Eldar Sadikov is the co-founder and CEO of Field Materials, which uses AI to automate the administrative work involved in purchasing and managing materials for construction projects, from purchase orders and delivery tickets to invoices and inventory. Eldar grew up around construction in Russia, where his father ran a general contracting business and his mother worked as its controller. He started programming at 13 and eventually built an AI company serving the retail industry, which was acquired by PayPal in 2018. He returned to construction in 2021 after a conversation with his Stanford friend and eventual co-founder, Victor, about the challenges of materials procurement. Eldar believes we're entering a golden age for construction. The industry is being asked to build an enormous amount of AI infrastructure in just five to ten years, all while facing a shortage of skilled labor. He thinks this combination of growing demand and limited resources could finally push construction to adopt new technologies and improve productivity at a much faster pace. He also challenges the conventional wisdom that construction technology is overcrowded and ripe for consolidation. Eldar argues that the relatively small number of major software providers is actually evidence of how immature the market remains. Rather than expecting a handful of companies to dominate, he believes we'll see more billion-dollar construction technology businesses emerge, even as smaller, less differentiated products struggle. We also explore how Eldar and his co-founder got Field Materials off the ground, what they learned from their earliest customers, and how those lessons shaped the product. We discuss why they chose to focus on specialty contractors rather than large general contractors, what Eldar would do differently if starting over, and why eliminating manual data entry became central to their vision.
There's been a lot of investment in construction technology over the past decade, but how much has really changed?
Eldar Sadikov, co-founder and CEO of Field Materials, believes we're still in the early days. While many expect the construction software market to consolidate, Eldar thinks there's room for many more large, successful companies to emerge.
Field Materials uses AI to automate the administrative work involved in purchasing and managing construction materials, including purchase orders, delivery tickets, invoices, and inventory. Eldar grew up around construction in Russia, where his father ran a general contracting business and his mother was the controller. He started programming at 13, went on to build an AI company that was acquired by PayPal, and eventually returned to construction after reconnecting with a friend from Stanford.
Eldar is optimistic about where the industry is heading. He believes we're entering a golden age for construction, driven in part by the enormous demand for AI infrastructure and the shortage of skilled labor needed to build it. In his view, those pressures could finally accelerate the productivity improvements and technology adoption that construction has struggled with for decades.
We also spend time on the experience of building Field Materials, including how Eldar and his team found their initial customers, what they learned along the way, and why they decided to focus on eliminating manual data entry rather than simply making existing workflows more efficient.
We cover a lot of ground, including:
Thanks to Eldar for joining me!
Links:
Field Materials: https://www.fieldmaterials.com/
Eldar Sadikov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eldarsadikov/
00:00 Introduction
01:46 Welcome to BuiltForward
02:48 Growing up in a construction family in Russia
04:24 How Eldar found his way back to construction
06:45 The early days of Field Materials
08:37 Figuring out what to build
09:03 Why existing procurement tools weren't solving the problem
09:59 How ChatGPT changed the opportunity
11:57 Finding the first customers
13:10 What Eldar would do differently starting over
15:15 Why smaller specialty contractors were the right initial customers
18:30 Why selling technology to contractors is difficult
21:39 Learning from customer feedback
23:39 The decision to eliminate manual data entry
24:52 Why Eldar believes construction is entering a golden age
27:57 AI infrastructure, labor shortages, and productivity
29:21 Who buys Field Materials and why
30:16 Why traditional workflow software could become obsolete
32:57 Can contractors build their own software with AI?
35:05 The future of custom AI agents
36:29 Construction software fatigue and consolidation
38:10 Why construction tech isn't as crowded as people think
40:19 How Field Materials transformed procurement at Worth & Company
45:33 Building trust and demonstrating ROI
46:26 How quickly contractors can see results
47:02 What's driving contractors to adopt AI
49:19 Four ways automation delivers ROI
51:32 Why customers increasingly want custom AI agents
53:17 What's next for Field Materials
55:05 Where construction technology is heading
55:43 Final thoughts
56:49 Outro
Jason Jacobs: [00:00:00] Welcome to BuiltForward, the podcast exploring where construction is heading over the next decade and how AI and other emerging technologies will and won't transform the industry. I'm Jason Jacobs, a longtime startup founder, investor, and the host. Let's get into it
Today's guest is Eldar Sadikov, co-founder and CEO of Field Materials. Field Materials uses AI to take the data entry out of how contractors buy and pay for materials, from material requests and purchase orders to delivery tickets, invoices, and inventory. Eldar calls this a golden time for construction.
His reasoning, we built the highways and the power grid over decades. Now, the industry's being asked to build out AI infrastructure in five to 10 years in the middle of a labor shortage. He thinks that pressure is the kick that construction's never had. He also has a take I haven't heard before, in [00:01:00] that everyone that I ask says construction tech is crowded and headed for consolidation.
Eldar thinks the opposite, that it's still an immature software market and we'll see more big players in the next few years, not fewer. We get into how he and his co-founder, Victor, incorporated before they knew exactly what to build, where they'd start if they did it again, and the bet they made in 2023 that the product had to require essentially zero data entry.
We also talk about who actually buys it, the contractor who just landed three data center jobs and can't hire fast enough, and the one whose longtime AP person is retiring and knows no 25-year-old's going to want the job as it's done today. It all gets into the one question behind the show, which is, what does a contractor look like when AI becomes embedded in how the business runs?
Okay. Eldar Sadikov, welcome to the show
Eldar Sadikov: Excited to be here, Jason
Jason Jacobs: Excited to have you. Yeah. I, uh, I was not aware of you actually, but our mutual friend, uh, Alex [00:02:00] over at Happenstance, uh, thought that we might want to connect with each other, and I'm so glad that he put us in touch because you're right in the belly of the beast of all the things I'm learning about. Um, and, uh, I'm, I'm just real excited to have the chance to, to speak with you and learn more about Field Materials.
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah, Jason, I mean, Alex, Alex and I, you know, obviously have known each other since Stanford days, and sometimes this, these connections that, that happen naturally through, through mutual friends are, are the best
Jason Jacobs: Uh, well, as you know, this show is, is unscripted, but typically a good place to start is just, um, tell me a bit about Field Materials and your path into, uh, the trades and your path into, uh, you know, and Field Materials' path into existence.
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah. Maybe I'll, I'll start from my path to, to the trades or construction. Um, it starts when I was a, when a child. Um, you know, it, it, it starts when I, you know, when I was [00:03:00] a kid and, uh, sitting at the kitchen table with, with my parents. And my dad, uh, is a civil engineer and he's been a project m- you know, project manager, eventually, uh, an executive, uh, and then, you know, ran his own, uh, uh, construction business, general contracting business.
Um, he built hospitals, industrial facilities,
you know
Jason Jacobs: where, where is this? Where'd you grow up?
Eldar Sadikov: I grew up in Russia, so in, back in, uh, from, you know, in the '80s and the '90s and, and, and my parents immigrated, um, 2001. And, um, so when I say kitchen table, that literally was back, back in Russia and, uh... But my dad started his own business in the 19- 1992, I believe, um, and a general contract in business and, um, a lot of the conversations at the kitchen table were like, "Hey, you know, we need excavators," or, "We need, like, certain equipment at the job site," and, you know, "When are we gonna get the next, you know, milestone payment?"
And, you know, like, "Oh, we, [00:04:00] we, we're short on crews," like, "We gotta get crews from this, from this project to this project" or whatever that might be. And my mom is, you know, was also-- They didn't work back then together, but my mom has been a CFO and controller accountant, essentially, uh, for construction companies and, you know, even when my parents immigrated, she continued working in Australia, um, you know, as, as a controller for construction companies.
And so that's my path. That's how I got to know this, this, this, this trades, uh, and construction in general. Then when I was growing up, I, I, I, I was not in con- into construction. I, I was pro- I was... You know, I liked programming, so, you know, from the age of 13, I started programming and, um, and I never thought I would end up doing something related to the trades, uh, until I met my co-founder, um, you know, Victor, who, who I met at Stanford, you know, in the 2011 or 2010 when we met.
And, um, you know, he was in civil engineering [00:05:00] department and, uh, he was in, you know... Uh, we met through entrepreneurial community. I was building a, a company for retail sector at the time, AI company for retail, um, which ended up sold to PayPal in 2018. Uh, but Victor was building a company in healthcare, but he was from civil engineering, and he was, um, spent a, you know, uh, you know, over a decade in, in, in the industry.
And, uh, he, in 2021, he approached me with this idea of Fulfilled Materials. He basically, you know, set up a, a coffee chat, and he said, "Hey, you know, I've, I've been looking at procurement. I've been thinking about procurement and construction." Um, you know, from the lens of design, he was designing a lot of the, the high-profile, uh, projects, uh, you know, things like from NATO headquarters to some of the biggest towers, um, in US and worldwide.
He was saying like a lot of the times, you know, we spec out materials for the building, and then when the building is built We'll look at it, and a lot [00:06:00] of the materials were replaced. Like, we, we would spec out, you know, titanium, and they would replace it with something else, for example. And, you know, and he's like, it-- You know, when I started looking at that, in his own words, um, he's like, "There's, there's very l- you know, little visibility and traceability in how procurement of materials happens and when they get substituted and how which materials get chosen and then which materials en-end up in the building."
Um, and, and when he looked at this, he said, "It's a very manual process, a lot of, you know, you know, spreadsheets, phone calls." Um, you know, there are different parties, you know, general contractors, specialty sub, the supplier. Um, and, you know, and we said, "O-" I said, "Well, it's interesting. Let's take a look at it."
I-- You know, we just kinda knew that the space is big and, and I'm like, "Let's, let's spend, you know, a few months, six months, eight months to kinda dig in." And, and literally we started digging in. You know, uh, Victor flew out to, to Kansas City, I believe. Uh, you know, he had a friend, a [00:07:00] concrete contractor. Uh, you know, we went on site.
He went on site, and he kinda looked at it, and he, he, he's, he interviewed a lot of the contractors. How are you doing it right now? What's the process like? And, you know, six months later or, or eight months later, we said, "Oh, l- let's, let's incorporate." I think it's-- the problem is big enough, and, and it seems to apply to a lot of the trades.
And, um, that, that's kind of how we started. Like the, the pr- the-- We didn't have a concrete, uh, necessary solution to begin with, but we knew that the problem was, was acute. Like the pain was acute to the point where like every contractor we spoke to was like, "Man, procurement is messy." It's like it, you know, everything from how we-- the field needs, you know, communicates the request for the materials, how we communicate with suppliers, how we get quotes, how we set up purchase orders, how we track delivery tickets, how we process invoices, how we handle payments, how we handle committed costs.
It's a mess. That was basically the, the realization. A-and I can tell you obviously what the product does, but that's sort of like the, the, the path to [00:08:00] Field Materials.
Jason Jacobs: So once got there, you had this kind of messy multi-stakeholder problem in a large market that had, you know, consequences to not be addressed. Um, did you have a clear, clear diagnosis at that time of why it wasn't addressed yet and why it was in the shape it was in? And, and then same question about, um, well, a theory of change.
Did you, did you have an initial theory of change for what you'd do to address it, or, or did you spend most of your time in those early days just trying to get closer to the problem?
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah, no, I, I can tell you. I mean, I, I like the analogy of a, of a, of a dark room and a flashlight. Like, when you, when you, when you start the company and when you have an idea for a product, you literally, the way it feels like is walking into, into a completely dark room, um, with a flashlight. And, and you know that there's something, uh, but you, you don't know the exact, the, the, the details, the shape, the size [00:09:00] of the, the object you're looking for, and that's how it feels.
In the beginning, we, we knew we had the, the end result, which is like it's messy, it's painful, nobody likes, you know, how procurement is done. But what needs to be addressed, what needs to be done wasn't so clear. So we looked at first, like, did anybody try to do this before? And we looked at a few companies that, that started before us, and we looked at them and we said, "Okay, the way they tried to solve the problem is by, you know, necessarily, you know, building a mobile app that makes it easy to, you know, request materials, receive materials to the job site, you know, receive materials to the warehouse, check what you have in the warehouse."
But we're like, "Okay-" This is part of the problem, but that's not a, that's not a full solution. You know, like at the end of the day, like if the field has to, has to go and enter that information carefully line item by line item and then, you know, go and receive materials by selecting the quantities line item by line item, it just moves the problem from the office onto the field, right?
So that's sort of [00:10:00] like, you know, the big realization. And, and luckily we started the company in twenty twenty-two, and November twenty twenty-two, ChatGPT came out. So LLMs really went, went, went mainstream. And by early twenty twenty-three as we started experimenting with LLMs, um, the big aha moment, and as someone that is a practitioner in AI, I, I, I, I went to Stanford to, to...
You know, I was, I was doing, um, you know, kind of statistical probabilistic models for, for, for, you know, for, for data problems at, at Stanford in computer science department. For, you know, the big aha moment was like, "Hey, we can actually use LLMs to solve this problem." And the first, the first realization was like, we could actually read a lot of the information like, "Hey, the materials we're ordering, it's on the supplier vendor quote document.
Can we read that information so now we, we know the exact count of materials that everyone is ordering, so we have itemized POs, and can we, can we automate the data entry for those POs into the ERP?" Same aha moment was with the delivery tickets. We said, "Hey, [00:11:00] if we're receiving the materials, rather than having the, the field guys go and enter received quantities line item by line item, can we just have them snap a picture and then we could track what has been received out of that purchase order?"
And ultimately the same with the invoice. Can we just read the information from the invoice? And if, if something was added to the order and it wasn't in the original PO, can we just read that information and track it that, "Oh, we ordered these two materials that were not on the original, you know, order."
And so that was the, the kind of the, the first steps. And then as we were digging more, we were like, "Oh, you know, we could automate this, and we could automate that." And ultimately we can build agents that could do this work and, and, and extract the data, enter the data, verify the information, um, do all the kind of manual steps from everything from requisitions to quotes to purchase orders to de-deliveries, um, to BOMs, to, to, to invoices and payments ultimately.
So that's, that's was kind of the, the approach we, we took.
Jason Jacobs: And in those days, uh, [00:12:00] how did you balance, um, uh, customer discovery with building? Uh, and, and how did you think about, um, the importance of design partners, especially in this type of multi-stakeholder world where one design partner's not gonna cut it because it touches so many different, um, entities and, and parts of the industry?
Eldar Sadikov: Excellent question. So we, we, um, we cold called, literally. We cold called in 2021, 2022, um, a bunch of contractors, most of them in the Bay Area because we were both in the Bay Area, uh, at the time. And we got a few kind of beta warm customers that said, "Hey, I have a pain point. I, I, I wanna, I wanna work with you at least to, to kinda, you know, help you find, shape that prob- shape that solution."
And, um, the-- It's never perfect, like meaning that we, we found those design partners. Are they ideal? I don't know. I mean, like, you know, um, you never know. And like even, even the trade [00:13:00] is not always clear because, like, there are different trades, right? So you could pick a mechanical contractor as a design partner, you could pick an electrical contractor, you could pick a framing contractor, you could pick any, any one of them.
We ended up working with a few that were drywall and framing companies, for example, contractors at the time. And, um, and so the, the first, the first idea was like, let's build something for quoting only. I'll, I'll tell you, this was kind of the, the first kind of go... You know, not go to market, but like how we started building this out.
I think quoting is a big problem, and let's build a, a, a solution that would make it very easy to get quotes, you know, you know, itemize those quotes, compare quotes, bid level quotes, then create purchase orders from those quotes. And, you know, interactively, when we look at it, it's like maybe it wasn't the most important module actually.
Like, we probably should have started from purchase orders to begin with and, and deliveries, which is a, a more common issue, I would say, if you have to statistically look at, at, at our customer base. But we started from that, [00:14:00] and we, we, we did a kind of beta launch with this beta customers in 2023 of that module.
And then, um, and then we quickly realized that that wasn't enough. Like, we have to provide a solution for the orders, the delivery tickets, and, and, and ultimately invoices and, and it has to be a full gamut of, of those things. Without those things, it just a... it doesn't cut it. It, it's a, it's a solves the problem, but if it doesn't solve it all the way, it's not enough for the customer to, to care, you know, uh, enough.
So we build it out fairly quickly over the next like maybe 12 to 18 months, and then by, I would say, um, so by the middle of 2023 is when we officially launched it. So we, we started the company in, in Jan-- Like we-- I left full-time job in the middle of 2021, but we didn't incorporate until the, the January of 2022.
And then, um, we didn't officially launch the product until middle of 2023. So it took us maybe like, you know, almost two full years to kind of do this closed beta, kind of building out [00:15:00] the, the product. And then by the early 2024, it was clear that we had a, we had something that works. Like it was just the, the, the market pool, the, the data, the, the customers that were coming and the way they were using the product.
Um, that's kind of how, how it developed.
Jason Jacobs: And, I given that that construction is so fragmented, uh, I mean, you have small shops and mid-size shops and large shops and subs and GCs and this specialty trade and that specialty trade, and it-- not to mention all the other types of stakeholders we, we haven't mentioned. But, um, how, how did you think about working closely with a small number of shops versus making sure that you have a relevant sample size given that, um, that if you, uh, uh, solve one shop's problems too closely, you might find that you've solved one shop's problems and that it's not relevant to how most other shops work?
Eldar Sadikov: Excellent question. I, I like, I like Paul [00:16:00] Graham here. I think he, he, he, he should be credited with a quote when he said... I don't know the exact quote, but something along the lines of, um, "It's better to have 20 or 30 customers, small or, or smaller, or mid-si- mid-sized customers," whatever the wording is, "than to have, like, three or four enterprise customers."
And I, and 100% agree with that, with that statement. I think that, um, the m- you will easily fall into the trap of building something very custom for a, for a very specific customer if you just focus on one big contractor. Like, for example, let's say construction. Like, if I, if I was to build a new company, and let's say I landed Suffolk, it's exciting, right?
Suffolk is one of the biggest ones, so let's say Turner or Bechtel or somebody like that. But if you build a solution for them, there is no guarantee that that solution is actually gonna, is will be relevant for a lot of the others. So I would actually pick, you know, a, a smaller, you know, sub maybe, you know, under 100 million and have, you know, [00:17:00] 20 of those.
That will give you much better kind of signal to noise-- N- well, not signal to noise, but, like, it will give you, uh, stronger data and more repeatable, uh, uh, um, problem and product, uh, more relevant product, I would say, to the industry than, you know, just, uh, building a product for, for one or two enterprise customers.
So that's what we've done. We've built it, um, w- from the get-go, we probably signed, you know, 20, 30 customers. Uh, I don't know the exact numbers, but by 2024. And, and we, we, um, you know, once we saw that it's actually-- We, we had-- First of all, they span multiple trades, those customers. From the very beginning, we s- we had, you know, drywall, electrical, mechanical, like several trades and, and because what I told the sales team and at the time is like, "I don't know which trade works.
Just, just go and like, you know, like cold call and figure out who's, who's gonna want this." And, and guess what? And everyone said, "Yeah, we need this." And, and, and so, like, uh, once [00:18:00] we saw that multiple trades are using it, and then we had different sizes of customers, and then we're like, "Okay, we seem like to have a, a repeatable pattern."
Um, so, you know, there is no, there is no, like, silver bullet in terms of which ones you sign, but you just try to go as broad and... Well, not as broad. It's not right advice for an entrepreneur to go very broad. But, like, simple and test, basically, and then, and then look for the, the pattern and re- re- repeatability, essentially.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, another-- I mean, as you know, I'm not building anything yet, but, um, uh, so I have nothing to get feedback on or to, or to sell. Um, but in my travels, as I talk to people like you who are out in the market, you know, selling lots of different things, and I've been, I've, you know, I'm starting to get let in the door at some shops to observe from the inside, which has been immensely helpful to my learning.
But it seems that there's a difference between having real pain [00:19:00] and having the, call it time or call it motivation to act on that pain. And it seems like in construction, uh, there's just a high threshold for pain tolerance. So I, I guess my question is, um, in your view, what is the difference between acute pain that is ac- that, that they're ready to act on and acute pain that they're willing to live with?
And what strategies did you use or, you know, would you advise people to use to, um, you know, to move them from, from tolerance to action?
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah. What I like about construction is that, um, is what you said about acute pain. Like, I think that this industry is underserved by technology, and what this means is that, like, the number of companies attacking healthcare or attacking, um, DevOps or productivity or, you know, [00:20:00] security, software security, is, like, orders of magnitude higher than the number of companies attacking construction.
And, and that means that a lot of the needs of construction companies are underserved. Basically, they have a lot of acute pains that nobody gave them medicine for, right? That's what it means. And that's what I like as an entrepreneur. I like to serve industry which has a lot of the, the customer, a patient that has a lot of pain and says, "Hey, I need, I need medicine for this."
Um, having said this, the, the difficulty with construction is that they have very little patience as well. You know? Like, like, unlike, you know, let's say a more, uh, savvy, uh, software buyer. Let's say take software security. You know, very mature market, you know, tons of software companies serving that segment.
They will be very patient with you rolling out a solution because they know that, you know, the most cutting-edge security solutions will be, you know, they will take time to, to shape, you know, take shape and whatnot. In construction, [00:21:00] you have a project manager that has, you know, 10 projects going on at the same time.
Everything is a chaos. They're like, "All right. I'm gonna try-- I'm gonna use this," but they give you, like, I don't know, 20, 30 days. "Let's, let's make this happen." And if something doesn't work, small things, they'll be like, "Uh, okay." They, they just throw their hands and say, you know, like, "Move on." Like, "I don't have time for this."
So that's the, that's the challenging part. Um, but like I said, I think I'll, I'll take, I'll take a, um, acute pain, uh, with no clear solution, no clear medicine over, you know, a little bit of impatience. You know, that, that's in my, in my opinion at least.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, and what, w- uh, g- given the difference in the market that you mentioned from, you know, f- from a more sophisticated software buyer to, you know, someone who's, you know, out in the field running around and just, you know, it's not that they're less savvy, it's just that they don't have the patience because it's Darwinism.
They don't, they [00:22:00] can't afford to, to have more patience. So how, how would you go to market differently here then given that relative to if you were in an area like security?
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah. Um, well, you have to iterate faster. I think that's what it means because, because, because you have, you have very little patience, which means that the time that you have to, to drive, to drive adoption and get success, success with the, with the first customers that you sign in, uh, has to be very quick, which means you have to iterate extremely fast.
Uh, and, and that means that, you know, obviously listening to customers and, and quickly observing and, and making adjustments. And I just remember sitting down with one of the customers early on, and they, you know, I, you know, I always like this, this Henry Ford's, um, uh, analogy-- not analogy, but a saying that, uh, if you ask a customer, um, uh, what they want, they'll say, "I need a better horse."
They'll never say, "I need a [00:23:00] car." So I remember showing one of the, the early, uh, y- you know, UIs of our software and the, the customers and, and the, the project manager, project engineer that was looking at it was saying, "Man, that feels laborious." Uh, you know, whatever, whatever the, the exact wording was, but something about laborious.
And, and I was like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "I don't know." So like, you know, and, and but, but that, that feedback, you have to iterate quickly. Like, what makes it look laborious? What makes it look like, like too many steps or, or something like that? And, and that, you know, those-- Being able to iterate on that and being able to say, "Hey, okay, I get it."
So they just don't want to do any data entry, for example. That was a big realization for us. No matter how p- how useful, how, how easy we can make that UI, eliminating the data entry to-- in order to capture the data, in order to make procurement flow is key. Like, if we can eliminate any data entry where there is no work at all, we'll be [00:24:00] successful.
And that, and we made that bet in 2023 early on, that we have to have zero data entry in our product, uh, practically zero da- data entry. And that, I think, made us successful. I think that's why our product is growing so fast because we are the, the only software on the market that, you know, removes completely data entry from, from, from procurement steps, whether it's setting up purchase orders, you know, tracking delivery tickets, um, you know, receiving materials, processing invoices, um, tracking inventory, you know, all of those things, um, prefabrication workflows.
We, we, we come from the standpoint of like zero data entry. How can we get the data? Is it, you know, voice transcription? Is it, you know, taking a picture of a paper form, taking a picture of a delivery ticket, you know, uploading a, uh, uh, a, a subcontract document and then reading that information from there?
Like whatever that, that mean, whatever way it might be, it has to be zero data entry.
Jason Jacobs: Um, well, typically in these episodes, you know, we would get into field materials and the product and some case studies and, you know, [00:25:00] what pain they're addressing and what kind of benefits they... Like, I wanna save some time for that, but I, I actually, for whatever reason, just the flow of this discussion, I wanna flip things around a bit, and I'd love to talk about, uh, the industry overall, um, da- and then come back around to, to f- where m- field materials fits.
So, um, the... Construction's an industry that's worked the same way for a long time. As a society, we're in a period of immense rapid change in a way that, you know, I, I, I don't think we've ever lived in our lifetimes and may never live in our lifetimes again. Um, given that, how much do you think that's gonna affect construction, and what are the elements that you think will stay the same, and what are the elements that you think will be different in terms of how the industry operates?
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah, yeah. No, I think, I think that, that I agree with you that this is... I always say this, it's a golden time for, for construction in a way that some people will say it's a stressful time, but I, I look at [00:26:00] it as a golden time. Why it's a golden time? Because, um, construction has never been under such immense pressure to innovate and, and optimize, uh, and, and raise productivity that it, that it's ever, ever seen in history.
Why? Because, yes, we had, we had cycles when we have-- we had to build out infrastructure quickly, whether it's, you know, highways, when we were building out highways across the country or maybe the, the power infrastructure, but the, the pressure was not-- the time pressure was not as immense. Like, like, while, while the, the scale of those projects is, is massive, like to, to, to build highways across the United States or, or any- everywhere in the world, it's a huge, you know, scale, and same with, with the, with, with grid, the power infrastructure.
But we didn't have like five or 10 years to do that. We, we, we had decades to do that. In this case, we are basically building out AI infrastructure, which will become like electricity in the next like, you know, uh, 20 years, in literally in the [00:27:00] next five to 10 years. And, and that pressure to build that much at this scale so quickly is something that we haven't, we have not seen.
And because of that, uh, the, the construction is forced to, to change the ways that it, it operated. And, and it, it's the kick in the butt that almost like it needed all along, but it didn't have that, it didn't have that, right? So that's why when you look at all these charts and pe- charts and people say, "Hey, productivity of construction did not go up since like, what?
1960s or '70s," the official stat. And, um, you know, it, it went up and then it went down which is the, the, the ironic thing. I think it went down since the '90s, if I'm not mistaken. Um, and, and you know, like now is the time, and I think that w- what's gonna change is that construction will have to... Like now we have labor shortage and, you know, you have all the companies like tech, tech giants saying, "Hey, we can, we can help educate, get people more in the trades," and, and so on and so forth.
Um, and we have, we [00:28:00] have, um, just schedule challenges. You know, people say, "Hey, I need this data center, not in five years. I need it in like 12 months and 24 months." And, and this will push construction to adopt robotics. It will push to adopt, uh, a lot more, um, AI software in general just to, to eliminate all the paper processes or a lot-- eliminate a lot of the back office work because the way, the way construction operates now, let's be honest, you know, outside of the fact that so much of it is like on-site, you know- Assembling, like it's also very back office driven, meaning that the, the, the field or the PM says something, then the back office says, "Okay, I'll get this for you."
Like purchasing, for example. "I'll get you a quote. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll look up the supplier, or I'll, or I'll, uh..." You know, you know, the back office will deal with whatever the, the reconciliation that needs to happen. Like that piece needs to be automated as much as possible. Like, uh, and, and then same thing with, you know, a lot of it could be prefabricated [00:29:00] offsite.
A lot of it could be, could be used with, with robotics, uh, solutions. Um, and, and that's where we're gonna change. We're gonna have physical AI innovations, and we're gonna have software AI innovations, um, really forcing the construction to become more productive, to be able to build faster, uh, at the same scale.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, just so have some context for my questions, um, w- uh, what is the primary customer base for Field Materials today?
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah, it's a, it's a mix. I would say 80% of it is, is specialty subs, and then about 20% of it is general contractors that self-perform. Um, so it's both general contractors that self-perform and, and subs. When you think about subs, um, it's, you know, a big chunk of our, of, of our, uh, customer base is, um, MEP, so about 50% of our customer base is actually MEP.
Um, and, you know, we are big in civil. [00:30:00] 20%, I think, of our customer base is civil, and we have a long tail of other trades. Like, we're big in drywall framing, I think maybe 10%, concrete another 10%, and, and there's, like, a bunch of other trades that I'm not mentioning, but that's roughly the breakdown of, of our customer base.
Jason Jacobs: Okay. So if you look at-- I mean, l- l- maybe we should talk about the subs for a moment because that's the biggest portion of your base, and it also happens to be where I've been spending the most time with my exploration. Um, but, uh, h- how do you think it plays out in terms of, um... I mean, it sounds like, like AI is driving the power needs that's going to put all the pressure on construction, but that AI is also a powerful tool to help.
Um, when you think about what construction needs to do to address the labor shortage and the increase in demand, um, not to mention the silver tsunami, right? Um, like how big of a tool it-- like, like if you look at the portfolio of solutions, is AI [00:31:00] 10% of it, 20% of it, 90% of it? And, and, and what else is there?
And, and, and to the extent we're talking outside of your lane, that, that's okay too. Like don't feel like you need to answer something that you don't, you, you don't, you don't feel equipped to.
Eldar Sadikov: Well, I think that there is no software now without AI almost, like, th-there will be, there will be... If, if any software as it currently exists, uh, is a workflow product, it will be a dinosaur in the next, like, four years, five years, I think. Uh, you know, I think that while it used to be the case that, you know, you have the system of record where you enter the data in a database, and then you have a nice UI and have a mobile app to access that data once the data is, is entered correctly, those days are going away.
So, like, when you think about it from that lens, and when you think about most of the physical, physical components that we'll be building also will have, will, will, you know, will be robotic in a way. I would say almost 100% is AI driven. Like, almost all innovation and the tooling that construction needs [00:32:00] will, will be AI driven.
Now, the only exception to this, I would say, would be, uh, where would you put the tools that we need for, for off-site prefabrication? 'Cause that, I think that is another big... I would see two trends that are happening in construction. I think one is the, the AI wave, which includes both physical AI, robotics, as well as the software AI.
And then, um, in software AI, a-all sorts of things, whether it's scheduling, estimating, uh, financial controls, you know, all, all, all aspects of that. And then, um, and then the second big trend outside of the, the physical and, and software AI is the prefabrication. So I think more and more things are moving, you know, you know, to prefabricated off-site so that they could be, you know, manufactured, assembled, and then just delivered and then installed, put together at, at, at the job site.
So I think that secondary aspect maybe is not so much AI, but it's part of the tooling that, that construction will, will need to adopt in the next, uh, you know, 10 years.
Jason Jacobs: For, for that AI piece, um, [00:33:00] where does that expertise come from, and how much of it is, um, vendors versus in-house? How much of it is incumbents versus upstarts, and how much of it is software versus services?
Eldar Sadikov: No, that's a good question. Um, it's actually an interesting question that I, that I talk to a lot of our customers. Like they-- there's a new trend in construction which is shocking to me that you might-- you find companies where a PM is like, "I'm vibe coding this tool, you know, for, you know, I don't know, for the field which, which will capture the, the time cards or, or, you know, for payroll."
Um, you know, something along those lines. I'm like, "Okay, great." I'm like... But I mean, um, some of it makes sense. Like if you want a, a quick punch list, uh, and you don't have it in the, in the software, like you should vibe code it because it's so simple to build, right? But the, the-- where rubber hits the, the, the road, I would say is when, okay, so now you got this tool.
[00:34:00] It works well if it works in isolation. Like, you know, you have, you have a, a notes app or something to track it. But now if you want to track that, if you want to push that data now into, you know, your project m-management suite like Procore, and then it has to be entered into the ERP, and then it has to be reflected in Primavera, and it has to, it has to, it has to be synced across all this campus, and it has to be secure because you don't wanna be hacked for this and, and y- y-you know, and, and you wanna be SOC compliant, uh, you're like, okay, now y-you, you, you're crossing the boundary where it's like, all right, can you vibe code this?
And it's like probably not a good idea because even if you vibe code it and this PM leaves the company, it's a big se- big security vulnerability and, and just a big, big, um, uh, you know, just maintenance problem. Who's gonna maintain this, this stuff? And, um How, how is this code be- gonna be managed anyways?
Like, construction companies don't even know what GitHub is, you know? That, that's kind of the question I would ask, you know, th- uh, y- yourself. And then now coming back to, to your question, [00:35:00] um, you know, how much of it is vibe coded? How much of it is, is, is, uh, is services? How much is software? I think every software that construction company-- uh, any software in general nowadays that you build has to have ability to build more AI within it by the customer.
So what I mean by that is, is in our product, we have-- we provide an ability to our customers to write their own agents, whether it's, you know, through simple prompt engineering or through vibe coding, you can actually build your own agents within the product. And I think if you could-- if you can build software like that, that empowers the customer to build their own automations, build their own agents, then you combine the both of-- the best of both worlds because you buy a product that has the security component to it, the compliance, the integrations with, you know, project management, with the ERPs, with estimation software, whatever you need.
But then you empower the customer to do what they want, to customize it, vibe code, [00:36:00] you know, specific things that they want. Um, and that's probably the, the, the proper, the right way to go. Now, how much of that is services? That's where, you know, there are different ways to skin the cat. Like, you know, who builds this, this, this agents?
D- you know, if we assist you with building that, is that a service? You know, and, and, you know, does that replace some of the, the, the human labor that you have at the, the jo- at, at your company? Like there are different ways to, to price that and, and, and, and, and structure that essentially.
Jason Jacobs: So, uh, I mean, it's, it seems to me, and again, I'm just an outsider coming in, so take, take my early learnings with a, with a grain of salt, but, um, but it seems like there's an interesting, I'm gonna use the word juxtaposition, which might be the first time I've ever used that word in a sentence in my life.
Um, but, uh, be- between, like the vendor fatigue that the industry feels about software vendors because they're just getting beaten over the head all day by people selling them crap, right? Um, and the [00:37:00] underutilization of the technology that's now possible, and then quickly becoming more possible under their feet.
So, um, every single person I've asked for their opinion on the show so far thinks that in the next five or 10 years, um, there's gonna be less, uh, you know, le- less vendors sending POs, um, you know, every year to these shops, right? So that there's gonna be consolidation, but at the same time, V- you know, VCs are piling into construction startups, and then the advice to all the founders is, "Go narrow or you're not gonna differentiate."
So, you know, the more narrow, the better, right? And so it's like, okay, well, if it's the more narrow, the better, and then there's gonna be consolidation, then this will be-- if it's successful, success looks like a module in someone else's system, but that's not, you know, that's not gonna return the fund, right?
So, um, I guess, yeah. I think-- I mean, I'd love for you to just, I guess, pontificate on like how do, how do you think about that contrast? How do you think about, you [00:38:00] know, the narrow versus, um, uh, you know, versus ultimately building, you know, something big and meaningful? And how do you think about the role of venture capital in construction tech?
Eldar Sadikov: No, great question. I think that, um, I'm gonna be a contrarian here. My, my v- my stan- my view on this is people who might be saying that we have a lot of solutions haven't seen other sectors. I'll tell you, like, look at retail, look at healthcare, look at some of the more mature software markets. We are nowhere close to being a highly fragmented market.
We're a relatively immature software market compared to, to some of the others, um, some of the more like established markets like security and, and, and healthcare and some of the others. And let's be honest, just look at how many big providers we have. Trimble, Autodesk, Procore, maybe Nemechek. Like you can count them on my f- on your fingers.
That's a sign of a relatively [00:39:00] immature software market in my m- in my eyes. And the, the perception that it's fragmented, that there are a lot of vendors and a lot of solutions is because yes, it's true that, that, that construction tech is polluted with small micro tools, especially when you look at a portfolio of a company even like Trimble.
They made so many acquisitions that they have a lot of, a lot of many, many, many products that they, that they have. Um, and that probably gives that impression of like a highly fragmented, you know, noisy market. But from the, you know-- but I think from like the standpoint of like a mature software market would have 10 plus big providers, uh, not three or four like the way we have now.
So to me that means that we're probably gonna have more mid-size and bigger players over the next few years. Um, like when I say bigger, it's like a, you know, billion plus companies, software companies serving this market in the next few years. And from that standpoint, we're gonna have more players, not fewer players.
Um, but yeah, we're probably gonna [00:40:00] move away maybe from this, this micro tools that are like 10, 20 million ARR companies that there will probably be fewer of those in, in our, in our segment, uh, than we have now. But from the, the, the big players, I think we're gonna have more bigger players, uh, uh, as the, as the, as the market matures
Jason Jacobs: Uh, bringing it back around to a real live example, um, uh, let, let's talk about field materials. So it'd be interesting if you're open to it to, you know, you don't have to mention any names, uh, if, if you're not able, but, um, just pick a, pick a customer and, you know, maybe one that you've had a longstanding relationship with, and, um, and talk about, you know, what they looked like before you came in and what they look like today and, and, and, you know, what you're doing for them and how that's evolved over the course of your relationship.
So- something like that
Eldar Sadikov: No, great. Um, well, I would take maybe an example. So we, we have mechanical con- [00:41:00] mechanical is big, big, big part of our business, mechanical contractors. And I'll take a, a customer like Worth & Company, for example. It's a, it's a company, uh, a few hundred million dollars in, in, in volume, uh, construction volume.
Um, they, uh, they have a dedicated purchasing team. They
have field
Jason Jacobs: Are, they, uh, a GC or an MEP shop?
Eldar Sadikov: They're, they're a mechanical contractor, a specialty sub. So they, they're, they're a specialty sub on the East Coast, um, uh, Pennsylvania, I believe. And, um, they, um, they have their, their purchasing team, so they have purchasers in the office. They have field crews that, that, that request the materials, and they have accounts payable team, and they have a bunch of PMs.
And up until they had field materials, it was a, a pretty manual process, you know, with the, the, the field guys, you know, calling the, the office saying, "Hey, I need XYZ materials." The purchasers then go and email out the suppliers saying, "Hey, can you quote me, quote me for this bill of materials?" [00:42:00] Then the, you know, the suppliers send them back order acknowledgments.
You know, they, they go and then they, they, uh, create a, um, a purchase order in, in their ERP, in, in their case it's Viewpoint Vista from Trimble. And then, um, and then the, the material gets, gets received and then the, you know, the, the field guys have to email the tickets, like say, "Hey, we received this material."
And then there is a flood of, of, of emails with all the different delivery tickets. Then the accounts payable team, they, they get these invoices. Again, the flood of emails with invoices. Then they download these invoices, they put them in folders, and then they, they go and, and, and look at each invoice and say, "Oh, let me find all the delivery tickets.
Okay, I found this. Let me find the PO. Check this, and then now enter this information, the invoice into, into the ERP." That's kind of what the process looked like before us, right? And what we automated for them, what we, what we really helped them with is to centralize all this procurement data in one place and automate a lot of the processes so that the field guys now first, first of all, can digitally request [00:43:00] things when they need it.
You know, whether it's a, you know, even if they fill out a paper form, they can just snap a picture of that form, and then the software will read that form with all the line items they need. And now the purchasing just forwards it to a supplier, and the supplier has a list of materials that they can quote, and they quote it back to them.
That's an example of, of how this could work. They can also, you know, dictate the materials they want, like through voice. Um- The purchasing team's job became simpler because, not only because of the way they, they get those requests for materials, but now they can, they can basically take any order acknowledgement form from a supplier, drop it into our software, and it will itemize the PO for them and push it into the Vista without having to enter a single line, uh, or single quantity themselves.
Um, same way with acquisitions. They don't have to, you know, enter them by hand when they send it out to suppliers. Um, when the delivery ticket comes in, now you don't have to have that inbox [00:44:00] with all the delivery tickets that are coming in. The field guys just snap a picture of the delivery ticket, the software reads that delivery ticket, matches it to the purchase order, marks the items that have been received.
No manual work needs to be, needs to be done. We also have what's called a slipper agent that can actually go through each ticket and quickly mark it as, as, you know, does... Verify that all the received quantities are less than the ordered quantities, and if they are, automatically mark that as received. So no, humans don't even have to touch that aspect.
And then finally, on the AP side, the reason why it got easier is because, uh, the invoices are just coming in. The software downloads those invoices, matches them to the purchase order, reads them line item by line item, identifies the line items in the PO that match that invoice, checks that the ordered quantity matches the invoice, or less than, you know, more than the, the invoice quantity.
Received quantity is, is matches the invoice quantity, the prices match, and then if everything looks good, can even [00:45:00] push it to the, to the ERP on your behalf. You can obviously... You know, most of the customers still want the, the, the human approver to go and say yes, and then they push it. But in theory, you could, you could take a lot of those invoices and completely, you know, automate them with an agent.
Um, but that's, that's basically what we do in, in its essence, like taking a con- concrete example of a customer. And then obviously, I, what I didn't mention, sorry, is, is the, there's prefabrication workflows, and there's inventory workflows. Like that also goes without saying that it ties into those, those, uh, specific workflows.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, and when you were initially getting set up, uh, yeah, I don't wanna lead the horse here, but some of the things that I've heard as I've been making the rounds is that it's hard for shops to trust, you know, especially new vendors with critical processes, especially in a world where you're taking something that was done by humans and having it be done by machines.
Um, another concern I've heard is, uh, you know, job security. Like, "Hey, that's my job. You know, what about me?" Right? [00:46:00] Um, uh, a, a another piece is just like, well, it's great that it can do that, but what's the business impact to me that I care about, right? And then the last is just given how differently these shops run, um, you know, how much custom work is there on your side to, you know, to get it set up with that glove fitlet that you just mentioned as you go into different types of environments, different sizes, different, um, you know, different, uh, trades or, or even just different, different shops.
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah. So let me, let me start from the first one, which is the first question that you asked, which the adoption, the trust. Um, you know, I, I talked about patience, like construction companies have very little patience. So our objective was always time to value. Like we have to demonstrate value within the first 30 days.
And what that means is that we have to, um... Obviously, we cannot solve all of your problems related to procurement in 30 days, but we should at least solve one aspect of it. Like what, what is it? Accounts payable? Is it the purchasing, the, the PO creation? Is it the [00:47:00] receiving aspect of it? Is it the inventory aspect?
But in the first 30 days, we have to demonstrate to you that, that we solved one of those pain points, time to value is very important. Um, so that's my answer to your first question. The second question was about, um, so, so job security. So ideal customer for us is not someone-- Well, I mean, the, we have two types of customers that come to us.
I would say one is the, the ones I like a lot, uh, which is we're fast-growing, we're doubling, we have a huge backlog. We just landed like three data center jobs, and I don't have staff. Like I have two accounts payable staff, but if I'm gonna double my volume next year, I'm not gonna be able to handle that.
Same with purchasers. I have two purchasers in the office, I don't wanna hire three more. Um, can I, can I automate this, the sum of the process so that my same staff could handle more? And that's what I, that's what I ideal customer for us because we're not trying to threaten anyone's job. Like we, we'd rather say, "Hey, we can free up the, your staff time [00:48:00] so they could do more, um, you know, with, with less time essentially."
Um, or the second type I would say is also common. Uh, the, the contractor may not necessarily be growing, but you know, they come and say, "Hey, I have a purchaser," or, "I have accounts payable person, uh, and they're about to retire. It's a, you know, 65-year-old, you know, lady that's going to retire, and I know that I'm gonna have to hire someone new, and I know that that someone new will not be willing to do the work that she used to do because that work is just tough.
It's hard. Like she's doing data entry work all day long, and I know that a 25-year-old will not come and do this work for me. And can I use your software so that I could hire like my... Or my son is gonna take over next year, and I wanna put the right process in place." So like that's the second type of customer that, that, that, that comes to in-inbound and a lot of times look for, for a software like ours.
Um, and that's in either [00:49:00] of the scenarios, we're not talking about job security, it's about survival. It's about survival, meaning that, you know, how do you manage more with less? Or how do you, how do you provide continuity to your business, uh, when the old person is retiring, who used to do this work and, and nobody's willing to do this work now?
Jason Jacobs: And then the two others, uh, one was just right, which you, you kind of partially mentioned already in terms of the, um, value in the first 30 days, but just like ROI, is there a common theme in terms of the, the type of ROI that you're generating, or does it depend on the shop and, and what are some examples?
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah. So I, I could, I can enumerate it very quickly. So number one, it's, it's just reducing the, the amount of work you have to do. So just reducing the data entry verification steps, and we can quantify it, and we can show you how you could... You know, your staff was able to do more with less, uh, with less time.
Um, that means like less, less time entering invoices, less time entering purchase orders, less time doing whatever work you have. Second one is, uh, cutting down on rogue spending. So a lot [00:50:00] of contractors suffer from, hey, 50% of my orders are will call, the guys go and buy something, and then, you know, I, I buy them at suboptimal prices because I buy them at retail price instead of that price that I negotiated in the beginning of the contract.
Or I end up with a lot of material waste because the guys just went and ordered, didn't know that, that this was already ordered, and now we wa- you know, we're stuck with material waste. So either way, that kills our margins essentially. And the third one I would say is... Well, third one and fourth one, I'll say two more.
Um, the third one is like, hey, um, I need to get through my, uh, purch- AP cycle faster and my AP team is taking, I don't know, 60 days to process my invoices. I'm not even hitting my invoice discounts. Like I, I, I'm paying $10 million in, in materials, in material invoices, and I know that I have, you know, discounts and I could, I could make, you know, $200,000 a month if I, if I process them faster, and I'm not able to, to hit them, right?
And the third one is just, um, visibility and, and, and better [00:51:00] intelligence. Like, hey, how can I see my committed costs upfront? How can I track it better? And how can I be smarter about the way I do my buyouts? Like if my project is, you know, if I want a new, you know... How can I look at everything that I buy throughout the year and negotiate better rates with my supplier to, to get better pricing, you know?
And I don't have that visibility, I don't have that data right now in my ERP. Can you give me that data? And yes, we can because of the ability to read all this line item data essentially from, from, from all the procurement data
documents
Jason Jacobs: and the la- and the last, um, uh, the last one was just around customization. How much customization is there on your side from client to client, and how do you manage that?
Eldar Sadikov: That's where I think AI is a big, uh, lever. It's been a big unlock for us because, uh, there was, again, maybe 24 months ago, the, the aha moment for me was like all these customers come and say, "I need this feature, I need this feature, I need that feature." And the big aha moment for us was like, actually [00:52:00] 50% of this feature request could be enabled by a custom agent.
Like, I'll give you an example, right? I want you to automatically import, uh, all my jobs, but not all jobs, only the new construction jobs. Don't import the service jobs, for example. That's an example of a feature request or, or a request that may come into you as a, as a, as a, as a software provider. Well, guess what?
You can build an agent that goes and on a daily basis or on an hourly basis imports those jobs. That's an example where you could basically do a lot of customization like that with just an agent in place. So nowadays, I would say 50% of all the customizations of feature requests or custom, custom features that customers request could be solved with a custom agent.
That could be
Jason Jacobs: is that, is that your team building it or, or their team?
Eldar Sadikov: Right now we, we are building it, meaning that we will, you know, kind of, you know, build it for them and, and gi- and show it to them, and they say, "Yes, enable it." But from, [00:53:00] I would say December, January, uh, of, of this year, uh, we will release this where our customers will be able to, um, you know, basically do it themselves with some, you know, human language, simple prompting, they can actually do that very easily
Jason Jacobs: Uh, so I know we have a h- uh, you have a hard stop that, that's coming up, so I'm f- I'm feeling urgency to tuck in a, a few more questions before we wrap. Uh, one is just, so the next kind of 12, 18 months, what are the key priorities for, um, Field Materials, and what are you most trying to solve for?
Eldar Sadikov: Yeah, good question. So I would say that what the general theme short term, which is 12 to, to, to 18 months for us, is just we as a platform see ourselves covering three major areas: procurement, AP automation, and inventory. And we are just making sure that we close all the gaps across all three areas. Like, we wanna be a one-stop shop for anything related to AP automation, whether it's expenses, bank accounts, [00:54:00] receipts, you know, y-y-you name it.
And, and, you know, same thing with procurement. Everything from tool tracking to inventory to, you know, you know, everything we, we, we should have 100% coverage. So our, our kind of 12 to 18 months roadmap is really focused on just, you know, you know, doing that. And I would say secondarily, we're really pushing hard, like we, we launched this automation agents a couple months ago, and we now have more than 20% of our customer base using it.
One of the big priorities for us is like making sure these automation agents, you know, basically become almost more successful than, than our core SaaS offering. Like, we want customers to be like, you know, um, uh, using them every day and, and to the point where it's like, "Hey, maybe 30% or 40 or 50% of my invoices don't even touch a human because the agents can do this work."
Um, that's kind of the, the second, the second big, big, big priority for us. and
Jason Jacobs: And then back... Oh, go, go ahead. Sorry
Eldar Sadikov: No, just enablement of that. Basically making sure that the, the [00:55:00] automation agents have the skills to, to, to, to automate all the, all the work that, that we want to automate.
Jason Jacobs: And then bigger picture, if you look five or 10 years out, if you're, you know, successful beyond your wildest dreams, uh, what does Field Materials look like at that time and what have you achieved?
Eldar Sadikov: I think we have generally aspirations to, um, probably go beyond procurement AP and, and inventory. I think we could probably, um, do a lot more with, with financial accounting, construction accounting and, and, and really automate any workflows that, that happen in construction accounting now could probably be handled in Field Materials.
That's how I would say and, and, you know, that's, that's where I see the company in like five, six-year horizon
Jason Jacobs: Uh, well gosh, uh, we, I f- I feel like we could have covered a lot more, but we've covered a lot. I'm grateful for you making the time. I know you got another call, so just, um, anything I didn't ask that you wish I did, or any parting words for listeners?
Eldar Sadikov: I think, I think we covered it well. I think [00:56:00] that the only thing I would, I would emphasize at the end, which I said earlier, I think it's ex- it's an exciting time we're living in. I think it's a, it's a golden time for construction tech. I'm, as a, as a computer scientist, as someone that only entered the space, like literally in the past, you know, um, few years, I can say this is a perfect industry to be in.
This is, this is, um... You know, timing is everything and, and being, and, and building for this industry now couldn't be more exciting, uh, than now
Jason Jacobs: Eldar, thanks so much for coming on. Uh, second time we talked, and every time we talk I learn a ton, so, uh, um, yeah. Wishing you and the Field Materials team every success, and, uh, I'm sure we'll keep in touch
Eldar Sadikov: Sounds good. Thank you, Jason. Thank you for having me
Jason Jacobs: That's it for this episode of BuiltForward. I hope you enjoyed it. If you found it useful, share it with someone building in the industry and follow the show so you don't miss what's next. Thanks for [00:57:00] listening, and see you next week