With Reebuild, Viennese founding trio Paul Lind, Alexander Kornell and Lucas Iser want to revolutionize the construction industry. The software they developed takes advantage of artificial intelligence to give construction and project managers an up-to-date overview, thereby freeing up time for what really matters: building.
Disorganization, confusion and delivery notes and invoices are not uncommon on construction sites – anyone looking to develop a project should first get an overview of costs and materials. This is where Viennese start-up Rebuild comes into play.
When they founded the company in 2022, the three founders Paul Lind, Alexander Kornell and Lucas Iser made it their mission to automate and simplify the processes of material procurement and logistics using artificial intelligence. This will be done using an application developed by them and will help Reebuild’s clients to work efficiently and successfully and provide them with an overview of costs and documents.
“We want to make time for what really matters: building,” explains Paul Lind. To date, he says, there is still progress in digitization in the construction industry. To meet legal and administrative requirements, construction workers typically spend a significant portion of their work time organizing invoicing and document processing. Reebuild wants to counter this: The start-up system aims to save skilled workers up to ten hours a week of paperwork, according to the website.
When asked how the rebuild came about, Lind said, “I didn’t really know about construction back then. Lind worked as a lawyer in a law firm and had no connection to the construction industry. However, Viennas soon realized that his interests lay outside of law and economics and cost management. Lind then worked as a cost manager for individual construction projects for a construction company, and quickly realized the problems in the industry—because many construction sites still “run on the guts of their construction manager,” says Lind.
When construction managers asked how satisfied they were with the construction process and the original software, the founders did not receive a positive response: “It’s always been like that,” they often said with a shrug.
Lind and his co-founders want to change that. Together, they want to show project and construction managers that using software on construction sites doesn’t have to be time-consuming or inefficient. As Lind says, there are more regulations to be followed in addition to invoices and delivery notes. “These regulations increase the inputs required in previous systems, and construction managers no longer have time to manage the construction site,” says Lind.
We want to devote time to what really matters: building.
But not just reconstruction Follows a simplified approach to construction projects. According to the founder, there is no direct competition for the startup, but there are many opponents who do not want to do without sheer habit: even today, countless construction sites continue to work with Excel or one-stop shops. “From previous experience, our competition is 80% Excel spreadsheets, 19% legacy software, and 1% other startup tools,” explains Lind.
Since founding, the trio has been able to look back on several milestones: In early 2023, the start-up announced the completion of its pre-seed round. This resulted in investments from Planradar founder Domakoj Dolinček, Laura Ragel from ROI Ventures and Ferdinand Dietrich from Storebox. A second round of funding followed just eight months later, in which Rebuild managed to land business angel Hansi Hansmann and Peter Steinberger, founder of PSPDFkit. The three founders managed to win the hearts of real estate and start-up investor Niki Stadler and business angels Gerhard Kornfeld and Reinhard Mansl.
Lind wants to pay I can’t name anything right now, but what will happen in the capital is already clear: the Vienna-based company wants to develop and further develop its AI model. Rebuild is supported by the Federal Ministry of Labor and Economic Affairs, the Austrian Research Funding Agency FFG, Microsoft for Startups and other actors.
While the pre-seed round results are an important milestone for Reebuild, founder Lind sees progress as modest: “We’re still very early in our journey as a startup. We know our idea works and is well received, but we want to adapt it as best as possible to the needs of practice. We plan to perfect our product in at least the next eight to ten years.
Reebuild’s goal is to make a difference for construction managers and change their approach to digitization in the construction industry as a whole. The Viennese start-up is looking to expand its presence in Germany and Switzerland, a third country in the DACH region. “We want to be good enough to become an integral part of the rebuild construction industry,” says Lind.
His golden rule on the self-employment path: “Just do it. We realized that we had discovered a gap that we wanted to address. If I could give people one tip, it would be to put ideas into practice and see what happens.
Together with his co-founders Alexander Kornell and Lucas Iser, Viennese Paul Lind founded the start-up Rebuild. It aims to revolutionize the construction industry using artificial intelligence. He and his colleagues want to simplify their work, freeing up construction managers for the essentials.
Photos: Rebuild, Scott Blake, Unsplash
