A Letter from the Founder

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I grew up in a small village in Austria, in a less than fortunate environment. In order to make money for my family, I started working as a carpenter at age 12. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, this early experience on construction sites would lay the groundwork for my entire career. What began as an attempt to make ends meet, slowly developed into a passion for building: first building our surroundings, then building businesses and now building talent.

After many years in carpentry, I switched over to the general contractor (GC) side and worked my way up from project manager to group leader, leading major projects across Europe. I saw firsthand just how complex and difficult, as well as how meaningful and breathtaking, these projects could be. Throughout my career in construction, I continued to pursue higher education – a privilege that no one in my family had before me – earning several degrees, including a PhD in Civil Engineering and Data Science. My PhD research, combined with a tragic fatality on one of my jobsites, made me realize that I could have a greater impact on my field by developing disruptive construction technology to make construction safer and more efficient. This inspired me to move to the Silicon Valley, to attend Stanford’s Graduate School of Business where I was fortunate enough to learn not just how to build and run businesses, but how to be an impactful leader. My unique construction background–equal parts field experience and academic expertise–led to the birth of Trunk Tools: the leading AI platform for construction.

Trunk Tools is disrupting construction management by building the “brain” behind construction, fundamentally changing the way industry professionals engage with their project data. Construction data is notoriously convoluted due to the large number of stakeholders and the intricacies of building designs. Construction technology so far has focused mainly on digitizing–taking what we used to do on paper and doing it on computers. But this digitization has led to construction professionals spending a majority of their time searching for data, filing paperwork, and struggling to keep track of every tiny detail. I’ve personally experienced the headache of trying to understand and remember millions of pages of documentation–it’s humanly impossible!

This is where AI comes in. The computing power of AI is perfectly suited to take mountains of unstructured data and organize it into structured data and insights, with “agents” that can automate tedious tasks. Rather than replacing workers, we leverage AI as IA (Intelligence Augmentation) that supercharges construction professionals by providing the right information at the right time–so construction is done right the first time. By integrating the newest AI developments (which are changing on an almost weekly basis) with Trunk Tools’ deep understanding of the construction industry, we seek to equip builders with the tools they need to build for a brighter future.  This industry has long been ripe for disruption, but the market has needed the underlying technology to actually get to a point where it can leverage unstructured data effectively. Generative AI is the answer to construction’s long standing incapability to adopt and leverage technology and we are proud to be the leading provider in our industry. #letbuildersbuild

To our potential customers, I invite you to explore how Trunk Tools can transform your projects and empower your teams. Your dedication to the craft inspires us to innovate continuously. Let’s make our industry more productive and an attractive place to work.

To our potential investors, join us in pushing the boundaries of the massive $13 trillion construction industry. Your support is crucial in bringing our vision to life. Let’s focus on an industry that so needs and deserves change. 

And to aspiring candidates, join a team that values excellence, curiosity, humility, respect, and boldness. Together, we can drive meaningful change in the industry behind the most consumed product in the world. Let’s build something that has an actual impact on our daily life.

Thank you for your interest in Trunk Tools. Let’s build the future of construction together.

Warmly,

Dr. Sarah Buchner
Founder & CEO, Trunk Tools