How A Teenage Carpenter Became The Founder Of AI Construction Startup Trunk Tools
Our second in a series of articles about non-tech founders getting venture funding features Sarah Buchner, a "blue-collar worker by background" who set out to find a way to help construction companies manage their projects more efficiently using AI agents.
Sarah Buchner, a former carpenter's daughter, grew up in a low-income household in Austria. She began working as a carpenter as a teenager, eventually becoming a general contractor on large construction projects in Europe. However, her career took a dramatic turn when a worker tragically died on one of the sites she managed. This experience led her to build a health and safety app for construction workers, which later evolved into the AI startup Trunk Tools.
Buchner's journey in construction had shown her that construction companies generate vast amounts of information, but much of it is fragmented and difficult to analyze. She saw an opportunity to make this data more useful and founded Trunk Tools in 2021 while completing her Ph.D. in data science in construction at Stanford Graduate School of Business. After graduating in 2022, she moved to California to focus on her startup.
Trunk Tools integrates with construction systems and analyzes the resulting massive amounts of unstructured information. The company's AI agents can review contracts, construction drawings, and other documents, flagging inconsistencies, suggesting specifications, and helping with bidding and project management. This ability to connect information across a project is particularly valuable, as Buchner explains, "For a human brain, it's impossible to calculate the second- and third-order effects of changes because of how complex and connected it is."
One example of Trunk Tools' impact is a project where the company calculated that a proposed change would add nearly $4 million to a $100 million project, leading the owner to decide against it. In another case, a worker's eye injury was quickly addressed thanks to Trunk Tools' guidance. The company now has over 100 employees and has raised about $70 million in funding, with revenue growing fourfold in the past year.
Buchner's unique background in construction gave her a competitive edge in convincing investors of her company's potential, as she could speak directly to the challenges and intricacies of the industry.
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