Buildzen was never supposed to exist.

We didn’t set out to build software—we set out to solve a problem we lived every single day.

As project managers in commercial construction, we were buried under the same pile of inefficiency everyone in this industry knows: broken processes, spreadsheets everywhere, double entry, delayed payments, unclear communication, and systems that never quite talk to each other.

We originally tried to tackle one piece of the problem—payments. That effort took us through Y Combinator, where we built Net30, a construction payments startup. But something became obvious: payments weren’t the root issue. Payments were just one symptom of how outdated most GCs operate behind the scenes.

The real problem? The entire back office.

Small and mid-sized general contractors weren’t lacking motivation or skill—they were lacking a system. A system built for how construction actually runs, not how software companies think it should. The tools out there either didn’t fit, were too bloated, or simply created more work.

So, we made a bigger bet.

We launched Aecore — a commercial GC — and built our own internal platform from the ground up. Every workflow, every process, every tool we built was driven by one question: how do we make the actual work of running a GC better?

‍What started as an internal tool to run Aecore has evolved into Buildzen.

Buildzen isn’t a generic SaaS platform trying to force GCs into someone else’s process. It’s the software we wished existed when we were running jobs ourselves. It handles real-world workflows — estimates, subcontractor management, schedules, invoicing, reporting — with the flexibility and automation a modern GC actually needs.

Most importantly, Buildzen reflects hundreds of real projects, real lessons, and real scars from running a construction company day in and day out.

We didn’t build Buildzen to chase a software idea.
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We built Buildzen because we had no other option.