BuiltForward host Jason Jacobs sits down with Furman Haynes, co-founder and CEO of WorkHero, the AI-powered back office for small HVAC contractors. Furman explains how WorkHero grew out of hundreds of conversations and ride-alongs with contractors, where he saw talented tradespeople spending nights and weekends buried in invoicing, permits, rebates, equipment registrations, and other administrative work. Rather than start by building software, WorkHero began with experienced office managers doing the work fractionally. Over time, the company built software and AI around what it learned, creating a human-in-the-loop model that works across the systems contractors already use, including ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, QuickBooks, and email. Jason and Furman discuss why paperwork becomes a bottleneck for small contractors, what AI can actually automate today, the challenge of maintaining automations as workflows change, trust and privacy, what happens to jobs as AI takes on more back-office work, and WorkHero’s broader mission to help independent contractors compete and grow. They also explore what WorkHero’s model could mean beyond HVAC, including plumbing, electrical, and the rest of the skilled trades.
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
Jason Jacobs: [00:00:00] Welcome to BuiltForward, the podcast exploring where construction is heading over the next decade and how AI and other emerging technologies will and won't transform the industry. I'm Jason Jacobs, a longtime startup founder, investor, and the host. Let's get into it
Today's guest is Furman Haynes, co-founder and CEO of WorkHero, which he describes as the AI back office for small HVAC contractors. And he means the smallest ones, the one, two, and three-truck shops. Invoicing, permits, heat pump rebates, all the paperwork an owner ends up doing at night and on weekends instead of going to their kid's soccer game.
WorkHero takes it off their plate entirely using a combination of software and expert office managers who work inside whatever systems the shop already uses. Furman came at this from workforce development. He [00:01:00] spent his early career building apprenticeship programs, and then more than a year learning the trades from the inside, doing ride-alongs and hanging around a supply house outside Boston, handing out cold drinks to contractors and talking to anyone who would talk back.
They raised a $5 million seed round last fall. Ed Smith, who you heard from in episode one, is the one who told me I had to get Furman on the show. And most of my conversations lately have been about mid-size firms and up. Furman has deliberately gone the other way, into the long tail of one of the most fragmented industries in the country.
So I wanted to understand what he's building, where he thinks this market is going, and what he's learned along the way. It's a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Furman Hayes, welcome to the show.
Furman Haynes: Thanks, Jason. How's it going, man?
Jason Jacobs: Uh, I'm tired. I, uh, for whatever reason, when I went to bed last night, I knew it was gonna be a terrible night's sleep, and sure enough- Hmm ... it was a terrible night's sleep, and I had to cart my son off to the golf course bright and early this morning, and he [00:02:00] also had a terrible night's sleep, so maybe there's, there's something in the air.
But, um, how are you doing?
Furman Haynes: Something spooky going on. I am doing great. Uh, coming off of a, a little bit of a sprint, uh, work-wise myself. Um, but August is hopefully going to, to, to chill out a little bit
Jason Jacobs: Uh, well, well, Ed Smith from Amply put us in touch. He was guest number one. You are, I think by the time this goes out, you'll be guest number four.
Um, and, uh, and like Ed, um, you know, uh, residential HVAC and, and, uh, and used to being more on the host side of the mic on these podcasts than, uh, than on the guest side. So, um, I appreciate you switching sides and, and, uh, coming on the show.
Furman Haynes: This will be fun. We'll see if, um, we'll see if I can actually answer questions instead of just ask them.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. And it was Ed that put us in touch as well. Um- It is. Although I think, um- Yes ... so Chad from Workshop is-- Chad and Eleanor are, are involved, and they're my neighbors. So- That's right ... um, [00:03:00] so yeah. It's, uh, um, it's a s-small little world here. But, um- Plenty of
Furman Haynes: good people.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. They-- To, to, uh, to kick things off, Furman, just maybe give the, give the thirty seconds or a minute on, uh, WorkHero and what you do.
Furman Haynes: Sure. I'm Furman Haynes, uh, co-founder and CEO of WorkHero. We are the AI back office for small contractors, specifically in the HVAC industry. We got started because we spent a lot of time with the guys at one truck or two trucks or three trucks. And if you spend a lot of time with those guys, you notice a couple of things.
The first is that they don't have anyone else in the office to help them with all the admin, and they're spending nights and weekends. We have a, now a, a stat for this, between ten to twenty hours per week on average is just spent on invoicing, on heat pump rebates, on permits, on all of this paperwork. As you might imagine, this is the work that weighs down any small business owner, but especially when you are doing [00:04:00] field work and you are out in the field all day, and then you need to get back at night and be on your computer or spend weekends skipping your, your kids' soccer games to do this work.
It not only takes up your time, but it's, it's just the soul-sucking work of being a small business owner in the skilled trades and specifically in the HVAC industry. We think we've seen something like inflation is a word that's being used a l-a lot in the economy right now. We think we've seen something like admin inflation in, in this market.
Like the... There's increasing amounts of paperwork actually, um, for, for, for different parts of the business that are, that are popping up. Um, what WorkHero does is com- takes that work off of the owner's plate completely. We see there's some existing field service software out there that is great as a, as a system of record, as a place to store your data.
Unfortunately, it doesn't actually do enough for the owner. It is a tool that they have to, they have to use, they have to, uh, get something out of to actually, um, to actually, uh, provide the value. And WorkHero, um, completely [00:05:00] handles all parts of office and administrative work through a combination of software and Uh, services of actual office managers, um, who are a core part of our team and, um, and are really a, a huge reason that we, um, can, can provide the kind of value that we do.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, what led you into this area and h- and what led you into, um, uh, this, this, uh, problem within this area?
Furman Haynes: Yeah. So, so my background, uh, I grew up in Tennessee, uh, had family... Uh, I like to say I come from a family of bad engineers and one good electrician. If I had tried to go into the trades, my mechanical aptitude would've probably led me to, uh, uh, to, to not being that successful, so, um, so I, I didn't.
Um, however, I saw firsthand, um, the, the, the kind of impact that, um, especially being your own owner can have, um, uh, for one of my uncles. We... I then spent my early career, um, building apprenticeship programs and really thinking about workforce training a lot, [00:06:00] which led me to the skilled trades, um, uh, in recent years.
And we spent, uh, uh, over a year doing a real deep dive into the industry, um, doing ride-alongs with contractors, um, hanging out at one specific supply house when I still lived up in Boston. Uh, there was a Johnstone Supply where I would go. Uh, I got to know the counter guys really well. I would hand out cold drinks to contractors and just, like, spend time with these guys.
And, uh, and that led us to, um, some initial hy- hypotheses we had about, uh, solving the, the talent shortage, which is very real still in this industry, to understanding, um, the, the beauty of an industry made up of tens of thousands of small business owners, you know. The skilled trades more broadly, but spe-specifically HVAC, is one of the most fragmented industries in the country, as fragmented actually as, as the restaurant industry.
And so you have tens of thousands of, of former technicians turned owners who are craftsmen, who love the work that [00:07:00] they do. Um, I always think about A specific small conference down in Florida that inspired a lot of what became WorkHero. This conference was-- it is hosted every year by, uh, someone named Brian Orr, who runs a YouTube channel called HVAC School, and the, the conference is called the HVAC School Training Symposium.
And every single year, a gathering of about two hundred to three hundred, all, all the small business owners, right? These, these are not the private equity-backed companies that are sending in their guys. It's all the craftsmen who come together to learn from the best trainers and the best, uh, technical experts in the industry about topics like indoor air quality and ventilation and variable speed and, and all the different, um, sort of bleeding edge technologies.
And I was struck by as, as I went down to this conference, I was struck by, wow, like, these are, these are all, you know, small business owners with two or three technicians, and they're still coming here to learn, uh, learn the trade and, and, and, and [00:08:00] improve their, their, their sort of craftsmanship. And it was clear to me very quickly that the, the-- one of the biggest bottlenecks to heat pump deployment, to doing better quality work, to incorporating building science practices was just admin and paperwork.
And that's, that's-- that was the journey that led to and inspired WorkHero.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, and, and, and w-where did you start, um, in terms of once you had that aha that this paperwork was a time suck and the craftsmen just wanted to do the work and, and you wanted to, you know, take the burden off their plate and also give them their, their time back?
Uh, I mean, it seems like there's a chicken and egg, uh, in terms of it's like, well, I need the help, but, um, you know, I'm too busy to vet someone new, and I also don't trust, you know, some, uh, you know, outsider coming in and- Mm-hmm ... and telling me, uh, you know, and, and handing over the keys to this very important, uh, part of my business.
So yeah, where did you start?
Furman Haynes: Yeah, great question. We started with people instead of software. [00:09:00] So, and when I mean... when I say people, I mean hiring expert office managers. So there was one close friend, uh, and contractor from the industry named Ryan Walker at Skywalker HVAC, great name business, uh, who I always like to talk about.
He based in, uh, southern New Hampshire, um, so not too far from you, Jason. And he, uh, he was someone that we'd spent a lot of time with in that first year. And then he actually... he went through a big change, which is that he decided... One of his friends had, uh, had actually sold his company. And Debbie, the office manager at that other company, had, had, had a need for work.
And Ryan said, "You know what? We're..." And Ryan was at three technicians, about a million in revenue, um, a-and sort of in that sweet spot where the amount of overhead and admin, um, starts to, starts to really hurt. And Ryan decid-decided to hire Debbie. David-Debbie came in. She had expertise in the industry. She knew, you know, she knew what good invoicing workflows looked like.
She knew what good lead generation and lead capture [00:10:00] looked like. She knew how to build a price book. Uh, a-and she had all of those systems, um, from her former, uh, company. She came in and transformed his business, in a few months had, had really significantly, uh, uh... I, I don't wanna say turned things around, but put in, um, a few different systems, one of them being a price book, one of them being better invoicing and cash flow systems, uh, a, a couple things around lead capture and marketing that I can talk about.
And the upshot of that was a business that, um, if Ryan so chose, could grow from one million to five million. And so our insight there was, wow, the difference between a good and a great HVAC business often comes down to the Debbies of the world. And so we said, instead of giving, uh, uh, these small business owners who we knew we wanted to build for really the, the, the small guys in the industry, as I keep talking about, we said they don't need more software.
Um, but, but what they do need is just someone who, who they can talk to, who knows the industry, that can build systems for them and that can take the work off [00:11:00] their plate. Um, so that's what we did. We hired a bunch of expert office managers and offered them out on a fractional basis. Um, and that was our wedge.
That was our starting point. That was really the, um, um, the, the tip of the spear, if you will, for our services. Um, we, we also saw, and we can talk more about, um, sort of where, where AI and LLMs are, are... have gone in the last few years, but we saw the opportunity to start with that human and then build automated workflows around their work.
So do the-- Our, our approach has always been to do the work manually from the beginning and then build as much, um, uh, leverage around those office managers as possible.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh. And, and just given how in-person these businesses are, um, how have you dealt with, um, in-person versus- Mm. -remote? And to the extent that it has been remote, how have you made it work, given how much, um, you know, in-person is the way that relationships and trust get [00:12:00] built, but also just that things get communicated since often, uh, you know, the data's in people's heads versus in...
I mean, this is my assumption. Tell me, tell me if I'm wrong, but it's in people's heads versus like, uh, in, you know, in, in GitHub or in some central system nicely organized.
Furman Haynes: Yeah. Yeah, like that, that brings me to how, uh, how contra-- What, what are the actual Uh, not the ideal workflows of a contractor and how they should be using their ServiceTitan or their field service software, plus QuickBooks, plus their email.
But how do they actually, um, like day to day, what does that look like? And I would describe, um, where most of the data lives. It's in a few places. It is first and foremost, just in their heads, and it never goes anywhere else. If it does go somewhere else, it might get written down on a sheet of paper.
Increasingly, that, that might get written down on, uh, Apple Notes or, uh, or whatever the sort of fastest, lowest friction, uh, place for [00:13:00] note-note-taking is. Um, and then some over email. You know, when you're coordinating with a jurisdiction about a permit or a rebate, ema-- customers will email you, your suppliers will email you.
So you have some data in your email. And you have-- If, if you're, you know, if you're Ryan, right, um, we think a lot about the guide, about a million in revenue. You have some data in your field service software. You're not just using QuickBooks, you've decided to use Jobber or Housecall Pro. Maybe you've used-- decided to use ServiceTitan.
And I would argue you're usually using about twenty percent of the feature set of that field service software. And so there's some customer data, um, invoicing data, pricing data, a little bit of data in that software. And so the challenge is how do you, um, how do you, um, leverage and, and make sure that information gets from, um, disparate systems into one place?
And, uh, I would just say as a starting point that the incumbent software does, as a system of record, [00:14:00] requires that you manually upload that. And the primary challenge of the software, especially ServiceTitan over the last ten years, has been to get technicians to use these mobile apps and make sure that that data makes it-- makes its way in.
And I think that we are seeing, and Workio is not the only one, a sort of, uh, uh, huge proliferation of new AI native ways to collect information. We can talk about voice, we can talk about, um, even just, uh, connecting to all those previous systems I m-- I mentioned, like adding a phone number to your text thread with technicians or adding us in a way as a user to that, that Notes app where you're already taking your notes, certainly integrating with your email.
And so we can p-pull and leverage a lot of those disparate sources of data. So that helps a lot with the remote part. I think you brought up a question around trust too, which, uh, would love to dig into more, but I'll just say what we've found is that having an-- a, a team [00:15:00] of experts, um, who really speak the language and know this industry as deeply as these owners, um, goes a long way.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, and so, so I'm, I'm curious if the systems of re-record require the manual input, and now there's these new AI tools for proliferation. Separate from WorkHero-
Furman Haynes: Mm-hmm.
Jason Jacobs: W-where do you think that goes? Like, will the incumbents of today be the incumbents of tomorrow? Will they... You know, are these features and not companies that are coming out on the AI side, or are they wedges to then get their tentacles into more strategic stuff over time and, and ultimately, you know, take the systems of record on in a, a more meaningful way?
Furman Haynes: It's a great question. I think your guess is as good as mine. I think across the- broader software landscape, we see that battle between incumbents and startups. It's the, you know, um, we, we've seen that, that, [00:16:00] that, um, that sort of, uh, market dynamic repeat itself over many years. Um, and there are structural advantages that the startups have, and there are structural advantages, obviously, that the incumbents have.
Uh, one thing I would say is, you know, um, uh, there is, there's a couple of things about the existing incumbents that are, uh, that make it challenging, right? And that, a-and one of those is, as I mentioned, they're, they can be hard to use, um, e-especially if you are a smaller owner. And so figuring out ways, and all of these, um, software companies are now working on this, figuring out easier ways to get that data is important.
And the second is they are general instead of custom. And this is, I think, the really interesting, uh, part of all this is, is the race to figure out what does it mean to build truly custom software. So, um, ServiceTitan serves fifty different trades, maybe a hundred different trades because, you know, they have HVAC [00:17:00] and electrical and plumbing, but they also have window cleaning and, uh, you know, and junk removal and a huge, um, fire safety and a huge number of different trades, um, which is amazing.
And ServiceTitan is a world-class company that has, um, you know, helped, um, thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of business owners. Because they had to build for that many different verticals, there's, um, there's only so much customization that you can offer. And if you are a... I'll take, um, some of the companies we work with.
If you are a residential heat pump-focused contractor in Colorado, or you're a commercial, small commercial refrigeration contractor in Massachusetts, the specific ways that you invoice, the specific ways that you need, um, to take some of your field data and make, make sure it gets into a portal, um, like a rebate portal, all of those are fairly custom workflows that aren't always, um, um...
Maybe they're gonna [00:18:00] be replicated for oth- a few other contractors in your area, but they're, they're really, really quite custom. And so obviously, in this era where it's, um, cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to build software, there's an opportunity to be able to build, um, in that custom way. And there's, you know, there's different approaches.
I, um- I have one friend in the space, um, who I'll shout out, Todd, who, who's building... He, he's building a platform that actually allows the, the business owners themselves to build their own software. Um, and that's one exciting approach, and I'm really curious to see how that, how that works. Um, we have a thesis at Workiro that, um, that we wanna build as much custom, um, um, software and workflows for our, um, for our customers, but they're not gonna be the ones to build it.
And so there's, you know, there's lots of different, um, approaches out there and, uh, and I think everyone's learning at the same time right now.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, and it, and it seems, and again, cor-correct me if I, um, misspeak or if my understanding is off, but that, um, that [00:19:00] you have a recurring model and that it is kind of office management holistically.
So I guess my question is, I know you've been at it a few years now, but when you came into market, did you start recurring or did you prove yourselves a different way? And did you start holistically, or did you start with more, more narrow tasks that you, you know, f-felt equipped to take on confidently and that were less threatening to, um, to the customers as a newer shop or a newer firm?
Furman Haynes: We started, we always started with a recurring subscription, and we always started fairly wide. And that's a different approach than a lot of Software-only companies take. If you're a software-only point solution, the classic model is to, is to, to build one specific narrow point solution for maybe a few different customer segments, right?
And so that's where there, there's a lot of horizontal software that exists, and we've inverted that. And so we're building a, uh, you [00:20:00] know... We're building for a na-pretty narrow segment of customers today at the bottom of the market, um, who are, by the way, um, uh, just amazing small business owners that I'd love to talk more about.
Um, for-- But, but for that segment, we're building a pretty wide, um, offering. Um, and the way-- the, the reason that we can do that is because we-we're not just building software. We have this, this, this service arm. We have this incredible team of office managers who can handle, uh, you know, they can handle some of the core workflows like invoicing or rebates or the price book that I keep talking about.
But they can also... When a contractor just needs to order new uniforms or, like, purchase a new van or put up a job description to hire a new guy, there's this set of ad hoc tasks that no software would ever be able to handle, but a human can handle. And so that's been-- that's always been our approach, is go wide.
There's a couple of things that we, um, have not gone after yet, um, including a lot of the front office. So call answering and scheduling [00:21:00] and dispatching is a, is a, is a core bundle of tasks that, um, office managers do today that we don't yet touch. And then there's bookkeeping, which is at the sort of, um, the tail end, if you will, of the contractor's workflow and, uh, and something that we're, we're, um, currently offering through a partner but are, are exploring how we might be able to offer more of.
Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: And, and so the, the typical customer that you serve, do they have an office manager already?
Furman Haynes: Some do and some don't. Um, uh, it depends. And some have what I would describe as a part of one. So for those guys that are at around five hundred K in revenue, often they have no office manager at all, and we can come in and be that fractional person for them.
It's great for them because they cannot... usually can't afford a full-time person at that point. If you're a much larger shop at three million, four million, five million, we can also work with you. Um, we usually, for those shops, there's a high throughput of admin [00:22:00] work, um, like a, like rebates and permits that, that is bogging down their...
Maybe they have a couple of front office CSRs that are-- and so we take that on, on for them. And then there's that sort of middle ground, which is the million-dollar shop. Um, usually at that point they have a spouse or a cousin or a brother who's working part-time to just help, help out even if they, um, it isn't their passion in life to, to, to, uh, be doing that paperwork.
And so we can take that off their plate.
Jason Jacobs: Um, and, and, uh, as you work across customers, um, how much of what you provide is cookie cutter from customer to customer? Mm. And, uh, and I know you mentioned that the actual delivery of it can be custom, but I'm just curious in terms of the things that you're taking off their plate, does it tend to be the same things from customer to customer?
Mm-hmm. Or do these engagements look more like engagements where they're more customized?
Furman Haynes: They are increasingly becoming common, and we're building a set of common workflows. Uh, [00:23:00] I'm gonna do something a little bit atraditional, and you tell me, Jason, if, if, if this will work. Um, we're, we're doing this over video, correct?
Can I actually pull up something and share my screen?
Jason Jacobs: Yeah,
Furman Haynes: sure. Will that be able to show up?
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. The, the, um, so there'll be a YouTube with video, and there'll also be an audio only. So the audio, audio only might not be able to see it, but I think it's fine.
Furman Haynes: Great. Well, what I'll do is I'll- You can talk
Jason Jacobs: through it.
Furman Haynes: Uh, exactly. I'll, I'll do my best to, uh, to talk through it here. So let's see sure that
All right. Can you see this?
Jason Jacobs: I can.
Furman Haynes: Um, and you're looking at, uh, a graphic, right? Not just, not just, uh... I think I had it up at first. Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: It's, it, um, the, uh, the rectangle in the middle is moving.
Furman Haynes: Great. So for the non-YouTube podcasters, what we're looking at is a visualization that Workhere has built that takes, uh...
Of, of, uh... If you imagine a small contractor, and this applies to a lot of contractors, not just HVAC. [00:24:00] If you imagine that shop as a, an assembly line, like a factory assembly line, with the, the left side being, um, marketing and when the lead first comes in the door, and then the series of steps from lead to estimate to dispatch to job being completed, to closing out the job, to a set of paperwork, um, including a permit and a rebate, to job costing, invoicing, collections, and then cash in the door.
So if you think about every small contractor's job at the end of the day, or their, um, what their focus we believe Workhere should be, is to accelerate the throughput from lead in the door to, to cash. Um, and that's relatively straightforward and obvious for a, for, for, for most as I, as I talk this out loud.
But there are a few areas at Workhere, given our unique vantage point, again, because we are, are not just a software, but we're [00:25:00] also just doing the work manually We have a, I think, a unique vantage point of where in the process these, um, uh, y- y- you know, where in the sort of factory floor this gets stuck.
And I think jobs get stuck commonly in a couple of places. One is the estimate building, and that's because they don't have yet a good enough price book, and so I can talk about that. The second is the, the, the closeout process, which refers to after the job is completed, have you effectively collected the photos, the notes, and any other information you need from the technician in the field to then be able to proceed with the rest of the paperwork, including the invoice, but also including the permit and the rebate and the, um, equipment registration.
And then the third area that- T- th-
Jason Jacobs: it sounds like a doctor-
Furman Haynes: Yeah ...
Jason Jacobs: with the paperwork.
Furman Haynes: Yeah. Oh, it's, it's, uh... that's actually a very, uh... it's, it's, it's a great analogy and, you know, doctors have assistants too, right? Um, and, and increasingly, I [00:26:00] think in, in the same way, you've seen a lot of admin inflation in the medical field.
Um, and then the third area to, to, to just quickly mention is the way that this... i- is job costing and the way that job costing, if, if done correctly, should actually lead to a, a virtuous loop here and make its way back to inform how one prices and, and then how one is quoting. So job costing refers to the process of, uh, a budget versus actuals on every single job.
So taking the quote, what you quoted, um, how long you quoted the job would take and, and, and the associated equipment and materials, and then looking at what you actually spent on the job in the form of primarily labor, but also equipment and materials. And if you, um, a-and this is the way we built some automations that work here, but there's other, other companies that can do this too.
If you're effectively job costing on every job, you start to learn and see very quickly patterns and am I losing money on a specific part of my business, like my service, um, business? [00:27:00] Or am I not priced, um, correctly in my market? Um, so there's a lot that comes from this kind of, um, um, repetition, and so job costing is the, is, is, um, among other things, one of the really important things that we take on.
And then, uh, the last thing I'll mention is just there's a couple of undergirding systems here. Um, bookkeeping, the price book, and then what we call visibility, um, which refers to the dashboards, um, uh, daily or weekly that you should as a small-- any small business owner, um, should have to make sure that you have, um, um, accurate information about your business to make decisions.
So, um, long way of answering your, your question here, Jason, but I-- what we're finding is that increasingly as we've learned this industry and learned the workflows, there are a set of common tasks represented here, which we, um, are helping every one of our customers with, basically. Um, and of course, there's some variation and, and lots of other things we do for them as well, but this is-- I, I, I thought this would be fun to, um, to show this, uh, this graphic as a way [00:28:00] of, um, you know, as a way of talking about our work.
Jason Jacobs: So, uh, that was, uh, very helpful. Thank you. Um, one question that leads me to is you've talked about how some shops have an office manager and some don't- Mm-hmm ... and, um, and how you can work across both. It strikes me that- Mm-hmm ... just like the landscape is fragmented with the shops, the landscape is fragmented with tools, right?
And, and different shops- Mm-hmm ... have wildly different, um, technical stacks and software tools that they're already using. Mm-hmm. Do you work with what's there? Do you swap those out and w-- and work with your stuff? Um, uh, you know, is it-- is that also custom from, uh, fr-fr-from shop to shop?
Furman Haynes: Yeah. So right now we, uh, we work with their existing systems.
Primarily, we integrate with the, the three, uh, largest, um, field service software in the industry. So ServiceTitan, Jobber, and HouseCall Pro. [00:29:00] And so-- And then we also integrate with QuickBooks Online and their email. And so that allows us to serve the, the vast majority of small HVAC contractors in the industry.
There is a long tail of other software out there, um, that we are, um, building integrations with too. Um, but that, that's how we work today. So we are-- Think of us like a, a sort of an AI plus human layer that sits on top of those systems and is able to take action and handle all the work.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, and I'm curious, uh, there's the tactical stuff you can take off their plate to enable them to provide the judgment, but there's also judgment that you could be bringing to the table, especially as you get more reps.
How do you balance tactical versus judgment? And also, how do you balance human versus machine? And, and, and, and that's kind of both where you are today, but also how you're seeing it play out over time in both of those dimensions.
Furman Haynes: I love this question. Uh, to the, the question of tactical versus [00:30:00] judgment first.
We are-- One of the benefits, again, of working with us is that we're not just giving you automations, and we're also not just giving you a virtual assistant. You may know that a lot of small business owners out there will hire a VA that maybe is overseas, and if you train them correctly, can handle some of this work.
But at Workhere, we have this team of experts who have all helped scale businesses from five hundred K to five million or five million to twenty million. I mean, these are deep experts in the industry. And so we have-- we, we like to say we're opinionated. Um, we actually have opinions about what a good price book or pricing system looks like, what, um, the best way to organize your maintenance plans in your software.
Uh, even, even some opinions about like during shoulder season, during the quieter, um, uh, fall, usually fall and spring seasons, depending on where you are. Like, how much should you be spending on marketing, um, as a percentage of your revenue? These are all things that, [00:31:00] um, the, the primary way so far that we've been able to pro-- help provide that judgment to our contractors is because of our, our expert expertise and the team that we have.
We also, and this gets into your second question, are build-- increasingly building as we add more and more contractors, uh, collective intelligence on, um, on the best practices for the industry. And that's where there are Lots of coaching groups and, and sort of networks out there. Um, some of them are quite expensive, I'll be honest, that, that charge tens of thousands of dollars to...
If you're a contractor at a million or two in revenue and you wanna get to ten million, you join this coaching group, you pay $50,000 and you go sit in a seminar, um, a-and, and learn some of these systems. And those are great. They've worked, um, I think they've, they've worked for a lot of contractors. But our belief in this new world that we live in is that the, um, that kind [00:32:00] of, uh, best practice sharing that used to be delivered through, uh, through, through gated communities, um, and seminars and actually you usually had to travel to them, will now be delivered through, uh, uh...
a-and delivered in real time, um, on a given week when a contractor needs to, um, change their pricing or whatever it might be, a-and really put in into their fingertips. And so that's one of our principles, um, uh, at WorkHero. The last thing I'll say about that question of, um, what humans do versus AI do is That's a-- I, I, I think WorkHero is positioned in a really interesting way to be learning sort of what, what, um, you know, what can be automated and what can't be automated.
And our belief from the very beginning has been, um, not to try to automate everything. Um, we always believed in what we call human-in-the-loop operations. And, you [00:33:00] know, if you look at charts from economists of which jobs are most likely to be automated, office and admin personnel is at the top of that list.
But what we're, what we're proving is instead of all of that value of AI just being like labor displacement, we're seeing actually labor productivity. Basically, if you give the kinds of experts that we're hiring at WorkHero tools and workflows, they can get a lot more done. And so our goal, just like with our contractors, our goal with our office man- office team is to take off their plate all of the routine crap that they still have to deal with so that they can come in and really focus on the coaching and the, and the judgment.
Um, and so that's, that's another journey that we're on.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, so a c-couple questions that that brings up. One is, um, privacy because- Mm. -if I own one of these shops, on the one hand, uh, you know, the more y-you use my data and everyone's data to make the [00:34:00] system smarter, the better service you get from me. But also, um, I'm giving up my secret sauce, right?
Like, I don't want my competitors to, uh, you know, to benefit from, you know, from all the experience that I've developed in, in the school of hard knocks. So, so how do you think about, um, uh, tre-treading that balance?
Furman Haynes: Yeah. I think part of your question is, like, literally maybe what are our privacy policies at WorkHero, but I think the more important question you asked is also h-how should, how, how should a contractor who's thinking about signing up with WorkHero think about that, that trade-off of like, should I give up my data, and what should I get as a result?
And what I would say there is, um, first of all, we, um, like, like a lot of companies, are working really hard to, uh, to put into place the right, um... AI makes it really easy to de-anonymize and, and, and pull apart. Um, you see this in, in the healthcare industry a lot right now. HIPAA's a really important law in place, and a lot of, um, companies [00:35:00] are, are, are able to learn what needs to be learned from that data without attaching it to any specific contractor.
And in the same way, um, uh, you know, there are-- A contractor might say, "Well, I don't want my, my, uh, my competitor d-down the street to, um, to, to, to figure out my pricing." And the first thing we tell them is, "Well, don't worry. We probably don't work with your competitor down the street yet. But if we did, um, and if we were making a pricing, um, recommendation to him, we wouldn't be, uh...
Nothing we do is referencing any of our other customers' data." Um, but, but the more important thing that we would tell them is the, um, you know... In this industry, I think a lot about how the small contractors, if, if it isn't clear on my hat, I think a lot about how small contractors can work together to, uh, to create a rising tide lifts all boats dynamic to compete against these huge private equity platforms.
And, um, [00:36:00] one of the ways that these PE platforms are, um, are winning right now is through, um, you know, sophisticated data mining of marketing data and pricing data. And so our goal is to, to do the same and, and help small contractors compete.
Jason Jacobs: Um, another question that, that, uh, that I find myself thinking about is, um, there's a difference between teaching someone to fish and feeding them, right? Mm-hmm. And if you feed them and don't teach them how to fish, right, or catch food, right, um, then they'll be reliant on others and not building out the capability in-house.
Mm. If this is a core capability to make the business run, um, you know, sh-should that be a concern? Is-- Has that come up as a concern, and how would you or how do you respond to it when it does come up?
Furman Haynes: Good question. [00:37:00] There are a set of recurring paperwork needs of a small, um, business that, uh, aren't necessarily about learning how to fish, but you just need to continue to improve the throughput of, as I was showing you earlier.
So, um, someone... If a contractor decides to hire us, we can build you some systems like a price book or something else, and then they decide to stop working with us, which of course has happened before. Someone still needs to be the one to make sure that factory line gets, um, gets accurately managed, right?
Um, and unblock those things. And so they'll probably have to end up hiring someone else. It might be an existing full-time office manager, it might be someone else. And so, um, to that end, um, uh, our belief at WorkHero is that Um, there is a, uh, there is a both, both an efficiency and a, a set of [00:38:00] tasks like rebates and permits and admin that, um, no contractor ever wants to do.
And if we can get really, really good at doing it, we'll help improve their cash flow, help them grow their business. And even if they end up hiring someone full-time to come in and do an admin, to come in and do something else, we can just handle that, that work. The other part of that actually I think is around AI.
Um, and so we have had contractors say, "Well, can't you just teach me how to, how to automate these systems and I'll automa- I'll automate them myself and then, and then we'll, you know, and we'll part ways." And this is something we're, we're, um, we're seeing play out right now. There is the building of agents or workflows, and then there's the maintenance of them.
I don't know if you've, um, uh, heard of or read the book, "The Maintenance of Everything." Um, but maintenance, just like maintenance plans, um, in the [00:39:00] HVAC industry, maintenance is a, is a, uh, increasingly under pr- increasingly... I was about to say increasingly underappreciated. It is an underappreciated, um, part of our economy writ large, and certainly we, we, I think, are starting to see this for any company that's building, um, a, a huge amount, uh, of agents or...
And so, um, these things break. They require tweaking all the time, and we have the team to do it. And so what we often-- This is, this is one of the things we, we, um, we talk to our contractors all, all the time about is like, "We're happy to build these things for you and then go our separate ways, but they are going to break."
Um, and so that's a, that's a dynamic that, um, that I think our contractors understand.
Jason Jacobs: Um, one of the things I've been thinking about this discussion aside is how the technology is changing so quickly under the hood, but in order to take advantage of it, uh, it... You know, you can't just stick it into how things work, right?
It needs [00:40:00] to-- The body needs to accept the organ if it's, if it's doing something different than the workflows, and the people need to adjust or, or said the other way, like, uh, it needs to, you know, like they need to match, right? But the tech- the capabilities of the technology are improving so quickly, and these shops seem to be used to, you know, assessing their technology stack at certain intervals.
Like back to what you were talking about, the training, right? Like you don't- Mm-hmm. You don't think people should go to coaching like once per quarter. Mm-hmm. Like they should have real-time help and guidance to tweak this and do, and do that, you know, versus just static like, you know, at these milestones and then nothing in between, right?
Well, um, well, the technology is fluid, but the addressing the tech stacks is at- Mm. -certain intervals, and the intervals pr-probably have been pretty far away from each other-
Furman Haynes: Mm. -
Jason Jacobs: historically. So, so I guess my question is, um, how much of the existing capability is actually getting utilized in practice? And then as the capability is increasing so fast, um, uh, [00:41:00] yeah, how, how can you keep up?
Because even if you can keep up, it might require changes on the client side- Mm. -that they can't keep up on the people and workflow side to properly take advantage of it with the guardrails so that they don't actually, you know, uh, touch a third rail.
Furman Haynes: Yeah. I'll give you a couple examples. So you can't automate a broken process, as we have learned.
We, we've tried. Um, you can... So if you have a contractor who is not yet, um, caught up in-- Maybe he's only using ten or twenty percent of his field service software, and so he's invoicing in a very manual way. So we had a contractor who, um, his technicians did not wanna use, um, HouseCall Pro. Um, they were just-- They, they couldn't get their notes into HouseCall Pro.
So instead, what they did, as crazy as it sounds, is they, on every job, after the job was complete, the technician went to a Google Sheet, which I don't know why Google Sheet is easier than HouseCall Pro, but they would click on their ph- [00:42:00] on their phones, and they would type in their notes from the job. And so previously, the, the, the workflow from there for invoicing would be to read those notes, reference their, um, um, their price book, which I think at the time was maybe mainly in the owner's head.
And then, and then from there, um, gener-- type up, manually type up an invoice inside of HouseCall Pro, which took... This was a shop that was doing eight to ten service calls a day, and so we're talking about five, ten hours of invoicing every single week. And what we found-- We, we first actually automated their more inefficient process.
So we actually took that Google Sheet, we built out a price book, and then we built an AI to reference those technician notes, reference the price book, and automatically generate an invoice inside of HouseCall Pro. So what we were doing was effectively optimizing a non-optimal process. Um, from there, we then [00:43:00] pushed them to...
After they saw the power of doing it that way and, and saw some efficiency gains, we sort of coached them into a better invoicing workflow. And so I think that's a good example of what you're, what you're talking about, which is As I understand the question, there is a, a level of, um, um, best practice in use of their current software that y- we still sort of need to take them from here up to here.
And what we've found is even if they have processes that are non-optimal or, uh, manual in some way, we can build-- As a starting point, we can build, um, you know, simple workflows or automations that maybe don't even use AI, maybe it's just a set of deterministic code, but is helping them, um, uh, you know, send a reminder to a technician or whatever it might be.
And then from there, um, we can, we can, um, build what I would describe as a more robust, um, true, um, automation or agent. And [00:44:00] so long answer to your question, but I think, um, a lot of our work at WorkHero is not just building, um, building automations, but also building the capacity and the-- and, and, and doing a set of education with the owner to help them understand what, um, what more optimal processes look like.
Um, which is a journey and, and requires the kind of office team that we have. Because I think if we were just... If we didn't speak their language, if we hadn't built trust, if we weren't checking with them usually every day, um, if not every week, then I'm not sure we'd be able to, um, to be, to be able to re-rewire their processes in the ways that we are.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, so, um, so on the one hand, if they're drowning in paperwork and you can take the paperwork off that they don't wanna do and that's sucking their time, then they can, you know, be more efficient and they can work less on the weekends, spend more time with their family. You know, maybe, you know, spend more time with judgment, maybe, you know- Mm-hmm
drive more business through, through the pipeline. W-whatever it [00:45:00] is, like, you know, productive... more productive use of the time than, than, you know, the mindless stuff that's weighing them down. Um, but on the other hand, you know, you're a do more with less model, meaning that, you know, the output of one office manager looks like X, and over time it looks like, you know, uh, one point two X, and then it looks- Mm-hmm
like one point five X, and then it looks like two X, and then it looks like five X, right? And so, so on the other hand, it's like, whoa, first they're coming for the office manager, then they're gonna come for the project manager, then they're gonna come for the estimator, then they're gonna, you know, like, uh, you know, then they're gonna come for me, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, so, um, you know, if I'm, uh- Mm ... if I'm a worker in these shops, um, sh-should I fear automation?
Furman Haynes: By worker, do you mean a technician, or what kind of worker are you talking about?
Jason Jacobs: Um, maybe touch on each.
Furman Haynes: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Who... or who should and who shouldn't?
Furman Haynes: Yeah, I mean, th-this [00:46:00] is a, this is a question that economists are asking themselves a lot right now.
I don't know if you've heard of the lump of labor fallacy.
Jason Jacobs: I ha- I have not.
Furman Haynes: The lump of labor fallacy just say, says that those that are scared of AI taking all of our jobs are assuming a finite lump of labor that exists in our economy that is not dynamic. And so the best example, I think, is Microsoft Excel.
When Microsoft Ex-Excel first came out, there was a set of financial analysts and bookkeepers in the industry, and everyone looked at Excel, and they looked at what these bookkeepers had done, which, you know, at that point, they were doing so much by hand or using o-other antiquated computer systems, and they said surely their jobs are gonna get, um, automated or, or, or, or, um, you know, displaced.
And instead, what happened is, is Microsoft Excel spawned, like, an entire industry of financial analysts, right? And there was this, um, the same thing happened with, um, bank tellers and the, um, ATM machine, lots of things. And so, um, I think [00:47:00] especially for any of the industries that you're focused on, Jason, for this podcast, that are, um, in the real world, um, physical industries and require, um, uh, what I think of as, like, there is, you know, sort of, um- Mmm, physical versus, um, any sort of digital or, or knowledge work t-work, and there's routine versus non-routine.
And in that two-by-two matrix, um, I, I, I can't remember which economist says this, but it is the work that is physical and non-routine which is the hardest to automate. And so certainly, you know, you hear this time and time again, like AI is not coming for the job of an electrician anytime soon. A-and by the job of an electrician, I mean actually like going in and wiring up a new panel or whatever else.
Um, it is going to meaningfully change those industries. Um, you know, I think especially like combination hardware, software, where in the future like maybe they're wearing something like meta glasses and they're able to do diagnostics really quickly, and that data is being automatically [00:48:00] uploaded to the office and there's like lots of things you can imagine that are exciting.
Um, but I don't think their jobs are going away. And in the, and the same, and the same way, I think any other people, um, in these HVAC companies, um, so long as they're using the latest tools and, and learning all the time, I think there are-- there's going to con-- um, you know, continue to be more and more jobs, um, and new jobs too, um, new types of jobs for, um, for these people
Jason Jacobs: Um, y- switching gears a bit, so, um, it strikes me that there's kind of an asset super light way that you could do this where you provide tooling to existing staffs. Um, and then on the other extreme, it's like if we got really good at, you know, uh, whipping the guts into shape, uh, you know, from the outside, we'd be well equipped to evaluate, uh, you know, where we can do this the best and be predictable about how much we could do it, and then we can go start [00:49:00] owning the assets in an asset heavier way.
There's the, um, there's the financial aspect of where can I make the most money and what's the best business, but then there's also the mission, which, you know, strikes me as, as important to you. And, and, you know, sometimes there's good ways to make money that don't feel good from a mission standpoint.
But I'm curious, looking through each of those vectors, um, you know, why did you pick the lane that you did, and did you think about either of the other ones that I mentioned?
Furman Haynes: Yeah. It's both mission and market. And so I'll talk about both. I mean, first on the mission side, um, I mentioned briefly like the way that I grew up and the impact I saw of, of, of a small business owner, um, and my uncle who was able to, um, change his life and the life of his family because, um, because of his electrical business.
And, and then, uh, uh, you know, spending time with as many small business owners as we have. You know, I think of the-- one of our, um, the, the, the con-contractors that we work with is the Steele family, and they're in Michigan. And when I say the Steele family, I mean, [00:50:00] there are eleven members of the, uh, Steele Heating and Cooling, and ten of them are Steeles.
Mm-hmm. The only one that's not a Steele, they will tell you and clarify, is like a close family friend. And so they consider them. And so these are certainly family-owned businesses. These are people that, um, care about doing high quality work and, and, um, and, and they care about, um, the climate in a lot of cases and, and installing more heat pumps.
And so for all those reasons we wanna help, help these businesses. Sometimes they wanna grow, sometimes they just wanna like s-save time so that they can make their lives easier and go spend more time with their families. And so that has always been a huge part of our, um, why we, why we do what we do. This is, this is why this hat.
Um, you know, our, our goal and belief is t- is that the future of this industry is not, uh, more and more roll-ups, but, um, you know, think of it a little bit like we think of a lot of, of ourselves like building the next Toast, um, a, a software company that's helped power the restaurant industry and helped thousands of [00:51:00] small, um, you know, small business enterprises take off instead of like the Uber model or like a private equity platform where you assume all the value has to happen by squishing them all together and actually owning them.
Um, so that, that's the mission side. On the market side, I'll just say Despite all of the hype about private equity, less than one percent by number of businesses, less than one percent of all HVAC businesses in the country, there's a hundred and forty thousand of them, have ever been touched by private equity.
Um, that's not by revenue, and, and we could talk about that, but there is a huge, huge long tail of small businesses in this industry who need help, who need more help, um, running, running their businesses that are, are far below the, the EBITDA revenue thresholds that would make them ever interesting from an acquisitive standpoint from private equity.
And so we're really excited at, at WorkHero, both because of our mission, but also because it's a, it's a, it's a huge market, um, to help as many of them as possible[00:52:00]
Jason Jacobs: Uh, so if, if you look five years out, uh, if WorkHero is wildly successful beyond your wildest imagination, um, what have you achieved?
Furman Haynes: Yeah. We've helped-- We've, we've meaningfully helped the Ryans of the world at Skywalker HV-HVAC, the, the family-owned businesses like Steele, the, uh, you know, quality-focused contractors like our friend Fletcher in Colorado, um, grow their businesses, save time, and spend time with their families.
That's it. Um, I actually hope a lot of them do end up choosing to either sell to their employees through an ESOP or sell to private equity because that kind of wealth generation is another, um, uh, huge part of our mission. So, you know, by the way, for e-- for all the reasons we talk about private equity, if a business owner so chooses to monetize all of their hard work through a, an obvious, you know, exit path, I think that's great, and I support it.[00:53:00]
Um, and so I do hope that we see five years hence, ten years hence, a lot of our Workiro customers have, have, with our help, grown and, and made their businesses far more efficient and attractive, and they've decided to, um, you know, to, to monetize that or leave it to their employees in some way that, that, um, that is impactful.
That, that's it at the end of the day. We could talk about the like, you know, our growth at Workiro or the business opportunity, but, but that's really what it's about.
Jason Jacobs: And then from an industry standpoint, if you look a little further out, let's say ten years out- Mm-hmm. Um, you know, how different is it, and what are the things, uh, that are the same in terms of how the industry operates, and then what are the things that are different at that time, if you had to predict?
Furman Haynes: I don't think there will be meaningful differences in the, um, the shape of these-- the shape of the market with respect to industry concentration. As I mentioned, I think you're gonna continue to see, uh, a, a [00:54:00] deeply fragmented in-industry. I think it's structurally so. I think we'll-- There are some people that talk about distributors are going away, and you're only gonna have OEMs and contractors.
I don't think that's gonna happen. I think distributors play a pretty important role. And, uh, you know, and I, I think the, the general way that contractors deliver services and value to c- to customers will continue to remain. A couple of big different-- or big areas that will change that I see coming...
Obviously, in the back office side, I think you're gonna see some fundamental changes to the way that software can act like an assistant instead of like a tool and how that, um, gets done. Um, diagnostics, I mentioned, is gonna be a really interesting, um, area of innovation. So there are-- there's great, um, software companies out there like MeasureQuick that have, that have already jump-started how quickly a technician can diagnose airflow issues or any sort of issues, um, with, with, uh, the, the, the heating or cooling system.
Um, we're gonna see a lot more innovation there using, using different kind of hardware and sensors. [00:55:00] Um, and then third, I would just quickly mention the business model themselves. I think you are gonna see, because of the heat pump moment that we're in, because of the amount of state and federal dollars, which will continue to flow, I think, um, largely You're gonna see some, and you already have seen some heat pump-focused businesses that don't do-- don't work on any, um, furnaces or oil-based systems.
And, um, and, and those businesses actually from a business model perspective, the way that they are, um, uh, uh, owning the systems or, um, servicing them is gonna look a little bit different. So I think you will see some innovation there as well.
Jason Jacobs: Uh, and, and that five years out, we talked about the mission for WorkHero, but what about in terms of what you're actually doing?
Are you still serving the same kinds of customers, uh, around, um, uh, off-office management? Are you serving more kinds of customers? Are you serving existing customers in more ways? Um, h- will you expand and how will you expand if you had to predict?
Furman Haynes: Our hope and belief is that we [00:56:00] can continue to serve more deeply the small HVAC contractor.
That is our passion and our mission, and we see what I, I mentioned bookkeeping or call answering or lots of other ways that we see, um, that we could do even more for them. And so that is our most immediate priority, um, in the next couple of years. Um, in the next five years, I would not be surprised... We are already working with some combi, um, HVAC plumbing shops that do both.
Plumbing would be the most obvious next vertical for us, followed by electrical. And we get this question a lot. W-w-we are very focused, um, for now just on HVAC, but there is a future-- I hope there's a future where we can-- we are large enough and successful enough that we can grow to serve small contractors in those other industries.
Um, I don't think at this point we are gonna be ever partnered with or working with any of the, you know, the, um, the really big PE shops. In, in the industry, that's just, um, our solution wouldn't really work for them and, and that's just not part of [00:57:00] our, um, our mission and our DNA.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh. And if, if you could change one thing outside of the scope of your purview that would- Mm-hmm
uh, dramatically, um, uh, accelerate your ability to fulfill your, your mission, um, what would it be and how would you change it?
Furman Haynes: I would answer something not in the industry, but, uh, about the, uh, the, the large, um, models and labs themselves and some of the, uh, frontiers of advancement there, specifically around computer use. Um, you know, uh, by that I mean the, um, the ability for AI to replicate, um, the, the sort of human native ways of using a p-computer.
Clicking around on a browser, clicking in and logging into a rebate portal and being able to fill out that information, being able to make judgment calls when there's some branching logic in a, in a sort of portal like that. And we-- about a year ago, there [00:58:00] w-- there was an apparent breakthrough in computer use, um, I think first from a Chinese model and then from Claude.
But what we've actually seen, I would argue in ways that, you know, in general, these models have moved f-much faster than I think any of us partic-- um, expected. Computer use is a, an area where things are still, um... It, it's, it's hard. It's one of these like, um, you know, uh, a real challenges. And so I would love to see, um, computer use take off.
Um, and I think we hope and expect that it will in the next six months, twelve months, eighteen months. And when it does, um, I think it's gonna dramatically change the kind of work that we can do.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome. Well, Furman, this has been such a great discussion. Uh, sorry to make you a little late for your next meeting.
Um, is there anything I didn't ask that you wish I did or, or any parting words you'd like to leave with listeners?
Furman Haynes: Jason, I'm glad that you are, uh, are, are back in the game and particularly focused on, uh, the trades and, and, [00:59:00] and these industries. And I would say that, um, maybe for anyone listening, knowing a little bit about your audience, I would just say, um, there is an opportunity to build for small businesses, not just for the large ones.
There's an opportunity, and I think AI uniquely gives you this opportunity to, um, create the c- new solutions and supports that really work for and are native to how small business owners work, as opposed to, you know, legacy, um, software that really only works for enterprise. And so, um, for anyone listening, I hope that, um, you know, um, you, you, you take this, uh, motivation to go out and build something for, for small business owners in another industry.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome. Well, thanks again, Furman. Love what you're doing, love how you're doing it, and grateful for you making the time. Best of luck to you and to WorkHero.
Furman Haynes: Thanks, Jason.
Jason Jacobs: That's it for this episode of BuiltForward. I hope you enjoyed it. If you found it useful, share it with someone building in the industry and follow the show so you don't miss what's next. Thanks for listening, [01:00:00] and see you next week.