Procore began because its founder could not find out what was happening on his own house. Tooey Courtemanche, a former carpenter turned tech founder, was building a home in Santa Barbara. Simple questions about what work was done, or where the budget stood, took days to answer. Construction was one of the largest industries in the world and one of the least digital. When Procore went public in May 2021, it was betting that builders were finally ready to trade paper for software.

A House in Santa Barbara

Courtemanche started Procore in 2002, in Carpinteria, California, to fix the frustrations of his own building project. He wrote software that kept owners, general contractors, specialty contractors and architects on the same page. The bet was that construction firms would pay for one shared platform instead of a pile of spreadsheets, faxes and phone calls. Procore charged by the volume of construction work its customers ran through it, with unlimited users.

Nineteen Years to the NYSE

Procore priced its offering at $67 a share and began trading on the NYSE on May 20, 2021. It raised about $634.5 million, and the shares closed the first day up more than 30 percent. Revenue reached $1.32 billion in 2025. Ajei Gopal later took over as chief executive, with Courtemanche as chairman. In July 2026 Procore agreed to buy DroneDeploy, a maker of drone mapping software. It still trades on the NYSE as PCOR.

Cover: Sir Walter Scott's Monument, Edinburgh; as it appeared when nearly finished, William Henry Fox Talbot. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a monument under construction (building the world).