Convex

Overview

Convex built a map for the people who sell services to commercial buildings. Founded in 2017 and accepted into YC's Winter 2019 batch, it combined property, permit, equipment, ownership, company, and contact data with sales workflows for HVAC, fire safety, security, elevators, janitorial, and other contractors. Convex raised $60 million and became a meaningful vertical sales platform.

ServiceTitan acquired Convex in April 2024 for $25.8 million, less than half the disclosed funding.^[1] That makes the venture outcome weak even though the product survived. ServiceTitan kept the brand, founders, data, and workflow, then connected Convex to quoting, jobs, and realized revenue. Convex found a valuable top-of-funnel wedge; its independent limit was that the incumbent system of record could make the same wedge more complete.

Founding Story

Charlie Warren grew up in Detroit around his family's wiring business. He understood commercial service work before he entered software: technicians maintained physical systems, but the companies behind them often sold through relationships, territories, paper lists, and institutional memory. After college and graduate work in energy and finance, he began collaborating with Blake Meulmester, whose prior work included industrial software, data, and analytics engagements at Goldman Sachs and Deloitte.

Warren and Meulmester started Convex in 2017 in Meulmester's San Mateo garage. Warren later recalled that they “bootstrapped for six months with one whiteboard to our names.”^[2] Brandon Dement and Sven Linsmaier were also named as early builders in investor accounts. The central idea was that a commercial property was a rich data object. Its location, size, use, owner, tenants, equipment, permits, and prior work could tell a contractor whether the building fit its ideal account.

The first product was Atlas, a map-based sales-intelligence application. A representative could draw or select a territory, filter buildings, identify owners and decision makers, inspect permit or equipment signals, and manage outreach. The product replaced a familiar process: driving around looking for promising buildings, searching county records, browsing LinkedIn, and assembling lists in spreadsheets.

The first onboarding exposed a positioning problem. Warren sold Atlas, flew to the customer, and demonstrated it to a 12-person team. Their reaction was to ask what else it did. He took away a sentence that became his operating rule: “always lead with outcomes over features.”^[2] Convex would sell faster prospecting, shorter rep ramp time, and more service revenue, not a map.

Convex entered YC in winter 2019.^[3] Emergence Capital led a $17 million Series A in 2020. In 2021, Fifth Wall, Emergence, and GGV led a $39 million Series B, bringing disclosed funding to $60 million.^[4]

Timeline

• 2017: Charlie Warren and Blake Meulmester founded Convex and bootstrapped it for six months in a garage.^[2]
• Winter 2019: Convex joined Y Combinator.^[3]
• 2019: Convex raised $4 million in seed funding.
• March 2020: Emergence Capital led a previously undisclosed $17 million Series A.^[4]
• October 2021: Convex announced a $39 million Series B and $60 million raised in total.
• April 2, 2024: ServiceTitan announced an agreement to acquire Convex.^[5]
• April 2024: ServiceTitan completed the purchase of all Convex equity for $25.8 million.^[1]
• 2025: ServiceTitan connected Convex lead discovery to its commercial CRM, quoting, and reporting.^[6]

What They Built

Atlas made commercial-property intelligence usable by sales teams. The database covered buildings, owners, tenants, contacts, permits, and physical attributes. A rep could filter by building size, owner occupancy, property type, equipment age, or recent work, then decide which accounts deserved attention. The map matched how contractors thought about territories and service density.

Convex added sales execution around that intelligence. Teams could create accounts and opportunities, manage outreach, record activity, call or email prospects, and track pipeline. Later products added buyer-intent signals and automated lead discovery. The present ServiceTitan product also offers AI-assisted searches and outreach, though those features expanded after acquisition.^[7]