, because agile project management software Jira “was a huge inspiration” for Yves and his team as they built the platform. “We actually pitched the company as Jira for construction,” he says. “That’s how we convinced VCs to invest.”

Flexibility and customization for just about any project or team is key, Yves explains. “We had an open API from the get-go … So anything you can do by hand in Fieldwire you can do programmatically.”

When the company launched, “none of our customers had developers who could do advanced things with that,” he adds. 

“That has completely changed over the last few years. Now, larger ones have in-house teams that build integration constantly between this system and that system –– doubling time entries and things like that.”

Growth mindset

Yves credits the “freemium” model for Fieldwire’s organic growth. The product is free for up to five users. 

Then if a user wants Fieldwire for multiple teams, it’s a no-brainer to buy one of the paid subscription tiers. The boots on the ground, so to speak, already use it and love it.

In this way, the product has “spread from contractor to contractor,” Yves says.

At its core, this growth strategy offers great advice for entrepreneurs or anyone who manages people. 

“Listen to your own employees,” says Yves. “They probably know a whole lot about what works for them. The more you listen to your team, the better your results will be.”