EquipmentShare (YC W15) goes public

Summary

When we first met the founders of EquipmentShare in Winter 2015, they didn’t come from Silicon Valley or Wall Street. They came from rural Missouri: the “Show Me” state. Their background is one where you learned to build things yourself, fix what was broken, and work with what you had.EquipmentShare’s founders grew up in a commune where rules were strict, and self-reliance wasn’t a slogan — it was a necessity. When they left, they didn’t have much. They certainly didn’t have Ivy League degrees. What they did have was something much better: a deep understanding of construction, contractors, and the everyday frustration of trying to get real work done with the wrong tools and the wrong systems.The EquipmentShare founders didn’t start by trying to “disrupt” an industry. They started by solving their own problem. YC founder Paul Graham proselytized about solving your own problems in his essay about how to get startup ideas: “The most successful startups almost all begin … from things their founders built because there seemed a gap in the world.”Co-founder and CEO Jabbok Schlacks at YC W15 Demo DayEquipmentShare started as a straightforward idea, which was to level the playing field for contractors by simplifying access to equipment, building a marketplace for construction machinery and unlocking more value from what they already owned. From day one, the company operated with a distinct rhythm: build first (before talking about it), ship fast (before optimization), and listen (obsessively) to customers.YC’s motto is “Make something people want” and few companies embody that principle more literally than EquipmentShare.Over time, they didn’t just build a marketplace. They built an operating system for the jobsite. What started as a way to rent and share equipment grew into a national, vertically integrated platform that helps contractors manage fleets, track machines, and run their operations better. Their T3 telematics and software platform — built because customers need...