Construction projects are built on coordination. Workers arrive at job sites, crews complete different tasks, supervisors record hours, and contractors manage costs against project budgets. But behind the physical work, another operation has to run smoothly: the back office.
For specialty trade contractors, managing that operation can be surprisingly complicated. Payroll may involve different union agreements, prevailing wage requirements, worker classifications, overtime rules, shift premiums, and project-specific rates. Timecards arrive from multiple job sites, employee information needs constant updating, and compliance reports must be prepared accurately.
For years, many contractors have relied on spreadsheets, paper timecards, disconnected software, and manual calculations to manage these responsibilities.
Anna Berger grew up watching this problem affect her father’s construction business. She saw how much time went into administrative work and how little technology was designed specifically for the needs of trade contractors.
Instead of accepting those inefficiencies as part of the industry, she decided to build a solution.
In 2021, Berger co-founded Trayd with her longtime friend Cara Kessler, a technology leader who had spent years working in software engineering at LinkedIn. Their goal was to create a modern back-office operating system for specialty contractors.
What started with a focus on payroll and compliance has grown into a broader platform covering workforce management, labor tracking, project reporting, and accounting.
The company reached another important milestone in March 2026, announcing a $10 million Series A led by White Star Capital. In September 2026, it introduced Trayd Accounting, extending its ambition to connect jobsite activity directly with financial operations.
Trayd’s journey offers a useful example of how founders can identify opportunities in industries that have historically received less attention from mainstream software companies.
1. Anna Berger: The Construction Back Office That Inspired Trayd
Trayd’s origin story begins with a family connection to the construction industry.
Anna Berger grew up in a New York construction family. Her father worked in the industry, and she had a firsthand view of the administrative work required to keep a construction business running.
The back office was filled with filing cabinets, stacks of paperwork, paper timecards, and systems that did not communicate with one another.
Payroll was not a simple matter of multiplying hours by an hourly rate. Contractors needed to account for different pay arrangements, worker classifications, union requirements, and project-specific regulations.
These responsibilities created a recurring administrative burden.
Berger later explained that watching her father’s back-office operations was one of the original inspirations behind Trayd. As she explored the opportunity further, she found that the same challenges extended beyond her family’s business.
Many specialty contractors were dealing with similar problems.
Her professional experience in technology, marketing, and startup environments helped her approach the issue as a business opportunity. She had also co-founded another company before building Trayd.
But solving a complex construction technology problem required more than identifying the opportunity. It required a technical partner who could turn the idea into a reliable product.
That partner was Cara Kessler.
2. Cara Kessler: The Technical Co-Founder Behind the Platform
Cara Kessler joined Berger as co-founder and chief technology officer.
The two founders had been friends for more than two decades, but their professional backgrounds followed different paths.
Berger brought the industry insight, entrepreneurial drive, and vision for what construction software could become. Kessler brought deep technical experience.
Before joining Trayd, Kessler spent approximately ten years working at LinkedIn, where she progressed through software engineering and platform leadership roles.
That experience was important because Trayd was not intended to be another basic time-tracking application.
The founders wanted to build a system capable of handling the complicated relationships between workers, projects, pay rates, payroll, and compliance.
In an interview, Berger described the two founders as having complementary strengths: she was focused on imagining what could exist, while Kessler helped translate that vision into what could be built.
Their partnership became the foundation of Trayd.
The decision to build together also highlights an important lesson for entrepreneurs: a strong co-founder relationship is not only about friendship. It is about combining different capabilities to solve a problem that would be difficult to address independently.
3. Why the Construction Industry Needed a Different Kind of Software
Construction is a large and operationally complex industry, but many specialty contractors have historically worked with technology that was not designed around their specific needs.
General contractors coordinate entire projects, while specialty trade contractors perform essential work such as electrical installation, plumbing, concrete construction, steelwork, excavation, and other specialized services.
These businesses often operate across multiple job sites and employ workers whose compensation can change depending on the work performed.
A worker might have one rate for a particular trade, another rate under a prevailing wage project, and additional compensation for overtime or a specific shift.
Union contractors also need to account for benefit contributions, deductions, and reporting obligations.
This creates several problems:
- Manual time tracking: Paper timecards and disconnected attendance systems can make it difficult to collect accurate hours from multiple job sites.
- Complex payroll calculations: Different rates, classifications, premiums, and union rules increase the possibility of errors.
- Compliance reporting: Certified payroll and prevailing wage requirements create additional administrative responsibilities.
- Limited job-cost visibility: Contractors may not see the true labor cost of a project until payroll and reporting processes are complete.
- Disconnected software: Information can be scattered across payroll, accounting, HR, and field-management systems.
For a contractor managing dozens or hundreds of employees, these problems can become a serious operational bottleneck.
Trayd’s founders recognized that construction needed software designed around the way trade contractors actually work.
4. Building Trayd: From Payroll Software to a Construction Back-Office Platform
Trayd was founded in 2021 to modernize the back-office operations of specialty contractors.
Its initial focus was construction payroll and compliance. The founders understood that payroll was one of the most important recurring administrative processes in the industry and that it was closely connected to other workforce activities.
Rather than building a generic payroll product, they developed software around construction-specific requirements.
The platform was designed to connect field data with payroll calculations, worker information, and compliance reporting.
This approach allowed contractors to reduce the need for manual data entry and repeated calculations.
As the product developed, Trayd expanded beyond payroll into a wider collection of workforce and operational tools.
The company’s direction became increasingly clear: instead of asking contractors to manage multiple disconnected systems, it wanted to provide a unified back office.
Its product now brings together several important areas of construction business management.
5. How Trayd’s Platform Works
Trayd’s platform is designed to connect the people, work, and financial information that contractors need to manage their businesses.
Construction Payroll
Payroll is at the center of Trayd’s offering.
The system is designed to handle the variables that make construction compensation different from ordinary payroll.
These include:
- Union wage requirements.
- Prevailing wage rates.
- Worker classifications.
- Job titles and task codes.
- Shift premiums.
- Overtime calculations.
- Union deductions.
- Bonuses and reimbursements.
- Multiple payroll schedules.
Trayd uses workforce information captured in the field to support payroll processing.
Instead of relying on employees to manually re-enter every detail, the system connects time and job information with the appropriate compensation rules.
The company says contractors can run payroll in approximately 30 minutes, although actual processing times depend on the customer’s workforce, configuration, and operational complexity.
Certified Payroll and Compliance
Certified payroll is an important requirement for many contractors working on government-funded or prevailing-wage projects.
These reports document worker classifications, hours, wages, and other required compensation information.
Preparing them manually can take significant time, particularly when contractors operate across several projects and jurisdictions.
Trayd automates certified payroll reporting and supports union and prevailing-wage requirements.
The platform is designed to help contractors maintain more consistent records, reduce manual adjustments, and prepare compliance reports more efficiently.
Workforce Management and HR
Construction businesses also need to manage employee information, onboarding, approvals, scheduling, and communication.
Trayd’s HR and people-management tools bring these responsibilities into the same operating environment as payroll.
This can reduce the need to maintain separate records across multiple systems.
Field and Labor Tracking
Accurate payroll starts with accurate information about the work performed.
Trayd offers mobile tools for workers and foremen to record attendance, track shifts, and manage field-related information.
The platform supports time and attendance tracking, scheduling, crew communication, and daily shift reporting.
When field information flows into payroll and reporting, contractors can reduce the administrative gap between what happens on a jobsite and what the back office knows.
Job Costing and Project Reporting
Labor is a major cost for many specialty contractors.
Without timely information, managers may struggle to understand whether a project is staying within budget.
Trayd’s project reporting tools are designed to provide visibility into labor costs as they occur.
Contractors can monitor labor by project, task code, worker, trade, and location.
The objective is to help businesses understand their actual labor expenses before the end of a project or reporting cycle.
6. Trayd Accounting: Connecting the Field to Finance
On September 24, 2026, Trayd announced the launch of Trayd Accounting.
This was a significant development because it extended the company’s ambition beyond payroll and workforce management.
The idea behind the product is that financial information should begin with what happens on the jobsite.
When workers complete their shifts, labor costs are generated. When materials are used and work progresses, project expenses accumulate. But in many construction businesses, finance teams receive that information later through payroll reports, invoices, and manual updates.
That delay can make it harder to understand the financial position of an active project.
Trayd Accounting is designed to connect jobsite activity, payroll, and accounting in one platform.
The company describes this approach as bringing the field, payroll, and books together.
The launch represents a broader strategic shift. Trayd is no longer positioning itself only as a construction payroll provider. It wants to become a central operating system for specialty contractors’ back-office operations.
This also creates a more substantial product challenge.
Accounting software must support financial records, reporting, and workflows that businesses depend on to make important decisions. Trayd will need to demonstrate that its accounting capabilities can meet the requirements of contractors while working reliably with their existing business processes.
Still, the direction is clear: the company wants to reduce the distance between work performed in the field and the financial information used to manage the business.
7. Customer Results: What Happens When Payroll Becomes Faster?
The strongest way to understand Trayd’s value is to examine how contractors use it.
The company publishes several customer case studies that show the operational challenges it is trying to address.
M. O’Connor Contracting: From 12–16 Hours to Under Two
M. O’Connor Contracting, a Boston-based general contractor, faced a familiar payroll problem.
Its financial controller spent approximately 12–16 hours every week reconciling time data, making prevailing-wage adjustments, and preparing certified payroll reports.
The company was also preparing to adopt Sage Intacct and wanted a more connected approach to its financial information.
After implementing Trayd, M. O’Connor Contracting reported that its weekly payroll workload fell from 12–16 hours to under two hours.
The company also gained automated certified payroll reporting and improved visibility into labor costs by project and cost code.
Titan Structural Group: Supporting Growth Without Expanding the Back Office
Titan Structural Group provides another example.
According to Trayd’s customer case study, Titan started using the platform when it had three workers in the field and later grew to 42 union employees.
Before implementing Trayd, payroll and reporting took more than 40 hours each week.
The company reported reducing that workload to approximately one hour per week.
The platform also helped Titan manage compliance across multiple union locals and states.
Tompkins Excavating: More Operations Without More Administrative Work
Tompkins Excavating faced increasing administrative pressure as its public-sector work expanded.
Its previous tools created fragmented workflows, reporting delays, and additional manual corrections.
After adopting Trayd, the company reported a 70% reduction in weekly payroll approval time and a reduction in recurring compliance reporting from eight hours to approximately 30 minutes.
It also reported scaling jobsite operations by 40% without increasing back-office administrative workload.
These examples are published customer results supplied by Trayd. They should not be interpreted as guaranteed outcomes for every contractor.
Nevertheless, they show the kind of measurable operational improvements the company is targeting.
8. Funding and Investors: The Capital Behind Trayd’s Growth
Trayd’s development has attracted support from investors interested in construction technology and vertical software.
In February 2025, the company announced a $4.5 million seed round led by Suffolk Technologies, with participation from Bloomberg Beta and Y Combinator.
The funding was intended to support product development, team expansion, and growth.
Suffolk Technologies was a particularly relevant investor because of its connection to the construction industry through Suffolk Construction.
That relationship provided more than financial backing. It connected Trayd with an investor familiar with the challenges and opportunities in the built environment.
The next major milestone came on March 25, 2026, when Trayd announced a $10 million Series A led by White Star Capital.
The round included continued support from Suffolk Technologies and Y Combinator, alongside a new strategic investment from RXR, a real estate and technology investment firm.
Trayd said the funding would help accelerate national expansion and product development.
There is a small discrepancy in publicly reported total funding figures. The company’s March 2026 announcement described its funding as approximately $15 million, while Crunchbase News reported $17 million. The $4.5 million seed and $10 million Series A alone total $14.5 million, before considering other reported investment or accelerator funding.
The most reliable way to describe the milestone is that Trayd raised a $4.5 million seed round and a $10 million Series A, with the company and media outlets reporting slightly different cumulative totals.
9. Business Model: Selling Software Built Around Construction Work
Trayd operates as a business-to-business software company.
Its customers are specialty contractors that need to manage employees, payroll, compliance, and project-related labor information.
The platform follows a vertical SaaS approach: rather than selling generic software to every type of business, it focuses on the specific operational requirements of a particular industry.
According to Crunchbase News, Trayd’s SaaS pricing is tied to the number of workers processed through payroll.
This model connects the company’s commercial growth to the size and activity of its customers’ workforces.
As contractors hire more employees or expand into additional projects, their need for workforce management and payroll services can grow as well.
The strategy also creates an opportunity for Trayd to expand its relationship with existing customers.
A contractor that initially adopts payroll software may later use the same platform for HR, time tracking, scheduling, job costing, and accounting.
The broader the platform becomes, the more operational information it can connect.
However, expansion also increases the responsibility to deliver reliable software across several business-critical functions.
10. Competition: Where Does Trayd Fit in Construction Technology?
Trayd operates in a competitive market that includes payroll providers, workforce management platforms, construction management software, and accounting systems.
Established companies such as ADP and Sage offer broad business software and payroll capabilities.
Construction-focused platforms such as Procore and other workforce or field-management providers address different parts of the construction operating process.
Trayd’s strategy is to specialize in the back-office requirements of trade contractors.
Its differentiation is built around the combination of:
- Construction-specific payroll rules.
- Union and prevailing-wage compliance.
- Field-to-payroll data connections.
- Certified payroll reporting.
- Labor cost visibility.
- Workforce management.
- Integrated accounting.
This specialization could give Trayd an advantage with contractors whose payroll requirements are too complicated for generic systems.
But it also means the company must continue proving that its platform can handle complex customer requirements while integrating with the wider construction software ecosystem.
Its long-term competitive position will depend on product reliability, customer support, integrations, and its ability to expand without making the platform unnecessarily complicated.
For another example of how vertical software can reshape an established industry, see the DenotePress story about Cubby and its AI-powered self-storage platform.
11. Challenges Ahead: What Trayd Must Get Right
Trayd has identified a meaningful problem, attracted venture funding, and expanded its product offering. But several challenges will influence its next stage of growth.
Handling Complex Compliance Requirements
Construction payroll is not uniform.
Requirements can vary by state, project, union, worker classification, and contract.
The platform must remain accurate as customers operate across different jurisdictions and increasingly complicated projects.
Building Trust With Contractors
Payroll is one of the most sensitive functions in a construction business.
Employees expect to be paid correctly and on time. Contractors need reliable records and accurate reporting.
A software failure can damage customer trust quickly.
Trayd’s product reliability and customer support will therefore remain essential to its growth.
Scaling Beyond Payroll
Expanding into HR, scheduling, job costing, and accounting creates a much larger opportunity.
But each product area has its own requirements and established competitors.
Trayd must demonstrate that these products work together as one coherent system rather than simply adding more features.
Competing With Established Platforms
Contractors may already use established payroll, accounting, and construction-management systems.
Replacing those tools can require time, training, integrations, and changes to internal processes.
Trayd must make the benefits of switching clear enough to justify the effort.
Turning AI Into Practical Value
The construction technology industry is increasingly exploring AI.
Trayd’s opportunity is to use structured workforce, project, and financial information to make its platform more intelligent.
But AI features will only be valuable if they improve real workflows, reduce errors, and give contractors reliable information.
12. What’s Next for Anna Berger and Trayd?
Trayd’s next chapter is likely to be defined by its transition from a construction payroll specialist into a broader back-office operating platform.
The March 2026 Series A provided additional resources for national expansion and product development.
The September 2026 launch of Trayd Accounting showed that the company is moving toward a more connected approach to construction operations.
Its ambition is to link the information generated by workers and foremen on job sites with payroll, project reporting, and accounting.
If the company succeeds, contractors could gain a more complete view of their businesses without having to coordinate information across multiple disconnected systems.
The challenge will be executing that vision while maintaining the accuracy and reliability required by an industry where payroll and financial reporting have direct consequences for workers and businesses.
For Berger and Kessler, the opportunity is substantial. They are building for a customer group that has historically had to adapt generic software to construction-specific problems.
Trayd’s long-term success will depend on how well it can turn that specialization into a scalable, trusted platform.
13. Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Trayd
Trayd’s journey offers several useful lessons for founders building technology businesses.
1. Look for problems you understand personally.
Berger’s exposure to her father’s construction business helped her recognize an administrative problem that many software entrepreneurs might overlook.
Personal experience can provide a valuable starting point for discovering real customer needs.
2. Build for a specific industry before trying to serve everyone.
Trayd focused on specialty contractors rather than creating another generic payroll platform.
That allowed the company to build around specific workflows, rules, and customer requirements.
3. Choose a co-founder with complementary strengths.
Berger brought the vision and industry understanding, while Kessler brought technical leadership and software engineering experience.
The combination helped turn an operational problem into a technology product.
4. Connect software to measurable business outcomes.
Saving payroll hours, improving reporting, and increasing labor-cost visibility are tangible benefits.
Customers are more likely to value software when they can see how it improves their operations.
5. Expand from a strong initial product.
Trayd began with payroll and compliance before expanding into workforce management, job costing, and accounting.
This creates an opportunity to grow with customers instead of constantly searching for entirely new markets.
Frequently Asked Questions About Trayd
1. What is Trayd?
Trayd is a construction technology company that provides a back-office operating system for specialty trade contractors. Its platform supports payroll, compliance, HR, scheduling, field tracking, job costing, reporting, and accounting.
2. Who founded Trayd?
Trayd was co-founded by Anna Berger and Cara Kessler. Berger is the company’s CEO, while Kessler serves as its CTO.
3. When was Trayd founded?
Trayd was founded in 2021.
4. Why did Anna Berger start Trayd?
Berger grew up around her father’s construction business and saw how much time was spent managing paper timecards, payroll, and disconnected administrative systems. She wanted to build software specifically for the needs of construction contractors.
5. What does Trayd do for construction companies?
Trayd helps contractors manage employee information, time tracking, payroll, union requirements, prevailing wages, certified payroll reporting, labor costs, and accounting through a connected platform.
6. Does Trayd support union and prevailing-wage payroll?
Yes. The platform is designed to handle union wage requirements, prevailing-wage rates, worker classifications, shift premiums, and certified payroll reporting.
7. How much funding has Trayd raised?
Trayd announced a $4.5 million seed round in February 2025 and a $10 million Series A in March 2026. Publicly reported cumulative funding totals differ slightly, with the company describing approximately $15 million and Crunchbase News reporting $17 million.
8. Who invested in Trayd?
Its investors include White Star Capital, Suffolk Technologies, Y Combinator, Bloomberg Beta, and RXR.
9. What is Trayd Accounting?
Trayd Accounting is a product launched in September 2026. It is designed to connect jobsite activity, payroll, and accounting so contractors can manage financial information in one platform.
10. Who are Trayd’s customers?
Trayd serves specialty contractors and construction businesses. Its published customer stories include M. O’Connor Contracting, Titan Structural Group, and Tompkins Excavating.
11. How does Trayd make money?
Trayd operates as a B2B SaaS company. Its software is sold to contractors, with pricing reported to be tied to the number of workers processed through payroll. Its full pricing structure is not publicly disclosed.
12. What makes Trayd different from traditional payroll software?
Trayd is designed around construction-specific requirements, including union rules, prevailing wages, certified payroll, field time tracking, and project-level labor costs. It aims to connect these workflows instead of treating payroll as an isolated function.
Conclusion: Building Better Back-Office Technology for the People Who Build the World
Trayd’s story started with a problem that Anna Berger had witnessed for years.
Her father’s construction business showed her how much time and effort went into administrative processes that could have been managed more efficiently with the right technology.
Together with Cara Kessler, she turned that observation into a company focused on modernizing construction’s back office.
Since its founding in 2021, Trayd has expanded from payroll and compliance into a broader workforce and financial operating platform. Its funding milestones, customer case studies, and launch of Trayd Accounting demonstrate the scale of the opportunity it is pursuing.
The company’s larger ambition is to connect the field, payroll, and finance in one system.
That is an important goal for an industry where project costs, labor information, and financial decisions are closely connected.
For entrepreneurs, Trayd offers a reminder that innovation does not always begin with inventing an entirely new market. Sometimes it begins by understanding an old industry, identifying a problem that everyone has learned to tolerate, and building a better way to solve it.
