Hi, we’re Rob, April and Ivan, cofounders of DigiBuild (https://digibuild.com/ https://digibuild.com/). We build construction software powered by blockchain. Ou

Hi, we’re Rob, April and Ivan, cofounders of DigiBuild (https://digibuild.com/ https://digibuild.com/). We build construction software powered by blockchain. Our tools help large companies, like VCC Construction, improve the schedule and budget on projects and save over a million dollars annually. I grew up in construction with my dad and saw first hand the issues companies face everyday. The building process involves 50-100 stakeholders (ie. suppliers, contractors, architects) who suffer from low margins and work on projects that fail 70% of the time. Large builds create upwards of 750,000 documents. It is very complex and costly to manage them. For every physical construction process that occurs, an “intangible asset” like a workflow or piece of data is created as well. Current software solutions offer some efficiency but fall short because they’re centralized databases or data silos with no transparency. From a risk management perspective, each construction stakeholder needs to review, verify, or otherwise build trust manually to make sure they’re protected (i.e. let me double check that document so I know you didn’t screw me over). The trust established with blockchain allows us to codify many of those processes and touch points, making them automated and giving more line of sight to construction teams. This is possible because unlike a centralized database, the blockchain is not owned/monopolized by any party and it is auditable so transactions can be verified by all the stakeholders. This meets their risk management requirements to do business. We have multiple tools solving customer pain, including a construction management platform for managing any project workflow; a procurement product to find, order, and track building material; and a payment product to streamline the collection of payment documentation and disbursements. Without blockchain, these workflows involve suppliers, subcontractors, general contractors all sending contracts, invoices, and data sheets back and forth. This is manual trust-building which adds time, costs, and risk. Using smart contracts allows us to codify these processes, automating 90% of them for all of the parties and providing more transparency. Our team has managed over $5B in construction projects. I’m also the former CEO of a nationwide construction company and our engineering team has worked on projects alongside Coinbase, IBM, Iota, and Linux. We would love to hear from you and hear feedback. We’re especially excited to be challenged and to brainstorm around our use of blockchain in this market - we know HN has a wide spectrum of views on that, on both sides of the ledger!