# FlowManual

> FlowManual is an AI platform for the back office of construction contractors. It reads specs, contracts, quotes, and invoices and automatically marks up scope, prices, deadlines, and exclusions, then compares bids against signed contracts and invoices against locked buyout prices to flag every scope change and price drift by severity and dollar impact. Founded in 2026 by Harvard dropouts David Shijoon Bae and Michael Lin, the company is part of Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch and aims to cut the repetitive manual work of pre-construction so contractors can bid more and deliver at a higher standard.

- **Founded:** 2026
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founders:** David Shijoon Bae (CEO & Co-Founder), Michael Lin (CTO & Co-Founder)
- **Team size:** 2
- **Products:** Document Intelligence, Bid vs. Contract Comparison, Invoice Verification, Takeoff Counts, Bid Leveling
- **Notable:** Accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch., Built a working AI platform spanning bid, buyout, contract review, takeoffs, and invoice verification with a 2-person team., Co-founder Michael Lin previously scaled a product from $3K to $336K MRR and cut latency from 800ms to 100ms.

## Products & services

- **Document Intelligence** — Automatically marks up construction documents - specs, contracts, quotes, invoices - highlighting scope items, prices, deadlines, and exclusions directly on the PDF with margin labels and clause references.
- **Bid vs. Contract Comparison** — Side-by-side analysis of a bid against a signed contract, ranking every scope addition, deletion, and price change by severity and dollar impact.
- **Invoice Verification** — Compares invoices against locked buyout prices and flags discrepancies line-by-line to catch invoice drift.
- **Takeoff Counts** — Interactive pinning system for counting items on drawings with schedule cross-checking.
- **Bid Leveling** — Scope analysis pulled from bid documents with pricing adjustments to compare subcontractor bids on equal footing.
- **Purchasing Intelligence** — Material price history analysis with 90-day outlooks to inform buyout timing.

## Achievements

- Accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch.
- Built a working AI platform spanning bid, buyout, contract review, takeoffs, and invoice verification with a 2-person team.
- Co-founder Michael Lin previously scaled a product from $3K to $336K MRR and cut latency from 800ms to 100ms.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Raised a $130K seed as part of Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch.
- **2026-07** — Featured among YC's S26 construction and proptech cohort building AI back-office tools.

## Links

- Website: https://flowmanual.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flowmanual

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/flowmanual-yc-s26
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-31