Home renovation projects can be unpredictable for both customers and builders. Meanwhile, small contractors barely use modern software and home renovation giants, like IKEA, tend to trundle on with dated legacy software. UK startup Beams thinks it can solve this conundrum and has now raised a $9 million Series A funding round to crack the issues. That takes its total raised to $13.3 million to date.

This latest round was led by ETF Partners, with participation from existing investors Giant Ventures, firstminute capital and Borusan Ventures.

Beams has a pricing engine which predicts how much a project will cost and how long it will take, compares it with over 6,000 previous building projects, and then uses 3D photographic and laser scans to build a detailed model of the home to design the renovation. 

Founder and CEO Hayden Wood was at renewable energy startup Bulb (later acquired by Octopus Energy from administration) when he first came across the problem Beams is trying to solve: “I saw how much friction existed around making homes more energy-efficient,” he told TechCrunch.

“Projects were often too risky or complicated for consumers, which meant many avoided making improvements altogether. I realized that if someone could simplify the process and reduce the risks, more people would be able to complete these upgrades and make their homes greener.”

Realising how little software was used in the renovation process, especially when compared to commercial building projects, he decided to the residential construction sector was being held back by this outdated approach.

Beams is therefore a managed marketplace for customers and builders to find each other, adding software to the home renovation process to make it more predictable and more efficient.

A proprietary pricing engine predicts how much a project will eventually cost and also vets builders before they join the marketplace and after every project.

“We’ve been operating since September 2023. In that time we’ve sold over £4 million of projects. We are currently active on 130 renovations and have completed 25,” Wood said. 

Of course, there are competitors. They include kitchen companies like Neptune, Plain English, Reform, Uncommon, Devol, Wren and Magnet. And in the UK, tradesman lead-gen websites such as Checkatrade help contractors get jobs. 

However, Wood says, “no players in the market are building proprietary software that provides an end-to-end solution that takes on renovation all the way from planning through to build.”

Beams is entering a sizeable market. 

The renovation market is worth £380 billion in Europe and £5.5 billion in London alone.

The company now plans to accelerate product development and growth to serve the rest of the UK and Europe. 

But what happens if the plan goes wrong or the economy takes a turn for the worse? 

“We’re very close to reaching breakeven, so if the plan doesn’t work out and growth slows, we will stabilise spending and experiment with other business models,” said Wood. 

Commenting on the funding round, Lucy Rands, Partner at ETF Partners, added in a statement: “Hayden and the team have built a comprehensive suite of services that go far beyond simple energy assessments. Their solutions seamlessly integrate sustainability and practical home improvements to help modernize the UK and Europe’s aging housing stock.”