Pitchfest Finalist: TraceAir, Pitch by Jordan Wojtowecz | Tech + Data

This series highlights our Pitchfest finalists. At the 2023 Housing Innovation Summit, we introduced a new program, coined: Pitchfest in order to bring new ideas to light, offer feedback that startups can use to advance their solutions, and introduce these innovators to potential advisors, partners, investors, and clients. A dozen companies made it to the final round, and four came out on top.

In this episode, Jordan Wojtowecz of TraceAir will give her pitch. You'll also hear from their client, Dan Galasso of Tri Pointe Homes. TraceAir participated in the Tech + Data category.

Read more about Pitchfest and the Housing Innovation Summit. 

Transcript

Haley Baumiester (00:00):

Welcome to the Housing Innovation Alliance podcast. This series highlights our pitch Fest finalists at the 2023 Housing Innovation Summit. We introduced a new program coined Pitch Fest in order to bring new ideas to light, offer feedback that startups can use to advance their solutions and introduce these innovators to potential advisors, partners, investors, and clients. A dozen companies made it to the final round and four came out on top. In this episode, you'll hear from one of our tech and data finalists, Jordan Vic from Trace Air and one of their clients, Dan Galasso from TriPoint Homes. To get in touch with them, visit their website and find ways to connect in the description.

Jordan Wojtowecz (00:39):

Hi everyone, my name is Jordan Vic. I'm an account executive here at Trace Air and I'm joined today by my client here in Denver. Dan Glosso with TriPoint Home. So I'm gonna kick us off with a short video. We'll get into it and Dan will share a story towards the end.

Speaker 3 (00:57):

Land developers only survey projects a few times during the site work phase. This is because traditional surveying is slow and costly. Infrequent data checkpoints leave little room for course correction. If there are problems like dirt busts, unjustified change orders, or moving dirt twice that impact your budget and schedule. Trace Air makes this all much simpler with our cloud-based platform and drone services, which survey 100 acres in less than an hour. The three D model has a topographical accuracy within one 10th of a foot and is available the day after the flyover. Drones are inexpensive and simple to use, so a topographic survey can now be done on a weekly basis. If you already use drones, trace Air works with your data too. You can analyze your project with the three D Topo model generated by the platform. Do everything you need. Check pad elevations, measure stockpiles, dirt, balance and overlay your line. Work to compare as-built with as design. There's no need for any extra software to work with Trace Air. The platform works on any device. With an internet browser, you can share results with the whole team leading home builders and land developers already use Trace Air to build cheaper and faster. Contact our team to learn how Trace Air can benefit your projects.

Jordan Wojtowecz (02:22):

So we fell in love with the construction industry very early on and many of the challenges that are facing the industry today can actually be made significantly easier with the use of technology. So we're excited to be able to provide a solution that really does empower the whole team. So how do we empower land development teams? The first key component to that is that we are completely turnkey. So we go out, collect the site data, process that overnight at a three centimeters accuracy and then it's available in a powerful yet very simple to use platform for the entire team. And our business model in terms of pricing and what that looks like really depends on the unique needs of the client. So we offer subscription based software on demand or project based. These are the folks that we are working with. I like to show this, not only so you're familiar who we've developed trust with, but we've got folks that have a one acre multifamily site all the way up to folks that have thousands of acres worth of multifamily development.

Jordan Wojtowecz (03:26):

So where there are dirt challenges we can step in and help. And kind of getting into the specifics as to why land developers love Trace Air. I touched on some of these already, but the main thing here is that fast turnaround 24 hours. So teams are able to take control spot potential issues before they become into very costly problems down the road. That historical data is really important. So if they need to refer back to something from six months ago to verify billing or dirt movement, they have the ability to do so, which all contributes to a really high R o I for our clients. Getting into some customer stories here, before Dan speaks one a couple of months ago, we actually had a client in Oregon who got an invoice. Seemed pretty high, but we had been flying their site so they were actually able to go in and see that they were over billed by about 14,000 cubic yards of dirt.

Jordan Wojtowecz (04:22):

So we helped them resolve that dispute there. The other one is, you know, for billing, right? But also being able to overlay project documentation. This was very interesting because he was looking and the utilities trench was being built underneath what would've been the foundation of the home. One was not supposed to be going in that direction according to plan two would've been a massive hazard and liability, everything would've had to come down and we saved him over a hundred thousand dollars in rework alone. Just from that. And I have Dan here who's gonna share a brief story on how he has used Trace Air.

Dan Galasso (05:00):

We've used Trace Air in a number of ways every, every way that she showed on the slide and that you saw in the video, we've used it for that. We've also used it for entitlements phase where we have currently have a project that's tested. We have homeowners showing up that are unhappy about the project. Their biggest argument is parking. So we have a similar product, similar size site built by another builder just up the street, same municipality, same actual match. So we've had Trace Air fly that community morning and evening, weekday weekend. Now we have scans of what actually is happening parking wise. We're parked similar to this project, which is over code by the way. And there's still a complaint. There's not enough parking through the scans we found. And now we can demonstrate there isn't a parking issue. You can see morning, evening, weekend, weekday.

Dan Galasso (05:39):

There's still available parking in this, in this community. And we're starting to explore using it also on the further into the vertical cycle. Dirt movement gets to be a real real big expense. And so we're exploring now how we get to show our construction managers what's happening with their dirt. Hey, you don't have, I know it looks like you have, you don't. You have to backfill your foundation. There's part of the grading template that needs to get filled in. So those are the ways we're using it in addition to these I we're finding. But so far it's been it's been really helpful.

Jordan Wojtowecz (06:05):

Thank you Dan. So this is how it started and this was actually only a couple of years ago. We started in the Bay Area and now we are servicing over half of North America and Canada and we do have the capability to service the other states here in Gray and we're working towards that capacity every single day. Something really neat. Of course you've seen how we have been growing, but it doesn't stop there because innovation is Gotcha. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (06:34):

Thank you.

Speaker 6 (06:37):

John. Thank you for the presentation. Tracer is fairly well known company in this space. So I was wondering and you've been work, you did a great job with the dirt, dirt moving dirt, dirt balancing. So I was wondering, but this is mostly applicable for single home, single family construction company. So I was wondering, are you planning to add some new features like monitoring the actual construction of the high-rise buildings? Thank you.

Jordan Wojtowecz (06:56):

Yeah, that's interesting that you asked that and actually Dan and I were just kind of talking about this yesterday. So land development has always been our target, our bread and butter because we realized at the beginning there was nothing created specifically for land developers. So we are exploring new ways of how can we tie in that transition from the horizontal land development into vertical construction. And we do have some clients that are utilizing our services in that way, but of course we do wanna make it specific to them one day. So we are thinking about that. Thank

Speaker 7 (07:29):

You. That was a good presentation. My question was also along the same lines is what are your plans moving forward? So you're obviously seeking funding to continue to grow trace air, but it seems like you're in a good spot. So what is, what are your plans moving forward? What do you need funding for

Jordan Wojtowecz (07:42):

Right now? Actually to keep up with the demand that we're getting from our clients is hiring more folks on the engineering and operation side. So I mentioned we process all of the data overnight, but we have a team that works overnight to ensure the accuracy, everything is good to go. So there hiring more folks to keep up and then two go to market strategy, right Through the use of working with land developers, we realized, hey, there's civil engineers that are utilizing our services. So right now our go-to market is really diving into the civil engineering side and we've got some folks that are willing to give it a try on some of the challenges that they're seeing. So

Speaker 8 (08:21):

How often does your average customer do your flyovers and also on the revenue side, like is it just a straight SaaS fee, you get access to the platform monthly regardless of what you do with it? Or is there some money based on usage? The

Jordan Wojtowecz (08:34):

First part of your question regarding how often do we fly, since every customer is different, for example, if we step in at the early to middle stages of development, we're flying weekly or biweekly 'cause they wanna be able to keep track of that. You know, a lot can happen in just one to two weeks. But we also have folks that they don't develop raw land, they only purchase finished lots. So we're seeing maybe one to two on demand scans so that they can verify that their lots are on grade before equipment is taken away from site and those sorts of things. And then subscription wise, there is access. You can have access to the platform for several months after that. And if you feel, hey, I might wanna check in on this data, then we will always have that data for you. And then we would talk about subscription at that point.

Jordan Wojtowecz (09:21):

Do the customers buy the drones or the drones are part of the, the software and subscription, then we are completely turnkey. And that's really how we are completely unique. I would say maybe 5% of our clients that already have the drones will fly the site. But we have our network of certified pilots across the US and Canada that will fly the site for our client and have it to them the next day. Raining sometimes, you know, we can fly but high winds lightning ride if that would be a hazard for the pilot to go out, sure that can affect it. But if there's any case that it's gonna affect the accuracy, then we will not fly. We will coordinate another day to fly. And about

Speaker 9 (09:58):

How many projects are being processed on an average

Jordan Wojtowecz (10:01):

Each night? Currently we're looking at easily a 100 or more. Yeah. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you Dan.

Haley Baumiester (10:11):

Thank you for listening to the Housing Innovation Alliance podcast. We invite you to learn more about Pitch Fest and let us know if you are interested in participating in the next cohort@housinginnovationsummit.com.