I'm a project manager at a California flooring contractor. Not a former one — a current one. STrOp exists because of my own Friday nights: the certified payroll that has to go to DIR, the estimate that got re-keyed into a schedule of values, the SOV that got re-keyed into a pay app, the T&M tags that never made it into a change order. Every one of those is the same information, typed again, by someone whose actual job is delivering a project.
The tools weren't built for us
Construction software is built for the top of the food chain — owners, architects, general contractors. What trickles down to the specialty sub is a portal login and a list of things the GC's system needs from you by Thursday. The sub is first on the job and last to leave, carries the labor risk, fronts the material, and does it all on tooling a GC would never accept for themselves.
Nobody's going to fix that from the outside. Procore isn't going to wake up one day and care about your lien-waiver exceptions. So we're building it from the inside — one working contractor's operation at a time, starting with mine.
Why "STrOp"
A strop is the leather strap a barber draws a razor across before every client. It doesn't sharpen a dull blade — that's a whetstone, for the neglected. A strop realigns an edge that's already there, and keeps a keen blade keen. Daily.
That's the whole thesis. You're not dull, and you don't need to be taught your own business. You're a fine blade the system keeps knocking off-edge — the re-keying, the portals, the Friday-night compliance runs. The friction is the villain. STrOp is the strop.
How we build
One rule drives the product: enter it once. The estimate becomes the SOV. The SOV becomes the pay app. The timecards become the certified payroll. The T&M tag becomes the change order that shows up on next month's billing. One continuous record from the first takeoff to the last warranty callback — because that's the shape of the actual work.
And everything ships to a real jobsite first. STrOp runs live at a working California trade contractor before it runs anywhere else — the certified payroll it generates goes to DIR for real crews on real prevailing-wage jobs. If a feature doesn't survive contact with an actual Friday, it doesn't ship.
Where we are
Early access, California first. We're bringing on a small founding group of specialty contractors — Bay Area first, trades that live with prevailing wage and GC paperwork every week. If that's your shop, we'd like to build the rest of this with you.