SubBase CEO, Eric Helitzer, and Tats Nakagawa sit down for a practical, field-first look at construction procurement including what breaks, why it breaks, and how to fix it without blowing up what already works. Eric traces his path from the University of Florida’s Rinker School of Construction Management into high-rise concrete at Baker Concrete, then into GC operations and early Procore adoption. Those experiences shaped how he thinks about procurement today: it’s a people-and-process problem spanning field, office, vendors, and accounting, not just a software feature list.
They dig into the real adoption blockers (“if it ain’t broke”), why owners and C-suites respond to value-oriented ROI walk-throughs, and how SubBase focuses on the specialty-trade and self-performing GC level where materials chaos lives. Eric shares early founder lessons, a relationship-driven go-to-market, and the plan to deepen vendor workflows so confirmations and lead times move as fast as jobsite reality.
Chapters[Start] Rinker to Baker: UF internships, sustainable construction focus, and high-rise concrete work that taught critical-path scheduling and materials control.
04:14 From Paper to Platform: Early Procore adoption at a GC, seeing manual workflows fail at scale, and the first SubBase prototypes in the field with subcontractors.
08:30 “If It’s Not Broke…” (It Is): Education over assumptions including quantifying hidden costs, aligning owners, purchasing, PMs, and accounting with a value-oriented ROI session.
15:08 Beyond the Sub: Vendor Workflows and Responsiveness: Why vendor-side tools, faster confirmations, and shared history matter as much as price.
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