A Sioux City-based company is simplifying the way the construction companies disburse payments.
Launched in 2016, Lienwaivers.io is a cloud-based construction payments platform which integrates with common accounting and project management software to facilitate the exchange of lien waivers, ACH payments, W9s, and 1099s.
“A friend of mine who works in the construction industry was talking about some of the challenges he faced in the disbursement process and so I decided to work with him to write a little bit of software to help out with that and it turned out that the software worked pretty well for his company,” said Geoff Arnold, CEO and co-founder of Lienwaivers.io. “I started asking around to other construction and construction-related companies and found out that this was an issue that a lot of companies were facing. So we decided to start a company to commercialize the product.”
Typically, completing lien waivers and mailing payments is a time-consuming process for people who work on the financial side of the construction business. Lienwaivers.io is looking to change that by allowing contractors, lenders and title companies to utilize key features to speed up their construction disbursement process.
Finding the right pricing model
One of the biggest challenges Lienwaivers.io has faced in its first two and half years is finding a price model that works for them.
“You’re trying to present very straight-forward pricing that’s easy to understand and digest, says Arnold. “But you also want it to scale so that as you’re working with customers, you’re making more money because you’re providing more value.”
Over the past two years, Lienwaivers.io has tested many different pricing models over the past trying to present a straight-forward and fair pricing model that is also scalable.
“Ultimately, we feel pretty good about our pricing model now, but it’s still kind of a work in progress.”
Changing the construction industry with tailor-fit software
“I don’t think the construction industry is old and archaic. I really don’t. I understand why people say that, but I just don’t feel that way,” says Arnold. “What I will say is that construction is still dominated by these large one-size-fits-all construction software packages. And what we’ve seen in other verticals is people choosing different software packages that work really well for their particular problems and then piecing those together using API to communicate between them. That way you’re really getting a custom solution to the way that you do business.”
That’s where Lienwaivers.io comes in. By focusing purely on the disbursement side of things, Lienwaivers.io allows companies to reduce the cost of their disbursement process without having to purchase a massive software package.
“We don’t try to do project management. We don’t try to do construction accounting,” says Arnold. “We purely say, when you’ve decided who you want to pay and how much you want to pay them, our software can automate all of that, which turns out to be a huge amount of work in construction.”