Part3’s Platform Strategy: How They Built a 175% Net Revenue Retention Rate by Starting with Core Users First

A 175% net revenue retention rate is extraordinary for any SaaS company. For a startup in construction technology – an industry notorious for slow adoption – it’s remarkable. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Part3 founder Jack Sadler revealed how their laser focus on architects and engineers as core users drove this exceptional growth.

The Core User Strategy

While most construction tech companies target general contractors, Part3 took a different approach. “Construction administration is through the lens of designers. So architects and engineers, you know, mechanical, structural, civil, and the rest of the consultants that design buildings and structures,” Jack explains. “What we’re trying to do is create a category that actually arms all of those designers with the tools, the data, and the information they need to manage the build phase as well as they can.”

This focused approach emerged from deep industry understanding. “90% of what they do is documents, 10% is data,” Jack notes about architects’ current workflow. This insight led to a clear value proposition: transforming document-heavy processes into data-driven workflows.

Building the Platform Network

Part3’s platform strategy starts with making their core users – architects and engineers – successful before expanding to other stakeholders. “What we’re really trying to do here around construction administration is create the de facto platform that connects every one of these professionals that’s involved,” Jack shares. This includes contractors, owners, financiers, product representatives, lawyers, and project managers.

The strategy proved powerful. After raising their seed round, Part3 reported a 175% net revenue retention rate, meaning their existing customers were significantly expanding their usage. This expansion happens naturally as architects bring more projects and team members onto the platform.

The Expansion Playbook

The pandemic accelerated their growth strategy. “We saw in the construction industry where its notoriously difficult to get people to change what they do, people suddenly adopting things like cloud based software and chat tools like teams and slack and Zoom and conferencing tools,” Jack recalls. This shift eliminated what had been a major barrier – educating customers about cloud security.

Their expansion metrics tell the story. In 2022, their first full year after raising pre-seed funding, they increased top-line revenue by 6x. In 2023, they achieved another 2.5x growth. Perhaps most impressively, they close about one-third of every qualified deal that comes in.

From Core Users to Platform

Part3’s success stems from deeply understanding their core users’ challenges. “An architect spends a lot of time becoming a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager on any given day, and that shouldn’t be the case,” Jack observes. “We just want to free him up, get him back to design.”

This focus on architects’ needs creates a natural expansion path. As architects succeed using Part3, they bring in more stakeholders, who become free users of the platform. Over time, these secondary users invest data and time in the platform, creating opportunities for conversion to paid customers.

For B2B founders, Part3’s story offers a crucial lesson: sometimes the path to building a successful platform isn’t about trying to serve everyone at once. Instead, it’s about choosing the right core users, solving their problems exceptionally well, and letting their success drive platform adoption. In construction tech, this meant starting with architects first – and letting them lead the way to transforming how buildings get built.