It's Crunch Time: Our Series A, Our Mission and Our Industry's Need for AI

The past two years at Document Crunch, since we closed our Seed Round, have resulted in incredible growth, deep learnings, and a little bit of luck. Document Crunch's mission has always been to empower every individual in the construction industry to understand their contracts. And here we are, finding ourselves at just the right place at the right time. We found a perfect window after having established ourselves as the Contract Intelligence platform for the construction industry, right as the world was going bonkers over AI. 

This confluence of events was the catalyst for our $9M Series A, led by Navitas Capital and joined by repeat investors such as Zacua Ventures, Fifth Wall, Argonautic Ventures, and Ironspring Ventures.   

There Has Been a Massive Paradigm Shift in the Construction Industry  

Something has shifted for construction. The industry is being challenged from the top down to adopt meaningful AI that will drive greater efficiency, eliminate manual workflows, reduce redundant tasks, and most importantly, de-risk exposure on projects. When we created our category several years ago, the industry was skeptical. We heard, “You are crazy to try to change our processes” and questions like “Does this really work?” We had to convince the industry (well done to our sales and marketing teams!) that we weren’t nuts and that we really could improve a painful process, which previously did not involve software in any meaningful way. We grinded it out the old-fashioned way and began to win over one customer at a time. Before we knew it, we had a lot of customers loving our product! And then, the AI movement changed everything for the better, just as we had begun to hit our stride. We now hear things like “Document Crunch just gets construction” and “It’s negligent to not get this to my project teams!” It is pretty cool to see that Document Crunch has been building to meet this moment for several years now, and it is apparent from our growth and adoption that the industry is ready for us right now. 

We Have Always Been Dedicated to Building Purpose-Built AI 

We recognized early on the immense potential for AI to transform the construction industry. My co-founder Adam Handfinger and I have spent our whole careers in this industry. We love this industry and want to make it better. We were fortunate to have an excellent business partner in co-founder Adam Nadler, who helped shape this vision into our initial product. From there we were able to assemble a team of pioneers in this space, and we built our machine learning models and platform from the ground up. Leveraging these proprietary language models, our AI platform delivers unparalleled accuracy and nuance to the most complex customer questions and workflows. We’ve now combined our cutting-edge machine learning architecture with the latest advances in natural language generation from leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic. The result is a revolutionary Contract Intelligence solution that provides context-aware insights, empowering construction professionals to truly understand critical clauses, obligations, and risks. There is nothing generic about us. We are using our solutions to make a real impact on the construction industry, and the industry has recognized just how powerful our solutions can be. Prior to us, the industry could (painfully) review its documents. Now, it can Crunch them. 

As generative AI continues to evolve rapidly, Document Crunch is at the forefront of innovation. We are trailblazers in applying these emerging capabilities to extract actionable intelligence from complex contracts and project documentation. Our AI doesn't just read construction documents; it understands them at a deeper level than previously possible. 

We pride ourselves on crafting AI that is purpose-built for the construction domain. We live and breathe solving actual problems for the construction industry. Our models capture the nuances and terminology of this industry with precision unmatched by generic solutions. By leveraging AI uniquely tailored to the construction industry’s needs, Document Crunch is delivering transformative risk management solutions that give our customers a competitive advantage… and we are just scratching the surface of what's possible. 

We Will Get Deeper into Automating and De-Risking Industry Workflows 

We started out enabling back offices to review construction contracts for risk during the pre-construction/pre-signature phase of a project. This risk review solution has gained significant traction in recent years by contractors large and small. Our initial product has even been adopted by adjacent industry stakeholders like sureties, insurance carriers, insurance brokers, design professionals, and material suppliers. The Crunchers take great joy knowing this risk review product is operationalized across the industry. It has become the standard. We will always continue to invest in this core product. 

However, we have always known there is an even greater need to empower project teams to help de-risk contract compliance once construction—and the need to administrate the contract daily—has begun. It has been our plan to ensure we gained traction with back offices and then began delivering that much-needed value to those executing in the field. We achieved every milestone we set to earn this next phase of our mission. It’s now our time to get Contract Intelligence directly to project teams. 

The main theme of our Series A is to ensure that we de-risk projects around contract compliance. 

Our Moment to Empower Project Teams Is Now  

The newest solution offered by Document Crunch, Chat with Your Contract, released just last month, provides project teams with instant answers and insights from their contracts and other construction documents. This revolutionary tool has been described by joint customers as a "total game-changer." It’s the beginning of a new era where Document Crunch will become directly integrated into project management workflows which create risk around contract compliance for construction companies. This is also the reason for our major partnership with Procore. We want to bring insights directly into where operators are working every day. 

We’re learning very quickly that this functionality has the power to become the backbone of our technology, with the ability to de-risk projects and educate folks in real time and at times when they do not have a resource with contract expertise available. You’re never going to see a project manager walk out of a debate at an owner’s meeting to call their lawyer to address how the contract should be administered and then come back in to continue the discussion. You are never going to have project teams engaging the back office day to day in dozens of situations or forms where contract compliance is a NECESSITY, yet is often poorly done. 

However, they can turn to Document Crunch in real-time and have all the answers they need to mitigate their project risk and protect their profit margin.

We are giving project teams 24/7 access to a Contract Genius. It has the power for everyone in the field to ask anything about their contract, at anytime, anywhere, making projects less risky for everyone. 

This is just the beginning. We will continue to roll out solutions that automate jobs to be done which can lead to lack of contract compliance. In other words, we are going to change everything for our industry. 
 
Welcoming Navitas Capital to Our Company 

All of this momentum is also why it is so meaningful to be partnered with Navitas Capital, known for backing solutions that have widespread adoption within the construction industry. Navitas’ experience makes it a perfect match for us at this moment in time. And they are a great group of people on top of it. They have gotten to know us over several years and we are in lock step around our bigger vision. We have an amazing team of investors, all of whom have doubled down on us, and Navitas is now a very strategic addition for us. I encourage you to check out their reasons for investing in Document Crunch here. 

We are thrilled to welcome Travis Putnam to our Board of Directors. We know that together, we can bring something truly scalable to an industry that is desperately in need of better contract compliance to ensure it can realize optimal profits.  

We know exactly what we need to do to begin de-risking construction projects around matters of contract compliance. We intend to become an end-to-end risk intelligence platform for our industry. We take our responsibility very seriously and will continue to solve the biggest problems plaguing our industry when it comes to contracts. 
 
It is indeed Crunch Time. 

Interested in learning how Document Crunch will help de-risk your projects and enable contract compliance? Let us show you how 

By: Josh Levy