NewsJul 8, 2026

Scaffold Wins $100K at the 2026 Housing Innovation Summit Pitchfest

A panel on stage facing a packed conference atrium

Scaffold took home the $100K HTV Investment award at Pitchfest, the flagship startup competition of the Housing Innovation Summit, held May 19–21, 2026 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The pitch competition is hosted by the Housing Innovation Alliance in partnership with Home Technology Ventures (HTV), and brings together the housing industry's most promising startups to pitch live in front of investors and industry leaders.

Pitchfest is the leading forum for housing-focused startups and industry to connect, share ideas, and explore business opportunities. Applicants are evaluated the way an investor would size up a deal: on the uniqueness of the idea, its potential to move the industry forward, its scalability and feasibility, and the strength of the team behind it. A select group of finalists is chosen to pitch live on stage, where a Judges' Choice and an Audience Favorite are named on the spot. One company walks away with a direct investment from Home Technology Ventures. Past participants have gone on to land strategic advisors, demonstration partners, and multimillion-dollar investors through the Housing Innovation Alliance network, with some acquired after meeting connections at Pitchfest itself.

Scaffold was selected from a competitive field of finalists working across construction software, robotics, regulatory technology, and other areas shaping the future of homebuilding. The $100K HTV Investment is Pitchfest's marquee award, reserved for the founder that judges believe is best positioned to make a lasting impact on the industry.

We pitched alongside innovative companies working on robotics, regulatory technology, land development, and building products. Coordination is the highest-leverage opportunity to build houses cheaper today.
Ben JohnsonCEO, Scaffold

The Problem Scaffold Solves

Residential construction runs on an increasingly complex network of builder portals, contractor software, and supplier systems, none of which share a common data format. At the level of a single home, hundreds of tasks are edited dozens of times, and each system records those edits in its own language. Scaffold is the layer underneath all of them: a universal record that every system can read, trust, and build on top of.

Scaffold's platform reads from the builder portals, contractor software, and supplier platforms the industry already uses — including the many portals that expose no API at all — and resolves what it finds into a single, current record. It reconciles deficiencies in source data, flags changes and discrepancies, maintains a complete history of every job, and automates routine work across purchase orders, invoicing, and scheduling. Teams handle the exceptions that need judgment while the platform keeps the underlying data current.

The result is a shared data layer connecting builders, trades, and suppliers without requiring the industry to adopt any single system — and the impact lands on the jobsite. Because every connected system reflects the same current information, contractors using Scaffold can dispatch crews only when a site is ready and catch discrepancies before they become rework. Across its trade contractor base, Scaffold reports roughly 50% fewer dry runs and an 89% reduction in mistakes within the first 60 days of go-live.

Hear from Ben

About Home Technology Ventures

Home Technology Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in bold founders reshaping the future of homes and the industries that support them. HTV backs startups working to solve housing affordability and modernize an industry it sees as significantly underinvested in technology and R&D, with a portfolio spanning construction, financing, and home services.

What's Next

The $100K investment from Home Technology Ventures will help Scaffold accelerate its mission to give the residential construction industry a shared source of truth: connecting builders, trades, and suppliers on data they can all trust, without asking anyone to rip and replace the tools they already rely on.

Learn more about the Housing Innovation Summit at housinginnovationsummit.com and about Pitchfest at housingpitchfest.com.