Why We Invested In Trestle
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Next up in our Why We Invested Series is Trestle. Trestle is solving problems that have been entrenched at the intersection of vertical communication and data connectivity across all projects. Trestle streamlines the time-consuming contract and vendor management process for contractors with a holistic SaaS platform. Trestle closes the feedback loop with vendor management, empowering businesses to reduce risks, make better decisions, and increase profits.
Let’s talk contract writing and procurement! Not exciting? Well, for general contractors, their reaction is eerily similar to yours. The contract writing and procurement process presents significant challenges for general contractors (“GCs”) across the globe, resulting in staggering annual losses exceeding $332 Billion globally. Larger construction projects consume more than 25–35 hours throughout the contract lifecycle, and navigating internal approval processes can take up to 30 days. This inefficiency translates to over 30,000 manhours lost and $3.5 Million per contractor yearly.
In addition to the significant number of headaches, manhours, and dollars lost, the traditional contract workflow also exacerbates those existing issues. Fragmented systems and reliance on PDFs, Excel, and emails make the process disjointed and inefficient. Creating draft contracts involves copying terms from old contracts, while negotiation occurs through email exchanges of PDF documents. Internal approval flows and contract storage also suffer from inconsistencies and limited accessibility across multiple teams. Streamlining the contract workflow is crucial to enhance productivity, reduce costs, and facilitate effective contractual engagements for contractors.
The problem is only getting worse as the market expands with the latest policies and technologies. The construction market in both the United States and Canada saw a 7.8% and 8.8% increase from 2021 to 2022, respectively. In November 2021, the Biden Administration signed a $1.2T infrastructure bill to rebuild America to become more sustainable and efficient through new roads, transportation, and power grid infrastructure. The administration has already awarded $220B to over 32k projects.
Trestle offers a comprehensive and streamlined solution designed for the construction industry, aiming to combine the fragmented, tangled, and painful contracting and vendor management process into a single platform. Trestle’s AI contract drafting tools save users valuable time and minimize the risk of costly errors and contract gaps. By automating budgets, suppliers, and SKUs, Trestle ensures accurate data integration into contracts. Additionally, Trestle offers real-time project transparency through dynamic dashboards, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions based on up-to-date and historical data. No more emailing and sifting through pdfs to find previous contracts; Trestle’s vendor and contract performance manager is a centralized repository for tracking past contracts and evaluating vendor reliability and quality, enhancing decision-making during bidding and procurement processes. Trestle’s informed estimating feature automates supply costs and SKUs from previous projects, eliminating the need to recreate spreadsheets for each project and integrating with existing bid software for efficient data retrieval.
The founding team brings deep industry and technical knowledge to the table. Victor Zhang, CEO, and Co-Founder, has worked for 15+ years in heavy construction. Victor spent the last five years at Dragados, where he directed large estimating teams for multifaceted infrastructure projects, each surpassing the $1 billion USD mark. Jason Chen, CTO, and Co-Founder brings 10+ years of experience in professional interactive software development to the Trestle team. Jason is no stranger to startups as a previous founder and through leading software development at NEWNESS, Pipeline, and Verys. Dak Washbrook, Founding Engineer, has a “full-throttle passion for software development.” Dak has spent the last four years at Weedmaps developing and implementing software that helped clients serve over 600,000 retail customers. Together the Trestle team strikes the balance of industry and technical knowledge that makes us here at Redbud VC excited about contract writing and procurement!
Originally posted at https://www.scale-vc.com/post/why-we-invested-in-trestle
