The Path to Rigor
An origin story.
Rigor’s CEO, Isaac Lidsky, understood how a lack of modernization would hold back the homebuilding industry. In 2011, he and a partner acquired a small ~$15 million revenue /year residential subcontractor, ODC Construction, in Orlando FL. Lidsky, a student of computer science and law and a successful technology startup founder, immediately prioritized the creation of a proprietary construction logistics software platform for the business to streamline operations. The software provided ODC with needed visibility into operations and costs, and remains the backbone of ODC’s transformation into Florida’s largest private residential construction management business with a portfolio of more than 50,000 homes and billions in revenue.
In 2017, with an outstanding management team in place at ODC Construction, Lidsky began exploring blockchains, cryptography and distributed computing, and in early 2018 was hired by Erich Wasserman, then an advertising technology founder and head of business development for ad tech company MediaMath, to study the space and craft strategic recommendations for enterprise applications of blockchain technology in ad tech. Jonah Weinstein, a talented product manager of high frequency asset applications with a passion for decentralized networks, joined the team. Together, they would explore the blockchain space and produce business plans to apply blockchain technology’s coordination capabilities to the labyrinthine ad tech ecosystem and its convoluted supply chains.
Wasserman and Weinstein left ad tech in 2019, and the three would partner up in early 2020 to explore the decentralized crypto space yet further, this time as investors and builders.
The partners began incubating Rigor, picking up where Lidsky left off innovating in construction logistics. With study, they recognized that unless and until you could integrate money flows into construction logistics easily and in tandem, truly seamless coordination would continue to evade the industry. The problem was ideally solved by innovations in the blockchain space, especially as “Layer 2” technologies eased blockchain-based operations, speed, and transaction costs.
The founders set out to grow a stellar management team. They brought aboard CTO Dan Halperin, a prolific Web3 builder and dev team leader. They also welcomed COO Julia Wasserman, whose experience in asset management at PAAMCO and in leading AI Ethics at Google made her a perfect addition to the team. And Paul Gozzo, homebuilder and investor with more than a decade of experience, leads lender ecosystem development.
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