Tect App Inc., the locally based developer of a trade platform for the building industry, is raising $1 million through equity crowdfunding on the WeFunder Inc. website.
Tect has developed a platform to create a community for dialogue in the building industry so that architects and design professionals can get expert advice from others in the industry and equipment and product manufacturers early in the design phase.
"We want to see more collaboration early in the process," said Bob Habian, the CEO of Tect, who is also an architect. "We want to make sure the supply side experts are in the process early."
Project teams in the building industry include architects, engineers, designers, contractors, owners, developers, estimators and others. Often those teams are transient, only working together on a single project and then going off to other projects.
That disconnect makes the industry inefficient, Habian said. Tect is trying to solve that problem.
The platform is meant to bring teams together early in the process and to tie them into a conversation. Tect specifically wants to bring the expertise of manufactures to designers early. One of the biggest disconnects is that architects and engineers aren’t connected to manufacturers who make the products and components that the contractor on a project will eventually have to use, Habian said.
“The designers are not equipped with the wisdom of the manufacturers,” he said. One of the goals of Tect is also to connect architects with the technical people and engineers of manufacturers rather than with their sales representatives.
Based in Sacramento and founded in 2019, Tect has raised $2 million to get where it is today, Habian said. It's now raising about $1 million in the equity crowdfunding effort, of which more than $300,000 has already been raised. The WeFunder effort went live this week.
Equity crowdfunding allows private companies to sell equity to small individual investors. It was made possible by the 2012 JOBS Act, which cleared some regulatory hurdles for equity sales by private companies.
Tect's platform is still in a closed beta test, but it has customers, Habian said.
Some of the people most interested in investing are customers, Habian said. "We're solving it from the inside out. It's built by us for us."
It turns out many people in the building industry are resistant to change. So rather than launching widely to the entire industry, Tect is working on customized searches for early adapters.
