After nearly four years of working in sales at tradesperson software company ServiceTitan, Mark Hoadley (pictured above) was looking for a change and to potentially start something of his own in a similar industry.
Hoadley’s brother-in-law, and now co-founder, Ben Sikma, was working on M&A in the waste management space at the time. Sikma discovered how outdated many of the companies changing hands were. When he and Hoadley started looking deeper, they realized waste management might be exactly what Hoadley was looking for.
“All of the existing software in the space, they were clunky, old,” Hoadley told TechCrunch. “Sometimes we’d talk about how this one reminds us of the Oregon Trail, this reminds us of the cell phone Michael Douglas used in ‘Wall Street.’ They’re very clunky and antiquated.”
Hoadley, now CEO, and Sikma, now president, launched Hauler Hero in 2020. The cloud-based software platform works with waste management companies on everything from route planning and management to billing to a customer portal where companies’ underlying customers can request pickups. Hauler Hero’s software also taps AI to help automate some of these tasks like invoicing and route management to find inefficiencies and help companies save money.
Hoadley said the company specifically decided to build multiple product lines right out of the gate as opposed to just building route management or billing software with plans to expand later. He said that he watched ServiceTitan struggle to expand into recurring services (pest control) while he was there. The company ended up having to buy an existing player to get it to work. He didn’t want his company to face the same fate.
“We wanted to make sure that we built this the right way from the beginning,” Hoadley said. “Many people will advise you to build an MVP, which is just a wedge into the market, and on balance, that didn’t seem like the right way to do this. It’s more difficult to raise all the capital and start that way, but now we’ve got a really efficient machine that our customers love.”
The company launched its platform in beta in 2022 and rolled out publicly in Q1 2024. Since then it has amassed more than 120 residential and commercial waste management customers across 40 states. It’s grown its revenue 200% in the past year.
Hauler Hero is announcing that it raised $10 million in seed funding led by I2BF Ventures with participation from K5 Global and Somersault Ventures in addition to executives from companies like Gusto and ServiceTitan and some of Hauler Hero’s customers.
Hoadley said the company plans to use the funds to hire more engineers and sales folks and to continue working on product development.
One area the company is working on, Hoadley said, is building up their products for larger enterprise customers that want better integrations with their other related businesses like transfer stations, or places to sort and store waste. He added that they are also looking to build up its integrated communications offerings like two-way text messaging, which would allow the company to get enough data to eventually build a customer service agent.
Hauler Hero’s tech operates in a relatively crowded industry filled with legacy software companies including Capterra, WasteWorks, and cieTrade, among others.
There are also other startups looking to solve these problems. Copenhagen-based WasteHero is one early-stage startup looking to build software for this industry that’s raised $6.7 million in venture funding. New York-based CurbWaste is another that raised $21.2 million in funding.
The waste management market is massive, though: It generated more than $140 billion in revenue in the U.S. alone in 2023. While the industry does include huge enterprises like Waste Management and G Mello, it also includes thousands of smaller privately run waste collection companies. Hauler Hero wants to grab a meaningful market share.
“It’s extremely rewarding. These are people who really are doing backbreaking work and God’s work,” Hoadley said. “It’s really rewarding to give them an opportunity to get their workflows done more quickly, to be able to generate reports more easily, and ultimately to grow faster and have more cash in their pockets to do the things that matter to them.”