Reconstructing Home Construction: Assembling the Team to Build Better, Together

In technology, a developer designs and creates software.  In homebuilding, a developer designs and constructs housing. At Mosaic, we do both.

Today, we are proud to announce a $100 million strategic agreement with Mandalay Homes, Arizona’s leading energy-efficient home builder. Together, Mosaic and Mandalay Homes will build 400 homes over the next 24 months in Northern Arizona. In a region where housing supply is decreasing, and pricing is rapidly increasing, we are addressing this demand, as we bring on 80 new members to our team and continue to enhance our technology platform, enabling builders to construct higher quality homes faster and at a lower cost. While we currently develop our platform on homes we build ourselves, over time we plan to provide our solutions to other homebuilders, contractors, and construction crews so we can all create better communities together. The Mosaic • Mandalay partnership is a natural fit as we are both focused on consistency, efficiency, and affordability.

We also want to take this time to announce our $14.25M Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing total funding to date to $24.75M.  Other investors in Mosaic include Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, Greylock Partners, Slow Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, SV Angel, 8VC, Building Ventures, and notable angels like Elad Gil, Ram Shriram, Eric Wu (CEO of OpenDoor), and Michael Milstein (Milstein Properties and Emigrant Bank).

“There is a huge opportunity for technology to disrupt and streamline the real estate industry, creating cost efficiencies that benefit virtually every stakeholder in the homebuilding ecosystem — including homeowners. The Mosaic platform contributes to a future in which the homes are both more affordable and better for families across the country.” – Anish Acharya, General Partner, a16z

How we got here

From the start, Mosaic has been focused on a single mission: to create places people love and make them widely available. The rate-limiting step in achieving this mission has been making the fieldwork of home building more efficient, scalable, and adaptable. To that end, we have developed a technology platform to address these needs and to enable teams to build beautiful and unique homes faster and more efficiently. You can read more about our history and our company here.

As we build upon our foundation, Mandalay Homes accelerates our progress and helps us hold steady on a process-first approach to scale operations thoughtfully, without compromising quality for volume.

We are excited to build better, together.

Where we are going

Builder’s View, Technologist’s Touch

There’s an experience that can only be earned on a job site and process improvements that can only be achieved with the help of technology.

• Mosaic’s team combines construction, technology, real estate development, academic, and business expertise.
• Our technology is informed by the crews that will use it as well as the developers, lenders, municipalities, and sales staff up and downstream of the construction process.
• Our technology is also informed by our partners like Mandalay. Mandalay’s three decades of field experience as an award-winning, category-defining home builder has earned developer, supplier, and homeowner trust and set new standards for energy efficiency.
• Members of our technology team hail from Google, Microsoft, MIT, and Stanford and bring the power of software to construction.
• Our partner network is strong, spanning from best-in-class trade organizations, to thoughtful developers, to supportive and mission-aligned investors.

Standardize the Process, Not the Product

Homebuilding is both an art and a science. We are honored to build not only houses but homes: framing life for families and communities over generations.  

• Mosaic’s mission is to build places that honor each family’s unique needs.
• Our platform uses software to model and determine the best way to build, which we believe is on-site, not in a factory.
• We digitize standard construction plans and identify the best way for homes to be built on-site, using the same materials, workforce, and inspections as conventional homebuilding.
• Mosaic’s technology improves efficiency in the field without reducing the flexibility of the architect when designing the home.
• Reducing waste and improving margins results in cost savings and faster cycle times.
• To date, we have seen a 20% reduction in construction time and a 15% reduction in material usage in framing while not changing the design of the home.

Upskill, Not Outsource

The skilled workforce shortage is a call for industry refinement, not replacement.  

• We keep crews building: smarter, safer, and faster.
• Solving the labor crunch is incredibly hard to do at scale, but this is exactly what our technology is designed to accomplish – incorporate people as part of the technology process, not replace them.
• We focus workers on tasks that require their human touch and expertise – leading to more efficient, rewarding, and safer work.
• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, apprenticeship programs typically take 1-6 years, or 2,000 – 12,000 work hours, to complete.
• Mosaic’s platform allows the existing workforce to increase productivity while also making construction as a career more appealing for the next generation.

Growing Thoughtfully

Without a blueprint or floor plan, a building would just be a collection of ill-fitting pieces.  Strategic, sustainable growth happens in stages, with time and foresight.

• We hope to work with, not disrupt, the homebuilding industry, making the ecosystem and our partners stronger.
• Construction is capital intensive, and iterating can be difficult and costly.  We will scale deliberately and create an enduring business by exceeding the expectations of our customers.
• We have expanded our business through execution with established, respected homebuilders and partnered with thoughtful long-term thinking investors.
• Together with Mandalay, we have completed nearly 70 beautiful, affordable, quality homes in northern Arizona since 2018. And we partner with developers and landowners such as Vintage Partners and Arizona Eco Development.
• We believe our approach to scaling will not only benefit our partners but lead to faster growth for Mosaic as a company and for the industry overall.
• Today’s agreement will expedite the construction of homes at existing and future Mandalay projects in the greater Prescott and Prescott Valley, Arizona areas, as well as the construction of the first Mosaic-designed homes at the Adora neighborhood in the Timber Sky community in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Our mission is to build places people love and make them widely available. This is not a mission we can accomplish on our own. With every home Mosaic builds, we are expanding an ecosystem of like-minded partners eager to improve our communities.  We are excited to define the new construction technology standards with Mandalay and eventually other builders, suppliers, crews, developers, municipalities, and families in the United States and around the world.