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90% of Construction Firms Have Zero Employees

Dmitry Alexin transitioned from forecasting GDP for West African countries to building Handoff, an AI agent that automates the chaos of residential construction.

In this candid conversation, Dmitry reveals why he abandoned Silicon Valley for Austin, how he turned a simple cost estimating service into a full-stack automation platform, and the hard lessons learned from taking venture capital money while staying true to construction's unique realities.

In this episode, you’ll:

• Discover why 90% of construction firms are one-person operations – and how this massive market inefficiency became Handoff's billion-dollar opportunity

• Learn the "services-first" approach to product development – how Dmitry spent two years manually doing cost estimates to truly understand the problem before automating it

• Understand why location matters more than you think – the contrarian case for why construction tech CEOs should avoid San Francisco (and where to build instead)

• Master the art of strategic capital – how mixing industry investors (like Masco) with generalist VCs creates unfair competitive advantages beyond just funding

• Hear the brutal truth about founder ego – why your Ivy League degree and big tech experience might actually hurt you in traditional industries, and how to fix it

Chapters

• 00:00 - Introduction: What is Handoff? AI Agents for Residential Construction Explained

• 02:04 - The Shocking Reality: 90% of US Construction Firms Have Zero Employees

• 04:21 - Cloud Kitchens, Dark Kitchens, and Travis Kalanick's Construction Data Problem

• 06:45 - The "Aha Moment": When the Only Data Source is a Physical Book

• 09:32 - Building a Cost Estimating Service Before Building a Product

• 14:18 - Why We Started as a Manual Service (And Why You Should Too)

• 21:45 - The Construction Data Desert: Why This Industry is Ripe for Disruption

• 28:12 - Navigating the Hype Cycle: AI Washing vs. Real AI Application

• 34:50 - The Fundraising Journey: From Seed to Series A and Beyond

• 42:30 - Strategic Investors: Why Masco and Industry Players Change Everything

• 47:15 - The Vertical AI Thesis: Why Construction Tech is Finally Having Its Moment

• 56:41 - Masco as a Strategic Partner: Data, Distribution, and Industry Insight

• 58:07 - The San Francisco Problem: Why Construction Tech Founders Should Leave the Valley

• 01:00:03 - Austin vs. Silicon Valley: Proximity to Customers Over Proximity to Capital

• 01:01:25 - No Ego Allowed: The Hardest Lesson for Technical Founders Entering Traditional Industries

• 01:03:35 - We're Hiring: Building the Future of Residential Construction from Austin, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires

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