BuiltForward

Jason Jacobs
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BuiltForward explores how AI, technology, and leadership are reshaping construction—and the broader physical economy. Host Jason Jacobs, an entrepreneur and investor, learns in public through conversations with the operators, founders, and leaders driving that transformation. Together they dig into how organizations continuously adapt as technology evolves, what actually works on the ground, and where the biggest opportunities are emerging.

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  1. 4 ngày trước

    The Real Challenge of AI Transformation - Professor Jerry Kane

    Professor Jerry Kane has spent more than a decade studying digital transformation and how organizations adapt to new technology. In this episode, we explore what AI transformation actually looks like inside an organization - and why Jerry believes the technology itself may be the easy part. We discuss: • Why AI transformation is fundamentally a people, workflow, and organizational challenge • Why waiting for AI technology to stabilize could leave companies too far behind • What Jerry is learning from teaching students to build and work with AI • Why widespread AI adoption doesn't necessarily translate into meaningful business impact • The difference between automating existing work and actually transforming how work gets done • Why AI workflows are “grown,” not simply built • Why the people who understand a company's workflows may be better positioned to drive AI transformation than outside technologists • Jerry's concept of the “backward-deployed engineer” • Why he is skeptical of the traditional forward-deployed engineering model for many companies • What becomes valuable when the cost of building software continues to fall • Why experimentation and organizational adaptability may become durable competitive advantages • How AI is changing education and the skills students need to develop • Why the organizations that win may not be the ones that pick the right AI tools, but the ones that become best at continuously adapting as the technology changes BuiltForward How AI and leadership are reshaping construction - and the broader physical economy. Follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/builtforward-7299979495069929472/

  2. 25 thg 8

    Inside a 35-Person Elevator Contractor - Matt Pincus, Pincus Elevator

    Matt Pincus is Owner of Pincus Elevator, a family-owned elevator contractor founded by his father in 1953. In this episode, Matt takes us inside the day-to-day realities of running a specialty contracting business. His biggest constraint is skilled labor: elevator mechanics take years to develop, experienced people are difficult to hire, and simply adding headcount isn't an easy answer. That makes productivity increasingly important. Matt describes the goal in concrete terms: if a job takes 200 labor hours today, how do you get it done in 150 with the same people, without sacrificing quality or safety? We also discuss what happens when customers who once paid in 30–60 days start stretching toward 90–120, why Pincus brought in a fractional CFO, and how quickly that changed decisions around collections, forecasting, and hiring. And we get into technology and AI: where Matt sees opportunities to improve the business, why contractors can know exactly where their inefficiencies are and still struggle to fix them, and what it would take for new technology to actually change how the work gets done. Topics include: The skilled labor constraint in the elevator industry Why developing an elevator mechanic takes years Productivity when you can't simply hire more people The 200-hours-to-150-hours challenge Cash flow and lengthening payment cycles Bringing in a fractional CFO Knowing your operational problems vs. actually fixing them Technology adoption inside a specialty contractor Where AI and automation could realistically help Running a multi-generational family business BuiltForward How AI and leadership are reshaping construction - and the broader physical economy. Follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/builtforward-7299979495069929472/

  3. 18 thg 8

    WorkHero: The AI Back Office for HVAC w/ Furman Haynes

    BuiltForward host Jason Jacobs interviews Furman Haynes, co-founder and CEO of WorkHero, an “AI back office” for the smallest HVAC contractors - often one- to three-truck shops. WorkHero takes 10–20 hours per week of admin like invoicing, permits, heat pump rebates, and other paperwork off contractors’ plates, using software plus expert office managers working inside the tools they already use, including ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro, QuickBooks, and email. Haynes shares his path from apprenticeship programs and trade immersion to identifying “admin inflation” as a key bottleneck to quality work and heat pump deployment, and explains why WorkHero started with people before automating workflows. They discuss fragmented contractor data, trust and privacy, why WorkHero goes wide rather than solving a single workflow, job costing and price books, human-in-the-loop AI, the limits of automating broken processes, and what comes next—including better AI “computer use,” diagnostics innovation, and potential expansion into plumbing and electrical. 00:00 Show Intro and Guest 03:04 WorkHero in 60 Seconds 05:18 Origin Story in the Trades 08:22 People First, Not Software 11:39 Remote Work and Data Reality 15:09 AI vs. Incumbent Software 18:51 Subscription Model: Going Wide 21:22 Who WorkHero Serves 22:28 Workflow Bottlenecks Explained 28:07 Tool Stack Integrations 29:29 Expert Judgment Layer 33:44 Privacy and Data Sharing 36:19 Teach-to-Fish Debate 39:41 Fixing Broken Workflows 44:41 Automation and Jobs 48:30 Mission and Market Choice 52:00 Five-Year Vision 53:30 Industry Ten-Year Outlook 55:37 Expansion Beyond HVAC 57:03 AI Computer-Use Frontier 58:39 Closing Thoughts BuiltForward How AI and leadership are reshaping construction - and the broader physical economy. Follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/builtforward-7299979495069929472/

  4. 11 thg 8

    The innovation team has no budget - Kevin Halter on how construction software actually gets bought

    The innovation team is not the buyer. The project is. Kevin Halter has spent about 15 years figuring out how technology actually gets bought and adopted in construction. He led sales at PlanGrid as the company grew from roughly $5 million to $120 million in revenue before Autodesk acquired it for about $875 million, then spent six years helping combine those acquisitions into what became Autodesk Construction Cloud. In this episode, Kevin explains why construction software companies so often sell to the wrong people. The innovation team may run the pilot, but it usually has “no budget, no authority to buy.” The real money sits closer to the project — with the people whose P&L, schedule, and bonus depend on getting the job done. Kevin also tells the story of diligencing the drone market for Emergence Capital before its Series A investment in DroneDeploy. At the time, heavily funded Airware looked formidable. Years later, Airware was gone and DroneDeploy had taken over its office lease. We recorded this conversation the day after Procore announced its acquisition of DroneDeploy. We get into: • Why PlanGrid sent people into the field in hard hats and steel-toed boots instead of trying to understand construction over Zoom • Why its product team kept removing buttons instead of adding features • How to run structured pilots that can actually expand across a construction enterprise • Why one successful project rarely translates automatically into an enterprise-wide rollout • “Tier zero” contractors, their innovation teams and venture arms, and why they aren't representative of most of the industry • Why the innovation team often has no budget — and how to find the money on the project P&L • Why construction software companies need to integrate with competitors rather than trying to own the entire stack • Why Kevin thinks too many startups are still building for the commercial GC • Where he sees opportunity instead: the trades, civil, industrial, residential, and owners of capital projects • Whether the big construction platforms should become more “headless” and let AI-native products sit on top of them • Who should actually be worried about AI and automation — and why Kevin thinks it isn't the skilled trades • Why owners ultimately buy certainty of cost and certainty of schedule • The labor shortage, retirement wave, and data-center boom reshaping the industry • How construction can become a career people actively choose • What Kevin makes of private equity rolling up MEP contractors - and why he says, “I don't love it. I don't love it. And I don't know how that ends.” We also go back to Kevin's path into construction: from engineering at Tufts and healthcare sales at Pfizer to founding an equipment-rental marketplace in 2012, joining PlanGrid, and ultimately spending his career helping construction technology companies figure out how to reach the people doing the work. 00:00 Show kickoff 02:05 Welcome 04:55 Engineer, Pfizer, and starting Getable 09:40 Kevin Spain and the drone diligence 11:35 Airware's $100 million and the drone wars 12:45 DroneDeploy takes over the competitor's lease 15:30 Joining PlanGrid 18:15 Venture money, boards, and how much to raise 22:15 Labor shortage, retirements, and data centers 25:10 Get off Zoom 29:00 COVID, customer tours, and in-person selling 32:25 Team composition and solution engineers 35:15 Structured pilots and land-and-expand 39:10 In-house innovation teams 40:35 Tier zero 41:40 The innovation team has no budget 43:05 Point tools, services, and integration 47:55 Stop building for the commercial GC 49:50 Sustaining versus disruptive innovation 52:45 Start where the market is underserved 55:30 Consolidation, M&A, and going headless 1:00:45 Who should be afraid of automation 1:01:55 Permitting, zoning, and the cost of building 1:04:15 Owners buy certainty 1:09:20 Making construction a career people choose 1:14:05 PE money and the MEP roll-ups 1:19:35 Ten years out 1:26:10 What Kevin advises on now BuiltForward How AI and leadership are reshaping construction - and the broader physical economy. Follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/builtforward-7299979495069929472/

  5. 4 thg 8

    "Construction Supply Chains Are Starving" - Guy Saxelby of Earlytrade on Cash Flow, Risk, and Getting Subcontractors Paid

    Construction has more bankruptcies than any other sector. Almost none of them are about bad building. Guy Saxelby is the co-founder and CEO of Earlytrade, a marketplace that lets subcontractors get paid early on invoices that have already been approved. The sub names a discount, the general contractor pays out of its own idle cash and earns a return on money that was sitting in a money market fund, and no lender sits in the middle. He started the company in Sydney in 2018 after late payments in one of his own businesses cost him employees, went all in on construction in 2023, and moved his family to Denver to build the US business. The arithmetic underneath it is the part that stayed with me. A subcontractor pays their crew every seven to fourteen days. They buy materials sixty days before the project starts. They do the work. Then they wait sixty to ninety days for the invoice. Who's funding that? We get into: Why construction has more bankruptcies than any other sector, and why they're almost all cash flow Pay-when-paid, and why "risk falls down the hill" from owner to GC to sub How the marketplace actually works, and why it isn't factoring Why the subs using it most are the ones growing, not the ones failing Why a good general contractor says no to more work than it takes on What's different about the US market: no regulated payment terms, and a private sector that dominates Why the big ERPs haven't simply built this themselves Breaking in as an outsider: "Who are you? You're a foreigner, and you're not from construction" Fifty-one sets of state rules, and why changing construction's legal plumbing is a fool's errand Designing something non-invasive: a financial benefit without being a financial product Where private equity actually makes its money in construction, and why it's rarer than people assume AI agents as a growth play rather than an efficiency play Ten years out: robotics, and the data-portability problem that matters more Links: Earlytrade - https://earlytrade.com | Guy Saxelby on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-saxelby/ 00:00 Show kickoff  00:24 Meet Guy Saxelby  03:19 What Earlytrade is, and how it started in Sydney  04:53 How COVID pulled the company into construction  06:02 Why Denver  08:01 Australia versus the US on payment terms  10:43 Construction supply chains are starving  11:16 Risk falls down the hill  12:15 Pay when paid  13:36 How the marketplace actually works  14:56 Dynamic discounting versus a fixed rate  16:42 Selling to the GC, serving the sub  17:13 The pitch to a general contractor  18:21 Is it only for desperate subs?  19:26 The sub's cash cycle  21:01 Why good GCs say no to work  21:53 The ideal customer profile  26:00 Sitting on top of the ERP  27:41 Objections and misconceptions  30:26 Why the ERPs haven't copied it  34:50 "Who are you? You're a foreigner"  38:18 Change the system or design around it  39:44 Fifty-one sets of rules and a fool's errand  44:33 Private equity in construction 4 6:59 The $10M wall and venture in contech  50:54 AI at EarlyTrade  55:04 Ten years out  58:11 The ten-year vision for Earlytrade  59:57 Who Guy wants to hear from  1:00:47 Scared money don't make money BuiltForward How AI and leadership are reshaping construction - and the broader physical economy. Follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/builtforward-7299979495069929472/

  6. 28 thg 7

    The Equipment Is Not the System - Ed Smith of Amply Energy on Building Better HVAC Businesses

    Ed Smith ran Wayfair's Canada business to nearly a billion dollars in revenue. Then he spent a year installing heat pumps - and learned firsthand why there's no such thing as a nationwide home-retrofit contractor: the equipment is not the system. The system is what a good contractor custom-manufactures on site, home by home. Ed is co-founder and co-CEO of Amply Energy, a software company helping residential HVAC contractors size, design, and sell heat pump systems - built on "Goldilocks" sizing and LiDAR-based home scanning and digital twins, replacing the outdated design tools (and finger-in-the-air rules of thumb) the incumbents left behind. He and co-founder Erik Fitz started Amply as a whole-home electrification contractor before pivoting to the software they'd built for themselves. We get into: Why heat pumps perform best when they're "Goldilocks" sized — and why square-footage sizing fails The pivot from installs to software, and why residential retrofits resist scale Amply's ideal customer: family-owned, heat-pump-forward, quality-focused, tech-forward shops Growing nationwide, fully remote, with no outside capital and zero ad spend — word of mouth, partners, and The Heat Pump Podcast Ed's skepticism of private-equity roll-ups and "box swapping" The long-term vision: whole-home electrification design and contractor "mixed groups" for peer learning AI at Amply: heavy internal use, ROI-focused, cautious on core product logic Links: Amply Energy - https://amply.energy | The Heat Pump Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-heat-pump-podcast/id1747806243 | National Comfort Institute - https://www.nationalcomfortinstitute.com/ BuiltForward explores where construction is heading over the next decade — and how AI and other emerging technologies will and won't transform the industry. If this was useful, share it with someone building in the industry and follow the show so you don't miss what's next. 00:00 Show kickoff 00:24 Meet Ed Smith 02:15 What Amply does 03:08 Do heat pumps work 05:13 From installs to software 09:06 Why contracting won't scale 12:10 Private equity rollups 14:55 Ideal customer and channels 17:49 Moat and AI reality check 19:51 What Amply replaces 21:59 Nationwide go to market 23:47 Acquisition philosophy 26:40 Residential vs commercial HVAC 28:02 Defining the ideal customer 28:39 Electrification contractor vision 30:34 Software gaps in the stack 31:47 Bootstrapping vs competition 32:49 Pigs and chickens parable 33:48 Dr. Seuss and constraints 35:57 Customer community mixed groups 40:53 Remote team and culture 44:18 AI use and ROI reality 47:41 AI future in construction 49:50 Closing plugs and farewell BuiltForward How AI and leadership are reshaping construction - and the broader physical economy. Follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/builtforward-7299979495069929472/

  7. 7 thg 7

    BuiltForward Trailer

    BuiltForward explores how AI, technology, and leadership are reshaping construction—and the broader physical economy. Host Jason Jacobs, an entrepreneur and investor, learns in public through conversations with the operators, founders, and leaders driving that transformation. Together they dig into how these organizations continuously adapt as technology evolves, what is actually working on the ground, and where the biggest opportunities are emerging. New episodes weekly. Subscribe and come along for the journey! BuiltForward How AI and leadership are reshaping construction - and the broader physical economy. Follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/builtforward-7299979495069929472/

Trailer

Giới Thiệu

BuiltForward explores how AI, technology, and leadership are reshaping construction—and the broader physical economy. Host Jason Jacobs, an entrepreneur and investor, learns in public through conversations with the operators, founders, and leaders driving that transformation. Together they dig into how organizations continuously adapt as technology evolves, what actually works on the ground, and where the biggest opportunities are emerging.

Thông Tin

  • Nhà sáng tạo
    Jason Jacobs
  • Năm hoạt động
    2026
  • Tập
    7
  • Xếp hạng
    Thô tục
  • Bản quyền
    © BuiltForward, 2026.
  • Trang web chương trình
    BuiltForward