Getting to know you: Neeral Shah, founder and CEO, YardLink

Neeral Shah launched YardLink in 2018 to move construction buying off the phone and onto a platform. It now lists more than 1,000 vetted UK suppliers across 2,400 depots, and raised a $17.5m Series A led by Beringea in October 2022. He tells Business Matters why an industry burned by software is right to be sceptical.

What do you currently do at YardLink?

I lead YardLink, a B2B digital procurement marketplace for the construction industry. In simple terms, we connect construction businesses with local suppliers for equipment hire, materials and services, all through a single platform.

What that means in practice is that buyers and site managers running multiple projects can source exactly what they want, when they need it, and get full visibility around what has been ordered and what is being spent, in real time, instead of piecing it together from spreadsheets, emails and WhatsApp chains. That covers plant, powered access, tools, site welfare, power and lighting and waste disposal on the hire side, and building materials and fuels on the buy side.

Day to day, my focus splits between product direction, commercial strategy and the team. We are a scaling business, so a lot of my energy goes into making sure the right decisions are being made quickly, the right people are empowered to make them, and that we are staying focused on the problems that actually matter to our customers.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

My family has been involved in the construction supply chain for generations, so I grew up with an instinctive understanding of how the industry works. But the specific moment came while I was providing trade finance for construction procurement. I kept seeing the same problem: enormous amounts of capital tied up in assets that would sit underutilised on sites, and procurement processes that were fragmented, slow and almost entirely manual.

I then spent time in strategy at a fast-growing tech startup, which is where I saw the power of digital marketplaces to solve exactly this kind of problem. The lightbulb moment was realising that what had transformed retail, travel and logistics could do the same for construction procurement, an industry that was, and in many ways still is, running on phone calls and pen and paper. Construction is one of the least digitised industries, with more than 95 per cent of supply chain transactions still conducted over the phone, by email and on paper.

How big is the problem in money terms?

We commissioned research with 250 senior procurement decision-makers which found the average UK construction project runs £7.6m over budget. Procurement is not the whole of that, but it is a meaningful part of it, and it is the part nobody has been measuring properly.

The distance figure tells a similar story. Around 95 per cent of what goes through our platform is delivered from within 15 miles of site, against an industry average of about 60 miles. That is fuel, time and emissions, and it comes from having enough local suppliers on the network to make proximity possible.

Investors have started to notice the category. ProcurePro raised $11m for construction procurement software this year, and there is far more capital going into this than when we started. That is good news, because the problems facing the sector are not going to be fixed by any one company.

Who do you admire?

This has evolved as I have moved through different phases as a founder, so I will answer it in three parts.

In the early days, building YardLink from nought to one, I really admired Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb. His early story is full of lessons about product obsession, design thinking and sheer hustle in the face of an industry that told them their idea would not work. What stuck with me most was not just the vision, it was how transparent and empathetic he has been about sharing the ups and downs since.

As the business scaled and my role shifted from founder to CEO, I found myself drawn to Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber. I have heard him speak a few times and what comes through is how level headed and calm he is. He stepped into Uber at one of its most turbulent moments and steadied it, not through bravado but through culture, transparency, fairness and a clear set of values.

But if I am honest, the person I admire most is not a founder or CEO at all. It is my grandfather. He ran a small business himself, but what I remember most is his calm. No matter what was happening around him or the family, he carried this steady, reassuring presence, the sense that everything was going to be okay. Building a business will always have chaos in it somewhere. The kind of leader, and person, I want to be is one who brings calm into that chaos, the way he did.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I would have trusted myself more. Being a founder is isolating, especially in the early stages. You are constantly looking outward for answers, to mentors, to peers, to your investors, because you assume they have seen more than you have. Being venture-backed, that meant leaning into a growth oriented mindset, and a lot of the advice I received pushed hard in that direction.

But there were moments where that advice sat at odds with what my gut was telling me. I wanted to make sure we were building a business that actually worked, not just chasing growth for the sake of it. Looking back, I did not always have the confidence to push back and say no, even when I believed I was right.

If I could go back, I would tell myself to back my own judgement more often. Advice from smart people is valuable, but nobody understands the business the way the founder does.

What defines your way of doing business?

Reliability and trust, above everything else. Construction is an industry that has been let down by technology before. Platforms that promised transformation and then did not work on a live site, in the middle of a programme, when the stakes were highest. That scepticism is completely rational and it has shaped everything about how we build and run YardLink.

We use a model I would describe as digital plus human in the loop. The platform handles the speed and the visibility, but there are real people on our team who take accountability when something goes wrong and make it right. That combination is what builds trust in an industry that has learned to be cautious about new technology.

The other thing that defines how we operate is a genuine commitment to the supplier side of the marketplace, not just the contractor side. Our supplier network is the product: vetting them properly, measuring their performance continuously and giving them a reason to keep improving their service standard.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Just get started. I spent time wanting to get the idea to a point of perfection before committing to it, and what I have learned is that there is no such thing as a perfect moment or a perfect product. The only way to find out if something works is to put it in front of real customers and listen to what they tell you.

Beyond that, say no more than you say yes. Early on there is a tendency to chase every opportunity because everything feels urgent. But focus is the scarce resource in a young business. The founders I have seen struggle most are often the ones doing too many things adequately rather than a few things exceptionally well.

And build the team early. The people around you will determine whether the idea becomes a company. I have been incredibly fortunate to have a team that really cares about what we are building, and that has made every difficult period easier to navigate.

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