Market Problem:
In production residential construction, subcontractors like plumbers and electricians work with large home builders to deliver hundreds of homes. For each unit of work, subs receive a Purchase Order (PO). These POs have a 5 percent or higher error rate and must be manually reviewed and entered into accounting systems. This process is slow and repetitive. On top of that, field teams spend up to 25 percent of their time ordering supplies for each job, which cuts into productivity.
Who’s it for:
Construction Trades, Small Businesses
What we did:
SubAssist is a SaaS product built to automate back-office workflows for subcontractors working with production builders. I was brought in to lead development after six months of slow progress under an outsourced dev team. The founder needed help turning his vision into a working product.
To get the project back on track, I defined a clear roadmap with milestones, then worked closely with the team to execute on those goals. We partnered with a major industry player and prepared the product for market.
We launched with a group of early adopters within nine months and iterated based on feedback. We focused on three core use cases:
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Managing digital versions of paper contracts
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Automatically reconciling purchase orders
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Ordering job-specific supplies without manual input
As part of the go-to-market effort, we worked with major suppliers in specific trades and developed a messaging strategy to target business owners in the building trades.
Success metrics:
- 3 paying customers within 18 months, generating more than $20K in ARR
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Over $15,000 in monthly PO errors identified per customer
- $100 million estimated impact by a national industrial supply partner ready to engage