Buildings 2.0 Library
Conversations on the future of the built environment
81 episodes of the Buildings 2.0 podcast, each bound as a short book: the ideas, the numbers and the lines worth keeping.
Season 2, Episode 13 /Oct 22, 2025
Why the next big construction tech startup might be born inside a corporate accelerator
German Aparicio Jr, Trimble
Oct 22, 2025 /The Business of AEC
Why the next big construction tech startup might be born inside a corporate accelerator
German Aparicio Jr manages early innovation and partner development at Trimble, the construction-technology giant, where he runs its accelerator and works alongside its venture arm. He spent a decade at Gehry Technologies making software talk to other software on some of the most complex buildings ever built. He knows what a construction startup needs, and it is rarely more code.
German Aparicio Jr, Program Manager of Early Innovation and Partner Development at Trimble, Trimble
In this conversation
How Gehry Technologies' consulting worked: bespoke tools that moved data between platforms for complex projects, a business built on a real need.
German's read on adoption in 2025: contractors are more willing to test emerging technology and give feedback than founders assume.
What this year's accelerator cohort is building: AI for code checking, contracts and agents in the field.
His advice to students at Cal Poly Pomona and to founders alike: be curious and let curiosity drive decisions.
They priced it at a point where a leader in a firm was able to just pay for it on their company card.
German Aparicio Jr
Chapters
From Gehry Technologies to Trimble
A career that ran from Gehry's studio to Trimble's accelerator.
Are firms still slow to adopt?
Whether the industry's reputation for slow adoption still holds.
By the numbers
Architecture firms using AI day to day in 2023, by firm size
German says the reputation for slow adoption is out of date. The gap between large and small firms is where a startup's go-to-market lives.
Source: AIA Firm Survey Report 2024 ↗The landscape that excites him
The parts of construction technology German finds most promising now.
Before you start a startup
What an aspiring founder should know before raising money.
Be curious
The one piece of advice he gives students.
One of the biggest needs for startup companies is those introductions to be able to scale.
German Aparicio Jr
Takeaways
The single biggest need of a construction startup is a warm introduction to a contractor or owner willing to pilot. Twelve weeks of integration work, then a door opens that a founder could not open alone.
Price it so a firm leader can put it on a company card. That is how early construction software got into buildings, and how it still does.
Strategic capital is different from pure venture: it brings distribution and integration, and it co-invests to share risk.
Be curious, and use that to drive a lot of your decision making.
German Aparicio Jr