CommanderAI, the waste industry’s most advanced customer relationship management (CRM) and sales prospecting platform, is now live. Betterland has recently achieved its $5 million successful seed funding round! That funding officially closed last month, with leadership by 11 Tribes Ventures. Watchfire Ventures, Gaingels, and Rad Fund joined the effort. This funding increase sets CommanderAI up to easily scale operations and further solidify its expanding sales initiative.
Founder David Berg started the company in early 2024. It’s intended to innovatively equip, tailor and design tools for those who may have one truck as a small hauler or widespread larger companies and organizations within the waste management ecosystem. With the U.S. waste management industry generating over $100 billion in revenue in 2024, there is significant potential for growth and disruption. In reality, the space today has only a handful of active software players. This results in incredible opportunity for CommanderAI to prove itself and emerge as a major player in the industry.
David Berg brings a unique perspective to the waste management industry, having learned about its intricacies firsthand while driving a garbage truck. His journey involves being the first employee at Ohio-based Brattle Motors, further building to his entrepreneurial pedigree. Berg’s perspectives into the industry are invaluable as CommanderAI seeks to provide an unsaturated aspect of the market.
And the reality is that most investors, at least a short list of investors, don’t really have any deep investments in waste either, Berg noted. This lack of investment interest, in turn, reflects the need for more specialized solutions that the sector is hungry for.
Today, CommanderAI is primarily targeting the mid-to-large regional players in the waste management space. Their robust platform provides an array of integrated features such as mapping, marketing, and routing features all built to save your operations time and money. “We’d like to have 30% of the waste management industry using CommanderAI as their lead source of AI tooling and really any sort of tooling within their tech stack,” Berg expressed, underlining the company’s ambitious goal.
The company’s methodology is based on developing an intimate knowledge of its customers current sales processes. “The way that we’re approaching it to them is, ‘Hey, look, we know you have a way of selling. You’ve been doing this for 20 plus years. All we’re here to do is help you sell more efficiently,’” Berg explained. This approach is intended to build on existing processes in a more organic manner while still bringing technical assistance that is useful.
Berg highlighted the use of data as a central pillar to their offerings. “Although that data is inherently available somewhere on the public web, to be able to segment it and actually repurpose it to where it’s useful took a lot of work,” he stated. Emphasis on data-driven solutions. This data-first approach is one of the things that differentiate CommanderAI from the competition.
With this new capital, CommanderAI will use this funding to scale its sales team by three or four times. The company knows that having a robust talent pipeline will be key to its ambitious growth trajectory. “We saw an opportunity there to be the first, not only to build within the space but to disrupt an entire market,” Berg remarked, indicating his vision for the future of the company.
The waste management industry has traditionally been seen as an underserved industry for technology solutions. With CommanderAI, we’re changing that narrative. Not only does it provide a necessary service, but it increases their operational efficiency and sales effectiveness, which is especially important in this essential industry.