Parch Is Redrawing Architectural Collaboration
When Sabah Mohammed moved to Atlanta to build her career in architecture, she expected to be designing buildings, not drowning in paper. Yet in her job, she found herself lugging dozens of floor plan printouts onto construction sites. “I was working on a project, and we were struggling to collaborate; I’d have to print these giant sheets of paper just to share updates with my teammates and clients,” Mohammed recalls. “Not only was that terrible for the environment, but it was also chaotic as I would have to aggregate individual feedback across different versions. The process felt inefficient and archaic. This frustration would soon spark an entrepreneurial journey.
Hackathon Spark at Atlanta Tech Week
Mohammed vented about the workflow challenge to a friend, and together they decided to act. In mid-2024, during Atlanta Tech Week, she assembled a small team to pitch a solution at a hackathon hosted by ACT House at Atlanta Tech Village (ATV). The idea was simple: create a digital way for architects and engineers to review plans and communicate on a simple interface without relying on endless email chains or printouts. They called the product Parch, as a nod to the humble parchment paper, which architects use to sketch and communicate ideas. Despite being cobbled together over a single weekend, the concept struck a chord. Mohammed’s team of five ended up winning the hackathon’s top prize.
Buoyed by that early validation, one of the hackathon teammates submitted the idea to Georgia Tech’s startup accelerator, CREATE-X. The fledgling project was accepted into CREATE-X’s Summer 2025 Startup Launch cohort. Suddenly, Mohammed found herself not only as an architectural designer but as the co-founder of a startup, working alongside her hackathon team to turn their demo into a real product.
From Hackathon to Accelerator
Joining CREATE-X gave Parch a critical boost. Over the summer, under the guidance of seasoned mentors, the team ran weekly customer discovery sessions, refined the prototype, validated the pain with existing solutions, and presented at the program’s Demo Day showcase. The experience also fundamentally changed their approach to building the business. “We had a working prototype from the hackathon, but CREATE-X gave us the structure to continue validating the problem,” says Mohammed. “Before CREATE-X, we were very solution-focused, but through it we narrowed down the exact problem we wanted to solve”. In other words, the accelerator pushed them to focus less on cool features and more on ensuring they were addressing a real pain point for professionals in the field.
That shift in mindset paid off. With clarity on the problem, the hassle of disconnected design collaboration, Mohammed and her team honed in on developing a tool that small architecture and engineering teams could use in their daily workflow.
Building a Collaborative Design Review Tool for Architectural Drawings
The result of these efforts is Parch, a web-based collaboration platform purpose-built for architects, engineers, and contractors at small firms. In essence, Parch acts as a digital overlay on a floor plan, allowing everyone on a project to literally get on the same page. “It’s essentially a design review platform for architects and designers,” Mohammed explains, describing Parch’s contextual interface. “You can review a floorplan and tag collaborators right where a change is needed, instead of dealing with endless email threads.”
While there are other software tools for sharing and marking up architectural drawings, Mohammed says they tend to be clunky or geared toward large enterprises. Parch’s key difference is its simplicity and accessibility. “There are other software options, but they’re clunky to use,” she notes. Parch is web-based; this accessibility is its biggest strength. Users don’t need special hardware or to install an app or download massive drawing files; they just open a browser, and all the drawings, markups, and threaded comments are there in one place. By contextualizing conversations within the drawings themselves, Parch reduces miscommunication and version confusion. An architect can sketch a change or leave a comment bubble on the plan, tag an engineer or contractor, and that person gets notified to see the exact area in question. It brings the familiar convenience of document collaboration (think Google Docs or track changes in Microsoft Word) to the world of architectural drawings.
In Beta and Looking Ahead
Today, Parch is running in closed beta, working with a select group of early users to polish the product. The team has been fine-tuning features and running experiments in preparation for a broader launch.
They’re also looking to bring on more technical talent to help accelerate development and implement user feedback quickly. In true startup fashion, the to-do list ranges from refining the software to figuring out an effective go-to-market strategy.
Mohammed remains optimistic and driven by the original problem that sparked Parch. Every oversized printout or convoluted email chain she encounters in architecture reinforces her belief that the industry needs a solution like this. As Parch prepares to open beyond the beta, she’s focused on ensuring the platform meets the needs of architectural teams.
As Mohammed and her team gear up for a wider release, they invite early adopters to try Parch. Interested firms can get early access via their site, sendparch.com, for a sneak peek at this new way of working. If all goes to plan, those giant rolls of floorplan printouts may soon become a relic of the past.