Editorial

Monograph Raises $20 Million to Build the Future of Practice Operations

Robert Yuen Photo
Monograph Raises $20 Million to Build the Future of Practice Operations
Contents

Today we announced our Series B: a $20M round of funding led by Tiger Global with participation from our partners at Index Ventures, Homebrew, Designer Fund, Parade Ventures, and Tishman Speyer. I wanted to take a few minutes here to talk about where we’ve been and the future of Practice Operations.

When Moe, Alex, and myself started Monograph, we knew there was an opportunity to improve the lives of our former colleagues and friends who were working in architecture firms with no timely visibility into the financial performance of their projects. Our customers have deeply resonated with this experience. Before adopting Monograph, firm owners lacked the ability to understand the financial status of their projects and their firm at any given moment. They were too busy either stitching together Excel spreadsheets, shoehorning software that wasn’t designed for the industry, or using legacy software so clunky that no one really wanted to use it. 

More importantly, Monograph unlocked visibility and transparency for project teams who now have access to real-time financial and project level data to help them make decisions about budgets, schedules, roles, and responsibilities. Design professionals, like architects, are visual people — and they’ve needed a solution that was designed specifically for them. Beyond design, our customers share our values. They care about being human and appreciate the support, education, and attention we provide no matter their size. With Monograph, they now have an operating system built specifically for their unique workflows.


The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

In an industry where 81% of firms are made up of small businesses, wrangling spreadsheets represents a significant amount of their non-billable time. This time compounds across the number of tabs or separate spreadsheets that have to be managed to provide a picture of financial health. Each spreadsheet might manage different information, from timesheets, to employees, to schedules and budgets. By unifying all of this data into the easiest-to-use platform designed for their needs, we’re saving architects days of un-billable time across their team while providing real-time visibility into project and firm performance. 

As we’ve been helping our customers move away from this cut & paste world, we’re building unique ways of representing this data back to them in a quickly digestible way where they need it most: within projects. From improvements to our MoneyGantt™ to project templates and profit drivers, our customers are seeing the immense benefit of a product that is designed specifically for them. For example, a project manager doesn’t have to wait to hear back at the end of the month from a bookkeeper as to the financial health of their project -- that information is right in the MoneyGantt™.


The future of Practice Operations

If spreadsheets represent a world of siloed projects and teams, they also represent the reality of operating a small firm — there is never enough time to focus on the business as opposed to in the business. It’s because of this reality that our vision extends far beyond breaking down internal silos. We’re specifically looking to streamline the biggest workflow challenges firm owners, office admins, and design professionals face in the day to day experience of running a firm. So much has been said about innovation in the design and production of drawings and 3D data models, but what’s the BIM equivalent of firm management? We believe it’s Practice Operations.


Our investment in the Industry

More than just dollars in the bank, I see this fundraising milestone as a reason to continue to build towards our vision and to continue our mission to be always in service to the men and women of the building industry. I’m incredibly proud of the Monograph team and celebrating today, some of the many ways we already give back. 

Section Cut: The Practice Operations Conference

Our Best Practice Podcast where we interview firm leaders about their operations

A growing community of architects looking to grow their firms and professionally

A Job Board to help our customers find talent


Growing our team

This new round of funding will help us accelerate development on the workflows that will enable our architects to do more with less. Our roadmap is incredibly exciting and I can’t wait for you to experience it.

None of what we’re building would be possible without the continued feedback and trust of our customers, our supporters, and our investors. They are part of this journey and like us, deeply want to see software that actually takes into account the unique workflow challenges the industry faces.  We are grateful for their support and inspiration to build Monograph, and to our growing team, who have worked hard to get us to this point.

In order to build the future of Practice Operations, we need to deliver world-class value to an industry that designs the world around us. Since we started this journey, we felt it was important for us to build a culture that reflects what the industry aspires to be: diverse, equitable, and inclusive. 

If you find that our mission resonates with you check out our careers page. We’re a product-led team that deeply values design and we’d love for you to come over, challenge us and shape the future at Monograph. We encourage anyone to apply who wants to be a part of our design-driven product company that believes people are at the center of our built environment. 

By joining us, you can leave a mark in one of the largest industries in the world over the next decade. 

We are doing something that has never been done before and we look forward to working with you.


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