Software company likened to Atlassian raises nearly $30 million in venture capital

A company described as “Atlassian for the built world” has raised nearly $30 million in venture capital, defying the ongoing funding slump that continues to leave Australian start-ups struggling to raise investment.

Sitemate has drawn comparisons with Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar’s tech giant Atlassian for both its growth trajectory and its product, which aims to replace Word and Excel with workflow software tools. The latest funding round has valued the Sydney-based start-up at close to $200 million.

Instead of being aimed at software engineers, however, Sitemate offers software for engineers working on the “built world”, including civil, structural, mechanical and electrical projects.

Sitemate chief executive Hartley Pike is a former field engineer with Lendlease.Credit:

The start-up is led by chief executive Hartley Pike, a former field engineer with Lendlease who found himself buried in paperwork before deciding to start a software company to fix that problem.

“We see so many ‘built world’ companies struggle to adopt and use clunky all-in-one systems, which force many of them to move back to legacy formats like Word and Excel – and even paper – because at least paper, Word and Excel are flexible and familiar,” Pike said.

He said Sitemate’s point of difference is its no-code “building blocks”, which can be configured and combined to meet the needs of thousands of different processes across industries, regions and compliance requirements. He said his company started booming when COVID hit, and industries moved to digitise most of their processes.

“Since we launched Sitemate in August 2018, over six years ago, we have grown every single month consecutively, and our growth rate is still increasing year over year,” he said.

Sitemate has closed a $27.5 million funding round led by Blackbird, with participation from existing investors Shearwater Capital and Marbruck. The company will use the money to fuel its international expansion, including opening an office in Austin, Texas that will join its offices in London, Vancouver and Toronto.