David Berg learned a lot about the waste management industry by driving a garbage truck around the country as the first employee at Ohio-based Battle Motors.
He discovered that despite the sheer number of sales prospecting platforms, selling to the waste management industry is still an offline endeavor.
“All of them had a unanimous way of going to market, which was old school ways of pen and paper, door-to-door knocking, [and] little-to-no technology on both CRM prospecting or any bit of the sales funnel,” Berg told TechCrunch. “We saw an opportunity there to be the first, not only to build within the space, but to disrupt an entire market.”
Berg launched CommanderAI in early 2024 as a customer relationship manager (CRM) and sales prospecting platform built for waste management — and other industrial services like dumpster rentals and industrial recyclers – to fill that gap.
Berg, who is also the CEO of CommanderAI, said that while Salesforce or HubSpot could be customized for the waste management industry, the technology is too complicated and lacks the necessary nuances about the industry to see widespread adoption. CommanderAI’s software is also better suited to the types of contracts that waste management companies use, he said.
These platforms don’t have the specific types of data that waste management companies use to find customers, Berg said. Waste management companies sell to small, standalone businesses that might not have an online presence, and to new construction projects that aren’t widely advertised. CommanderAI pulls that information for its users using AI.
“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,” Berg said. “That’s where the AI [large language model] pipeline comes in. There’s many more nuances within waste.”
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Waste management isn’t a small industry. The U.S. waste management industry generated more than $100 billion in revenue in 2024, according to an industry trade organization. The players in the industry are a diverse mix, ranging from waste haulers with just a handful of trucks up to the $90 billion behemoth Waste Management.
“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 said. “’We’re not here to replace your sales team. We’re not here to change your way of doing things.’”
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