Every skyline tells a story of architectural ambition, structural engineering, and massive capital deployment. Yet behind the concrete, towering cranes, and steel beams lies a highly fragmented back-office infrastructure. For decades, the administrative systems keeping construction sites operational have lagged behind modern software, relying on paper forms, manual calculations, and disconnected tools. Managing labour, compliance, and multi-layered tax obligations has historically burdened trade subcontractors with vast amounts of paperwork.
A quiet transformation is taking place within this industry. Led by tech entrepreneur Anna Berger, a New York-based fintech and property-technology startup called Trayd is reimagining how the building trades handle operations. Trayd has engineered a comprehensive back-office operating system specifically tailored for specialty trade subcontractors, automating the administrative work that has slowed-rolled construction workflows for a generation. By streamlining back-office mechanics, the company enables contractors to focus on execution while providing field labour with faster, tech-driven access to compensation.
The Multi-Hour Back-Office Bottleneck
The construction sector is one of the largest economic engines globally, yet it operates within a complex regulatory environment. Trade subcontractors, the specialized firms handling concrete pouring, electrical wiring, plumbing, mechanical installations, and masonry, face unique administrative hurdles. Unlike general contractors who oversee projects at a high level, subcontractors employ the hands-on labour force directly on site. This requires navigating a web of variable pay scales, collective bargaining agreements, multi-state tax compliance, and changing workforce counts.
In union-heavy environments and on government-funded prevailing wage projects, the paperwork demands multiply rapidly. Every week, administrators must manually reconcile handwritten paper sign-in sheets, track equipment allocations, calculate exact union benefits, process fringe rate overrides, and submit detailed certified payroll reports to maintain compliance. Recent regulatory updates, such as the updates to the Davis-Bacon Act, have placed even stricter requirements on payroll documentation and wage classifications. Under these regulations, a single payroll cycle can require over 14 hours of tedious manual data verification, and non-compliance carries severe financial penalties or project disqualification.
From Construction Floors to Tech Innovation
Anna Berger, Founder and CEO of Trayd, brings a practical perspective to this entrenched problem. Growing up around the construction industry, she spent significant time in her father’s office, witnessing firsthand the heavy administrative burden placed on back-office staff. She saw how teams spent hours manually cross-referencing timesheets, navigating union rules, and fighting with generic corporate payroll platforms never intended for the building trades.
Before founding Trayd, Berger built her career as a focused, high-energy founder within the technology sector. Her entrepreneurial journey includes co-founding Curtn, a video-based consumer social platform that garnered backing from prominent technology investors like Sam Altman and Joel Simkhai. While that early consumer venture eventually closed, the experience sharpened her capability in product development, capital raising, and organizational growth. With an educational background in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from City University London, she has maintained a career-long interest in human systems and operational efficiency.
A Vision Rooted in Industry Reality
Berger’s core motivation stems from an appreciation for the labour force that builds infrastructure. She observed that while field technologies like robotics, advanced materials, and 3D printing were advancing rapidly, the financial systems supporting the workforce remained outdated.
Subcontractors operate in a low-margin, high-risk environment where cash flow dictates survival. A primary driver for Berger was establishing a modern system that serves both corporate owners and frontline trade professionals. She recognized that fragmented data delayed operational visibility, preventing business owners from understanding their true labour costs until weeks after a job wrapped up. Furthermore, Berger wanted to resolve the systemic delays in worker compensation. In a high-turnover industry where labour shortages are common, offering fast, reliable, and transparent payment structures is a major competitive advantage.
Engineering the Construction Operating System
To turn her vision into reality, Berger partnered with co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Cara Kessler, an elite software engineer who previously spent a decade developing core infrastructure and serving as the web platform lead at LinkedIn. Together, they established Trayd in 2021 and joined the Summer 2023 batch of Y Combinator, a milestone that provided early institutional validation and capital to accelerate their development.
Kessler and Berger designed Trayd as an all-in-one back-office operating system built around the specialized logic of the trades. Instead of forcing contractors to patch together separate programs for scheduling, time tracking, HR compliance, and accounting, Trayd unifies these functions into a single system. The platform collects attendance and time data directly from field applications used by foremen and workers on site.
The core innovation lies in Trayd’s automation engine. The platform takes raw field data and automatically runs it through complex rule sets governing union deductions, localized prevailing wage rules, and variable multi-state tax rates. This automation reduces a weekly process that traditionally took up to 14 hours down to less than 27 minutes, freeing administrative teams to focus on scaling operations rather than managing data entry.
Scaling Through Sudden Market Demand
The value proposition of Trayd quickly found traction in the market, driving significant institutional investment and rapid operational scaling. Following an initial $4.5 million seed round led by Suffolk Technologies, the venture arm of construction giant Suffolk Construction, alongside Bloomberg Beta and Y Combinator, Trayd demonstrated strong product-market fit. Trayd secured a $10 million Series A funding round led by White Star Capital, with participation from RXR and existing backers, bringing Trayd’s total funding to $15 million.
This capital influx supported rapid financial and operational growth. Trayd achieved a 600% year-over-year revenue increase, processing payroll dollars for hundreds of contractors across the country. Customer testimonials highlight the immediate impact; field operations managers report that the platform has allowed their businesses to handle triple-digit spikes in field staff with zero added administrative headcount. To support this expansion, Berger scaled the internal team seamlessly to meet national demand.
Reshaping Commercial Real Estate and Infrastructure Tech
Berger has established herself as a clear voice in property technology and construction fintech. She frequently points out an industry blind spot: the vast majority of software solutions are designed for general contractors, despite the fact that specialty trade subcontractors outnumber general contractors 400 to one and manage the bulk of the labour force. This insight has repositioned how investors and partners view the construction tech ecosystem.
Her strategy addresses the intersection of finance and physical operations. By integrating real-time job costing into payroll processing, Trayd gives commercial real estate developers, general contractors, and trade partners clear visibility into project expenses. This level of data transparency is uncommon in an industry traditionally plagued by unexpected budget overruns and hidden labour costs. Under Berger’s direction, Trayd has integrated its platform with leading mid-market ERP and financial software, embedding its automated workflows into the core financial systems of modern construction enterprises.
Overcoming Obstacles in a Traditional Sector
Operating as a female founder in commercial construction, an industry where women account for a small fraction of leadership roles, presents unique institutional challenges. Berger has spoken candidly about the “prove it twice” dynamic that shapes the early stages of building a business in a traditional market. In meetings with institutional stakeholders and multigenerational contractor firms, her team frequently had to work harder to establish absolute operational credibility.
Berger’s leadership approach focuses on data accuracy, deep product utility, and continuous execution. Rather than relying on standard tech-startup tropes, she anchored Trayd’s identity in solving the specific daily frustrations of the back-office worker. By delivering clear, measurable results, such as a 31x productivity gain in back-office workflows, she turned initial skepticism into long-term client relationships. Her management style emphasizes building an aligned team culture that balances high technical discipline with a deep respect for industrial labour.
Modernizing the Global Built Environment
The future outlook for Trayd aligns with a broader shift toward automation and efficiency across the global construction sector. With $15 million in total venture backing and a proven model in the highly regulated Northeastern United States, Berger is positioning the company to become the standard infrastructure software for construction firms nationwide.
As federal infrastructure spending increases and labor shortages continue to challenge the sector, the demand for operational efficiency has never been higher. Trayd is well-positioned to expand its capabilities beyond core payroll and compliance into comprehensive project financing, supplier payment management, and AI-driven predictive labor scheduling. Here at Modern Construction 360, we continue to track how technology reshapes the physical world. Under Anna Berger’s leadership, Trayd is not simply updating legacy paperwork; it is building the modern financial and operational foundation required to support the future of the construction industry.
