How Todd Weaver went from $4-an-hour odd jobs to a $1B construction business serving Google and Apple

When Weaver was around 12, he walked into a construction site near his St. Louis, Missouri, home looking for work because his single mother was ill and struggling financially. The first person Weaver encountered was Bob Clark, founder of construction company Clayco.

He was too young for a conventional job, but Clark let him perform odd jobs after school, including pulling weeds and picking up trash, for $4 an hour. The after-school job developed into a lasting relationship. Clark, who would go on to become a billionaire, took Weaver under his wing, introduced him to different construction trades and helped him enter the industry.

More than four decades later, Weaver, 55, heads DGN Enterprise, a group of five construction-related companies with 585 employees. Its revenue is projected to approach $1 billion this year, more than double the nearly $400 million generated last year, according to Forbes.

Much of that growth is coming from the infrastructure behind the technology boom.

TW Constructors, the group's main construction business, now services and upgrades data centers across six Google campuses. Weaver's companies have also secured work involving Microsoft and Apple, along with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

Founder and CEO of U.S.'s construction and data center services company DGN Enterprise. Photo from Weaver's LinkedIn

A knock on the door

Weaver grew up in Hazelwood, Missouri, in a single-parent household. His mother was ill, and money was scarce. An account published by the U.S.’s newspaper St. Louis American in 2007 said a friend dared Weaver to approach Clayco, which had moved into the neighborhood, and ask its owner for work.

But after asking Weaver why he was not in school and learning about his family circumstances, Clark allowed him to begin doing odd jobs after school. A separate St. Louis American profile in 2009 recorded Weaver's own account of the encounter. "I was desperate to help my mother out with finances," he said. "The first person I saw when I walked in the door was Bob."

Clark and his wife, Ellen, helped raise him from his early teens, and Weaver spent much of his time with their family. Clark also introduced him to different construction trades and eventually helped him obtain a union card.

Weaver continued working in construction through high school. He later attended the University of Missouri-St. Louis and graduated in 1997 with a marketing degree. After college, he worked in business development for engineering companies before returning to Clayco in 1999 as an assistant superintendent, overseeing subcontractors and working on minority participation in construction projects.

The experience exposed him to a problem he would later try to address himself.

"The companies that could do the jobs weren’t there," Weaver said. "They either knew the business in the field or in the office – most minority firms had only one or the other. You need both to bid the job and complete it within the time frame."

Building his own company

In 2002, Weaver founded Legacy Building Group, aiming to build a competitive construction company while creating more opportunities for minority contractors and workers.

Clark helped him get started with a $150,000 loan, which Weaver repaid within six months. The business expanded quickly. By 2007, five years after its founding, Legacy was generating $36 million in annual sales.

Early projects included office renovations for World Wide Technology, distribution centers for Walgreens and a grocery store in downtown St. Louis. Legacy also worked with Clayco on larger developments, including the $100 million Casino Queen complex in East St. Louis.

Weaver gradually expanded beyond general construction. In 2006, his business acquired a mechanical contractor that became Mechanical Solutions, adding heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and plumbing capabilities. Legacy later evolved into TW Constructors in 2012. Weaver's broader DGN Enterprise group now includes companies specializing in areas such as electrical work, glass installation and fire-protection systems. But the expansion nearly ended during the 2008 financial crisis.

As construction spending collapsed during the 2008 global financial crisis, Weaver's business accumulated $2.5 million in debt and came close to defaulting. Rather than turn to Clark for more financial help, Weaver cut costs and sought financing through his business network.

Among the people in that network was David Steward, founder of technology services giant World Wide Technology, whom Clark had introduced to Weaver years earlier. Steward became another mentor, while World Wide Technology became an important customer. Weaver's company went on to build two headquarters for World Wide Technology, about 2 million square feet of distribution centers and IT laboratories, and four data centers.

A major turning point came more than a decade ago, when Google hired Weaver's company for a small data-center project. That initial job grew into a much larger relationship. Today, TW Constructors services and upgrades data centers across six Google campuses.

Data centers are the vast facilities filled with computing equipment that underpin cloud services, internet platforms and increasingly artificial intelligence systems. Their rapid expansion has created demand not only for servers and chips but also for the buildings, electrical systems, cooling equipment and other infrastructure required to keep them operating.

For Weaver, that demand has become a major growth engine. His companies nearly doubled revenue to about $400 million in 2025 and are expected to approach $1 billion this year. The group has also expanded through acquisitions. At the end of 2025, TW Constructors acquired St. Louis electrical contractor Vision Electric & Systems, which had more than 80 employees, bringing more electrical work in-house.

The scale is far removed from the odd jobs Weaver performed at Clayco as a child, but the connection with the man who first gave him work remains. Clark and Weaver still collaborate on projects. In 2024, their companies worked together on the 657,000-square-foot Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis.

Their relationship also extends well beyond business. Clark, who has an estimated net worth of $7 billion, told Forbes that Weaver is a "full and equal" member of his family and will inherit part of his estate alongside his three biological children.

"Todd is also my son, and I can’t be prouder of the great company he’s built and the values that he stands for," Clark wrote of Weaver in a 2021 post on his personal website.

"I always knew he was going to make an impact, and his hard work and determination have consistently helped grow Mechanical Solutions into what it is today."