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From Garage Band to SaaS: Disrupting HVAC Design

When two mechanical engineering students started a band at Cal Poly, they had no idea their partnership would eventually disrupt the HVAC design industry. Davis Muxlow and Andrew Krippner, co-founders of HVAKR, share their unconventional journey from indie surf rock to building a fast-growing construction tech company that's making legacy software players sweat.

Davis and Andrew dive deep into the innovator's dilemma plaguing the MEP space, why customer obsession beats feature obsession every time, and how they're navigating the tricky economics of AI-powered products that actually make engineers more productive (yes, even when it means fewer seats sold).

In this episode, you’ll:

• Discover why legacy software companies keep shipping products that slow users down – and how startups can exploit this structural weakness to gain market share

• Learn the "projects completed vs. time spent" metric shift that changed how HVAKR measures success and why your engagement metrics might be lying to you

• Understand the brutal SaaS pricing dilemma every AI-powered product faces: when your software makes users 3x more productive, do you eat your TAM or completely reinvent your pricing model?

• Hear the real-world playbook for breaking into a conservative, entrenched industry where buyers are overwhelmed with 20+ vendor pitches weekly

• Get insights on building with conviction – why HVACR spent a year perfecting their product before launching, and why that patience is paying off in customer loyalty

Chapters

• 00:00 - From indie surf rock to MEP software: How a college band became business partners

• 06:25 - The entrepreneurial DNA: Growing up around Ramboard and plastics manufacturing

• 15:42 - Why they chose to disrupt HVAC design (and why the incumbents couldn't)

• 28:15 - The innovator's dilemma: Why billion-dollar companies ship worse products

• 41:30 - Customer obsession vs. feature obsession: Building what engineers actually need

• 52:18 - The pricing model problem: What happens when your product makes users too efficient

• 01:02:40 - Legacy software's fatal flaw: Rolling out updates that make work slower

• 01:05:38 - Time spent vs. projects completed: Rethinking SaaS success metrics

• 01:08:23 - The double-edged sword: When your product works too well

• 01:09:19 - The future of AI-powered SaaS pricing and the per-project revolution

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