Hello DIRT bags,*
(*I say this with love.)
Some websites you need to do a full archaeological dig to find the messaging and positioning gold.
Others require little more than a gentle sift. A quick swish of the DIRT pan and the positioning gold rises straight to the top.
Trunk Tools is one of those rare, shiny specimens.
It’s an AI platform for construction that reads your specs, drawings, RFIs and submittals, so your field crew can ask a question and get an answer in under 30 seconds.
Founded 2021, $70M raised, and they're on 500+ job sites.
To use the proper financial terminology: they’re doing bloody well.
Let’s dig in!
THE GOOD
A headline that made me smile
I’m used to seeing AEC tech website headlines that say "deliver your projects faster, better, stronger, [insert cliche comparative adjectives here]."
So when I saw: "Let Builders Build", I leant into my computer screen with a toothy smile.
"Let Builders Build" is super smart because it tells you whose side Trunk Tools is on (the builders) and names the enemy without explicit naming it - the paperwork, the document digging, the admin stuff that keeps a builder off the thing they are good at.
That's the whole trick of good positioning: sell the outcome (not the tool).
For Trunk what they are really selling is more time and freedom.
VERY powerful proof
Not always a fan of the slider (because, fat thumbs), but I like what Trunk Tools have loaded into their slider.
"How Top Contractors Are Saving Time With Trunk Tools" is a mix of case studies from names that carry weight on a site - Gilbane, Suffolk, Cleveland Construction, Haskell. Even better, the quotes come from supers and PMs - the people doing the work and using the tool.
The homepage video is also excellent. Nothing beats a message from the founder, edited with with onsite footage and a sweet instrumental humming underneath.
They put numbers on the table
Scroll down the homepage and you land on a table of claims backed with a proof points.
The one I love most: "87% verified field accuracy." Not 100%. A slightly awkward number makes it feel so much more credible and real.
THE BAD
The homepage starts strong and then becomes a catalogue
The hero sells one big idea - get builders back to building. But then, you keep scrolling and the page turns into a product menu. TrunkText, then TrunkSubmittal, then Submittal Register, then TrunkReview, then TrunkRFI, then TrunkBid. Six blocks with a whole lotta bullets.
It loses momentum and made my eyelids feel heavy.
The products themselves sound useful. But the problem is: the way they’re presented makes the platform feel like six separate tools rather than one connected system working towards one goal.
Trunk Tools would be better off organising this section around the work it gives back:
- Stop searching for answers
- Catch problems before they become rework
- Move submittals through faster
- Spend less time comparing bids
- Keep your team in the field
Prove it or remove it
The subhead promises, "Save hours. Improve safety. Build faster." Saving hours is proven, over and over. Faster is also backed up with numbers. But safety is named once and never again. Not a number or case study supports the improved safety claim.
If you’re going to make a promise in your subheading, then you need to back it up or cut it out. Otherwise, it causes distrust.
There is a story inside this company. Founder Sarah Buchner has spoken about how a fatality on one of her job sites pushed her to think about systemic change in construction. Perhaps, this story could be (carefully!) moved to the homepage.
Features, features, blah, blah, blah
A bright yellow bar across the top of the homepage says:
“Introducing Cortex — and the five new workflow agents it powers.”
This tells me what Trunk Tools is announcing, but it doesn’t tell me why I should care.
“Cortex” means something to the team who spent months building it, but to a new visitor it may sound like a Marvel villain or a part of the human brain.
UNBURIED
They’ve barely opened the trunk
In an industry jam-packed with names like BuildSomething, SiteSomething and OpsSomething, Trunk Tools is a bloody good name.
It’s short and memorable. And it gives them a creative world to play in.
They’ve already made a smart start by giving each product the family name: TrunkText, TrunkReview, TrunkRFI and TrunkBid.
But there is so much more they could do.
Imagine team biographies that answer:
- What tool would we always find in your trunk?
- What job site lesson do you still carry with you?
- What piece of construction admin would you happily lock in the trunk forever?
Or a content series called Open the Trunk, where team members share the tools, lessons and questionable/weird objects they’ve collected from years in the industry.
Turn the tagline into a movement
It’s easy to miss, but on the footer and their social media channels they have a hashtag:
#LetBuildersBuild
The best line on the website is currently doing two jobs:
Sitting at the top of the homepage and hiding in the footer. It could be doing so much more.
"Let Builders Build" should be the organising idea behind the entire brand.
Every Trunk product removes one specific obstacle standing between a builder and the build:
- TrunkText ends the document hunt.
- TrunkReview catches the changes people miss.
- TrunkRFI cuts out the noise.
- TrunkSubmittal finds discrepancies before they reach the architect.
- TrunkBid removes hours of manual comparison.
- TrunkRegister gets teams executing sooner.
One idea with six different benefits.
Use it across customer stories, product pages, social content, sales decks and campaigns. Ask builders what stops them from building. Show exactly how much building time each product gives back.
Ah, so much DIRT.
Their founder swung a hammer at 12… WHATTT??!?!?!
This is the biggest piece of buried gold.
Sarah Buchner started working as a carpenter in rural Austria at 12.
She spent years as a blue-collar worker before becoming a foreman, superintendent, project manager and group leader.
She was the first person in her family to pursue higher education. She went on to earn a PhD in civil engineering and data science, followed by an MBA from Stanford.
She built with her hands before she built the software.
But this story is no where to be seen on the homepage (it's buried on the about page).
“Built for construction by construction professionals” is an abstract claim almost any company can make.
Sarah is the proof of that claim.
Put Sarah’s story on the homepage and suddenly that claim becomes specific, credible and impossible for a competitor to copy.
IF I WERE HOLDING THE SHOVEL...
I’d rebuild the homepage around the strongest thing Trunk Tools already owns:
Let Builders Build.
I’d use it to organise the products around the obstacles they remove, show how the agents work together across a real project and bring Sarah’s construction story much closer to the surface.
I’d also either prove the safety claim or cut it, and rewrite the Cortex banner around the problem it solves rather than the product Trunk Tools wants to announce.
DIG RATING:
7/10 shovels
Trunk Tools has already struck positioning gold. Now it needs to bump its strongest ideas up the homepage and push the product features down, down, dowwnnnnn.
To getting DIRT-y,
Nikita
P.S. If you liked this email, my newsletter (DIRT Dispatch) has more of the same. Except it's 23% funnier.
