From sawdust to seed round: ConstructionClock grows from Winnipeg

Builders are paid for putting their effort into building homes, not for filling out paperwork. But if they want to get paid, they will eventually have to put down the hammer and pick up the pen.

“We keep track of all this verified time, now it’s time to pay these people.”

Nobody knows this better than David Peters. Peters ran his own subcontracting business for nearly two decades. His employees just wanted to get paid; they often hurriedly filled out the form at the end of their shift and often overestimated in the process.

“My biggest problem was that our profits were being eaten up by poor time tracking… unintentional time theft,” Peters told BetaKit in an interview at the SAAS NORTH conference in November.

“Part of this is my fault: as the owner of a construction company, I should have done better,” Peters added. “But it was also partly [that] There simply aren’t any great tools for building SMEs.”

Tired of low profits, Peters decided to get into technology. He has spent the last three years building ConstructionClock in his hometown of Winnipeg. The application allows workers to focus on the work at hand by automating the recording of working time and attendance, recording their arrival and departure from work based on geolocation data.

Now the founder and CEO hopes to use the proceeds from the new C$2 million seed round to triple ConstructionClock's customer base in 2026 and take the product's natural next step.

“We've been keeping track of all this verified time, now it's time to pay these people,” Peters said.

Winnipeg Betting

Peters, whose voice sounds like sandpaper from inhaling “a lot” of sawdust over the years, is not your typical tech founder. Construction was blueprints and projected costs—a language he understood—and technology was vision and projections.

“I felt like a total charlatan,” Peters said. “But I overcame it because I invested all my savings in this company.”

He's also building a startup in Winnipeg's small tech ecosystem. There are almost no venture capital firms here and not many angel investors, he said, meaning not many people are willing to bet on tech companies in the area.

“If you have pre-income, it's impossible to fundraise in Winnipeg,” Peters said.

Ian Crozier, founder and general partner of the Winnipeg company Trillick VenturesI agree with Peters' assessment. ConstructionClock investor Trillick is one of a handful of Winnipeg venture capital players trying to bolster the city's ecosystem.

“There's very little activity going on in Manitoba,” Crozier said. “Most of the successful companies had to raise funds outside of Manitoba, or they had very, very large cap tables that took them a very long time to raise.”

Despite being new to tech in this environment, Crozier said Peters was “very persistent” in pursuing growth and attracting the right investors to realize his vision.

However, ConstructionClock was not Peters' first rodeo. At the beginning of 2022, Peters achieved pre-seed round for his first tech startup, RoofBundle, which ended in a legal battle with one of the investors. The dispute was settled the day before the case went to trial.

“I have a lot of opinions about all of this because I first started a company and worked there for six months, I didn’t know what I was doing, and it was a learning experience for me,” Peters said in a subsequent phone interview. “I put it behind me, I don’t care anymore.”

“I felt like a huge charlatan. But I overcame it because I invested my savings in this company.”

In late 2022, he moved to his new company, ConstructionClock, taking most of his team with him to address subcontractor time and attendance issues. Hence, his “saving grace” was Manitoba. Small Business Venture Capital Tax Creditwhich, coupled with the rapid promotion of the product, allowed ConstructionClock to raise “just enough” funds to survive the early days. The startup raised $1.2 million in pre-seed capital at the end of 2024, not including a minor component for some early angels who received money.

Peters wanted to triple the size of the company in 2025 after raising funds. When that seemed achievable, he approached investors over the summer for a new $2 million seed round. He wanted to “keep it small,” but now he had a problem very different from Winnipeg: too many investors wanted in.

Best problems

Peters set the terms and narrowed them down to three investors: Trillikwho wrote the biggest check, as well as two returning investors in Chicago-based M25 and an undisclosed “super angel” who Peters says runs one of Winnipeg's largest tech companies.

Peters has an interesting relationship with Trillick. After investing a “small amount”, ConstructionClock CFO Dominic Smith became a partner in the fund. She is also his wife.

“Is this normal in other regions? Probably not,” Peters said. “But here in Winnipeg we have a very small ecosystem and we support each other like crazy.”

Crozier agreed with Peters, calling it a “really good example” of how integrated Winnipeg's tech community is. He said Smith is one of Trillick's many records and stated that her involvement did not influence Trillik's decision to invest in ConstructionClock.

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“Many Manitoba founders are partners in Trillik, and we are a small but growing tech ecosystem that collectively wants to help each other win and invest in the success of our peers,” Crozier said.

There are now 3,000 companies on the ConstructionClock platform, and Peters' goal is to use the seed funding to triple the number of customers by the end of 2026. The company has a very short sales cycle, typically taking less than a week for a potential customer to decide to use its platform, and it adds about 10 businesses per day. This is especially true in ConstructionClock's main market, the United States, where 80 percent of its customers live.

But the remaining 20 percent of ConstructionClock's customers are spread across 23 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada. To increase the company's global presence, Peters hopes to use the new funding to spend more on advertising and add 10 more salespeople to its 25-person workforce.

“Of course, you always want to do something big in your hometown, and that’s what I want to do.”

David Peters, ConstructionClock

Then comes ConstructionClock's next big feature, payroll, which Peters called a “natural evolution” of the platform. ConstructionClock, which will launch in select US states in mid-2026, will not only process subcontractor wages, the new offering will also include earned wage access (EWA). Using EWA's white-labeled affiliate service, professionals can leave their jobs and withdraw the money they just earned without waiting for payday.

“Restaurants are doing it, a lot of service businesses are doing EWA, no one is doing it for construction right now, especially in the SME space,” Peters said.

Winnipeg's relatively small tech scene is home to players like Bold Commerce, Taiv and SkipTheDishes. Without those stories, Peters said he doesn't know if he'll have the “courage” to jump into the tech scene.

“Of course, you always want to do something big in your hometown, and that’s what I want to do,” Peters said. Crozier now calls ConstructionClock a “standout” company in the ecosystem.

“Winnipeg, yeah, it's not the sexiest city in the world, but I feel like we can build a really great business there,” Peters added. “We just want to be one of those companies that continues to grow and we hire a ton of Winnipeggers.”

BetaKit Prairies Reports partly funded by YEGAFa non-profit organization dedicated to sharing business stories in Alberta.

All images courtesy of David Peters/ConstructionClock