AI Exposes $500 B Construction Risk

Luigi Lapport transitioned from civil engineering on multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects to founding Provision, a Y Combinator-backed startup aiming to solve massive, hidden risks in the construction industry. He noticed that even the most sophisticated contractors were getting dragged into legal disputes over tiny, overlooked errors in thousands of pages of documents. Recognizing that these mistakes cost the industry half a trillion dollars annually, he set out to build an AI solution that acts like an expert estimator, uncovering risks before contracts are signed. Throughout the episode, Luigi shares his journey of navigating early-stage skepticism in a traditionally low-tech industry. He explains how ChatGPT actually helped pave the way by normalizing AI for contractors, allowing Provision to differentiate itself by hyper-focusing on accuracy in complex, highly-regulated documents. By targeting the pre-construction phase, Provision helps contractors avoid costly cash-flow surprises and litigation down the line. Luigi also reflects on his unique position as a founder-led salesperson. Despite a lack of formal sales training, he found that his deep empathy and intimate understanding of the industry's pain points were far more effective than traditional selling techniques. He highlights the crucial lesson of using top-of-funnel outbound data as a real-time bellwether to adapt go-to-market strategies quickly, proving that authentic problem-solving is the ultimate sales superpower.

Discussed in this episode

• Transitioning from civil engineering to an AI startup founder due to widespread construction litigation.
• Leveraging Y Combinator's pattern-matching capabilities to accelerate startup growth and decision making.
• How Provision surfaces hidden risks in contracts, drawings, and specifications before construction begins.
• Validating a multi-billion dollar market using top-down industry reports and bottom-up customer horror stories.
• Using ChatGPT's mainstream adoption to overcome contractor skepticism regarding artificial intelligence.
• Prioritizing absolute accuracy over generic AI output to meet the strict standards of construction.
• Why founder-led sales succeed due to deep empathy, authenticity, and an intimate understanding of the problem.
• Monitoring top-of-funnel outbound metrics as an early warning system to rapidly adapt go-to-market strategies.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Introduction to Luigi Lapport and Provision
2. 2:00 — From civil engineering to entrepreneurship
3. 4:15 — The Y Combinator experience and pattern matching
4. 7:30 — Identifying the $500B construction risk problem
5. 10:45 — How Provision surfaces hidden contract risks
6. 14:00 — Breaking through AI skepticism in construction
7. 18:30 — The power of founder-led sales and empathy
8. 23:00 — Using top-of-funnel data to pivot quickly
9. 28:00 — Rapid fire questions and closing advice

Key takeaways

• Founders are naturally top-tier sellers due to deep product empathy.
• ChatGPT normalized AI, making specialized enterprise solutions easier to sell.
• Top-of-funnel data acts as a crucial early warning system.
• In high-risk industries, absolute accuracy beats generic AI capabilities.
• Targeting the pre-execution phase prevents risks rather than reacting to them.

Transcript

Podcast powered by revenue reimagined. Today's guest is Luigi Lapport, co-founder and CTO of provision, which is a Y Combinator backed startup using AI to uncover risks hidden in construction documents. His path started in civil engineering where he worked on major subway projects with with Arab and later managed multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects at plenary Group. Now, he's bridging the gap, see what I did there, y'all, between construction and technology, helping contractors save time, avoid costly mistakes and rethink how projects are delivered.

This is going to be a conversation about risk, trust, and the future of building. Luigi, thanks for joining the show, man. Thanks for having me. Good to see you both.

Awesome, see you Luigi. So we've we've been working for a little while together, but actually I've never asked you this question and I'm super interested. So from engineering to entrepreneurship, you spent years in the trenches infrastructure projects. What was the moment you realized the industry just needs some kind of different solution?

It was really, it was really just broken, and people were suing each other left, right, and center. And I originally just thought it was a fixture of the industry, until you see the most sophisticated contractors being dragged through court because of the smallest kind of idiotic issue, you don't you don't necessarily see this elsewhere. And so I thought that there was an issue, and it turns out that there are. Um, which we'll unpack.

But it was really a a love for the industry, coupled with this deep desire to go add value to customer's lives, which made me quit. I I ultimately thought it was going to be a lot better for me long-term, if I just go and try to add value for people and solve some of these hairy problems. And we're making some progress. And so, so you went from stable corporate to a YC startup founder, like, why go through YC, why jump into that side?

Like, talk talk to us a little bit about your YZ journey. YC was an amazing option for founders who haven't been through entrepreneurship before. We came across YC because the Airbnb story is famous. Airbnb got into YC, begged borrow, or steal to get their C-check and was incredibly scrappy, coined the term ramen profitability.

You know, that that really was something that I was thinking about when I wanted to start a startup. I didn't really have a framework for starting a business apart from, you know, go out some value and make money. Um, when me and my team had gotten together, we had gotten through a few other accelerators. We had gotten to YC the first time, um, and we were really debating, should we do this?

We already had a paying customer at the time. And at the time, in retrospect, things seemed so easy. Like we had gotten a customer really easy. You're like, that was easy.

Really easy. Product product market fit. Exactly. Yeah, I remember when we had gotten our first customer, they call me maybe a week into the implementation and said, "Luigi, you know, we'd like to discuss a way to give you a couple hundred additional thousand dollars in profit for for this product."

I looked at my co-founders, I'm like, "Guys, what is everyone complaining about startup thing?" This is easy. So simple. And then when we got into YC, you know, maybe we were a little bit hot-headed about it, but we're like, "Maybe we shouldn't do it.

I think things are going pretty good." And my co-founder Brendan said, "Luigi, give us a real shot. Let's talk to some people who've gone through YC." And see what the value add.

Ultimately, what swayed us, the the group partners, our group partner is Gusta, and he worked at Airbnb. Um, the the amount of pattern matching these people have seen, it's just such a it's just so powerful. You can almost say anything and say, "Hey, you know, we're having a hard time deciding which product you should build." And they've seen it so many times, they could diagnose it almost instantly and give you the right path.

Now whether you want to listen is completely up to you. But we learned this through people who've gone through YC, and we thought it would be too hard to ignore. Plus, because a lot of us don't aren't based in SF, we thought it would be the best entrance into that network. And it ended up being true.

It was substantially easier to raise and some of the people we have on the cap table now are just phenomenal because of YC. I love that and I I love what you just said about whether you choose to listen or not is up to you. We have this conversation with clients all the time, right? Like if you're going to seek out the experts, be it YC, be it revenue reimagined, be it an executive coach, you know, whatever it happens to be, you have to recognize you did that for a reason.

So I love that you you realize that. When when you look at the the problem you're solving, how early was it and what was like the catalyst and maybe it was just seeing people suing each other that made you confident like this isn't just a a one-off problem but this is like a problem big enough to build a company around to go try to get investors. That's a great question. There's so many individual moments that I think in aggregate give me validation that it's a an attractive market.

Some of those moments for example are industry reports. Crux insights, it's a report that's put out annually that talks about the reasons that disputes happen, for example. Disputes are, you know, basically legal arguments within or legal issues within constructions that certain parties face. And they talk about the underlying reasons.

They typically have top three, you know, failing to understand your contractual obligations, people not understand people, uh, sorry, errors and emissions within their documents, things like this. And so I can look at that top-down number and say, okay, it's half a trillion dollars is being spent on issues. That's a big number. And who's that going to?

It's going to lawyers. It's coming out of contractor's pockets. Um, that's one moment though, because the more you understand, the more you realize that, you know, that's not necessarily your tam. That's one moment.

Second moment's more bottom-up, where I'm talking to a contractor and they've just agreed to, um, I think a $10 million project, but they didn't understand that we had a 5% holdback. We could hold back 5% of the total project value, while maintenance issues arise over the next two years. And now they're freaking out about cash flow. So like, bottom-up, I can see, okay, they they literally just agreed to do this project.

They bonded this project. They don't know that's an obligation. It was very clear. I wrote the contract.

Top-down, apparently there's a lot of money being spent on disputes. That helped me understand that, okay, there's probably some truth here. And then once you decided to start a business, because again, you only know these two ways, either anecdotally or through data, then you can fill in the gap through conversations. And then you end up building, you know, you can interpolate based on the amount of other times someone agrees or nods or says, oh my god, yeah, that's so challenging or oh heck, we lost money that way.

So, really, we developed, I I've developed my understanding of the market over over years. So, it wasn't a singular moment, but there were a lot of individual moments. It's funny when you talk about the holdback. Like, I I'm obviously not in construction, um, but I could imagine not recognizing that and building your cash flow minus, you know, not not considering a 5% holdback could be pretty pretty devastating to an organization.

It is. And it's common. I mean, people don't read these documents for the most part. They try to And they're huge, right?

They're like humongous. Contractors are just they have so much information being thrown at them. And like, why construction is is kind of crazy. Sometimes I honestly feel like it's a miracle that it happens.

For so many reasons, right? But like, these these these projects are so large in scale. You almost have to think of it as building a manufacturing plant from the ground up every single time. Right?

Nothing is really recycled apart from the processes. Everything else is done fresh from scratch. Like the formwork, concrete structures, they're just built with wood first. You know, there's now more advanced uh formwork, but as an example, and contractors are always looking at more projects than they can actually pursue.

So, you know, imagine if I said to you, um, you know, I'm going to throw 100 projects at you. You're probably going to win eight of them. But for the other 92, I need you to know those projects inside and out. You're hard pressed.

You're also you know, you're going to lose in the majority of them. And if you do win them, well, fuck, you might as well you you better hope that you've captured all the correct scope. Um, and oh by the way, the scope is not only mentioned within, you know, a thousand page spec and drawing, but it's also made via reference to all the building codes and all these specialty codes that you have to keep in mind and be aware of. Sounds like anal close rate.

I mean my close rate is high, but what it what it reminds me of, so I recently started doing some real estate investing on the side. Um, so either thank you. Uh, we're doing our first flip now, but to to get a deal, you know, look having to run the numbers and analyze everything and then, you know, get the contractor to come in and scope it and like I I see my my scope on a single family home is like this. Multiply that by 10 million times for the giant building we're going to like, holy moly.

Um, yeah, it's craziness. Um and it is, I agree with you, it's amazing anything gets built. It's it's it's honestly amazing. It's a miracle and I think the industry deserves a lot.

These people really are passionate about building and providing for their customers and it's really a shame that they spend a lot of time in legal disputes. Which was again, somewhat the impetus for starting provision. So let let's talk about provision for a minute. So contractor spend too much time reviewing documents.

They still miss risk. There's legal disputes. How exactly at a high level does provision fix that? We try and surface.

Plug, plug, plug. Yep. Yep. If you want to buy provision, you can go to our website, use provision.

com. You contact me in my phone number. Um, so we know that there are we know there are a lot of things that can cause fights, right? There's almost an infinite amount of things that can cause fights between two parties.

But in construction, the 80/20 rule is such that you could define probably 20 to 40 things that are likely to result in a fight. And so we surface those things. We surface them in various types of documents. So we'll surface them in a contract.

And so we'll say, hey, you just uploaded this document. I just wanted to let you know, you are required to indemnify the owner, but the owner is not required to indemnify you. No mutual indemnification. And so if something happens, they are not required to hold you harmless.

They're not going to come to your side. And you bet want to push back on that, right? That's a common issue. And so we'll identify that.

But that's just the contract, right? And what we found that actually differs from our original hypothesis is that the contract is not it's not the overwhelming source of fights, depending on how you look at the contract, right? So the contract itself is a 40-page document that has all the legalese. That is the contract.

But the contract is also everything that's made that is referenced in that document. So it could be the drawings, the specifications, any reports. If you look at it holistically, it's always the contract that causes fights, um, but not that upfront version. It's actually some of the more technical documentation, like the drawings and specifications.

So now we do that too, um, and say, hey, in this drawing, we found this issue, or hey, in this specification, and its conflict with the drawing is going to cause this issue. So you should be aware. So we want to surface those issues quickly and almost emulate what an estimator does very quickly, very accurately. So, you don't need to get to the end of the job and realize, I've actually lost all my profit because we've made a mistake.

And in your show, Oh, good. Go ahead. No, you know, I could tell by what I could tell by what you started, you're going to go where I'm going to go, but I'm going to let you take my thunder. Go ahead.

I was just going to say, well, yeah, we'll see about that. In a in in an industry that's so slow to change, what broke through the skepticism? Like, you know, you got your first client super quickly even before you got to YC. That you obviously hit a nerve.

How'd you break through that skepticism? There was a lot of early skepticism. I remember contractors, you know, pre chat GBT, basically saying, I don't trust computers, let alone AI. It's a black box to me, right?

Machine learning, those are two words. I don't know what it means. There was a lot of skepticism around whether it could even be done. Chat GBT was a watershed moment, and it gave people comfortability around a probabilistic type output product, where I can't always guarantee the quality of my response, but it still saves me a lot of time.

And that gave our customer base a lot of comfort, and we could say it's always like chat GBT for X. Just like you use chat GBT, you got to check, double check the sources, but this is going to bring you a lot further along. And then we ended up really indexing on accuracy. And showing our customer base, hey, for this document, we'll get there really, really accurately.

Or for this custom list of requirements, we'll get there very, very accurately. That's how we started to break through some of the concerns around accuracy, not just, oh, this is an AI-based product. So originally chat GBT, and then it was a strategic decision to really go all in on, how do we make the most accurate product, irrespective of the documents uploaded. And just to follow up on that, that's probably a challenge for you now, too.

Chat GBT. Yes. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Chat GBT is obviously one of the most phenomenal products of all time. And some people look at chat GBT and say, okay, well I can get 70% of the way there with chat GBT. So maybe I actually don't need your product. And that is true if you're only expecting 70% of the results.

If you only need contract review, and I agree with you, 70% of the results and if you don't care about checking the accuracy. If accuracy doesn't matter, that's true. Right. And for construction, shouldn't accuracy matter more than anything?

It it yes. It does. It does matter, but at the same time, these people aren't necessarily hiring lawyers, right? And so if they're not hiring lawyers, you're actually feel more comfortable with 70% because I already don't, you know, contract risk is not my number one concern.

It's not my concern. I usually I usually just sign it. So at least at least it's better than what I'm doing, right? Yeah, for sure.

And until it bites you in the butt and then you're upset, and you never want that to happen again. And then, you know, you should you should work with us. But for some people, they already don't work with lawyers. They're already too expensive.

Or the situation just doesn't warrant it, right? If they have high repeat work. I mean, Adam, you and I, or you know, me, you and Dale, we work together once, I review that contract, it's heavily criticized, we redline it. On the next engagement, I'm just going to take that template and we're not going to actually have a we're not going to review it again.

And that happens all the time in construction. It's called repeat work. It's one of the issues that we identify when we're cold calling a customer, if you have high repeat work, based on the the contract itself will not be an issue. But the design documents could be.

And, you know, that's where that's where we're focusing a lot more. I I I think that's a great call out. Um, the contract might not be the issue, although you should still double check to make sure someone didn't change the terms. I think in in in our world, little different.

In big corporate world, I tend to have less trust for people not doing that. Um, but in your space, so I I sold into restaurants for a while, right? A notoriously non-tech space. Um, construction notoriously low-tech, non-tech space.

How hard is it to get contractors to trust AI? There is a perception that it's hard. That is changing. I love it.

Chat GBT has really changed the perception of the contractor. It's in a way taught them how to buy, because they know what that experience is like. They know they can get to the aha moment of a, you know, a one-shot AI LLM product very quickly. You know, upload a document, give me a schedule.

They can see it. It's not bad. It's not great, but it's not bad. And so you can approach them and say, hey, I know you've experienced this limitation in this respect, either with getting a good schedule or, you know, getting ideas for value engineering.

This is actually where we've focused and I can get you a much better product. Now, the comparison's a lot easier. Um, so that's really what's changed the game. And then obviously, I don't come from a sales background.

When I came across Dale and I met him at the AWS sales workshop, obviously Dale was transformational. And Revenue Reimagined was very, very helpful and helped, you know, get us sales. Please don't please don't say Dale was transformational. He's he's going to take he's going to take that snippet and put it on repeat everywhere we go, Luigi.

Deservedly so, deservedly so. When Dale found me, I found a man sales wise and Yeah, I mean sincerely, Dale was very helpful in identifying issues and helping us break through some of the, you know, the common sales objections. And so that was also very helpful. I'm just going to put it on loop when he goes to sleep, so then it'll just be like subconsciously.

It'll it'll put me right to sleep. People buy from people. That's why companies who invest in meaningful connections win. The best part?

Gifting doesn't have to be expensive to drive results, just thoughtful. Sendoso's intelligent gifting platform is designed to boost personalized engagement throughout the entire sales process. Trust me, I led sales for a Sendoso competitor, and I could tell you, no one does gifting better than Sendoso. If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit sendoso.

com. Luigi, um, so Y YC gave you a good playbook for SaaS. And you talked a little bit about how you connected with your, uh, with Uber and how that worked out. But how how is construct construction isn't really SaaS?

Like, as you're starting to adopt the value proposition with your product, like, how did you kind of bring the two together? Because once again, you have that that demographic in the space that doesn't really understand SaaS. They don't understand AI. Now, this is probably before chat GBT, so as you rewind a little bit.

I think they do understand SaaS. I mean, given where we were given the the the lifecycle of the project where we work, where we're selling into pre-construction, we're not typically selling on a per-project basis. If you're selling operational tools, you are typically selling on a per-project basis, just the way budgets are built. They have a technology budget for this project.

You can sell on a per-project basis, a lot easier. You know, if you can evangelize some of the people there, you can get an enterprise deal. We took the approach of, hey, the risks are really they really ought to be identified in precon. Not once you execute the contract.

You can't influence it at that point. So, let's just sell into precon. You're actually you're competing against, um, predefined budgets, usually around estimating, or you're trying to build a business case where they can unlock some budget. And I mean, from that perspective, I mean, they understand SaaS, because they've been purchasing estimating tools, which are SaaS-based, and they've been doing that for like two decades.

Um, now, they're not usually very cloud-based, and some some companies like Edify are starting to do that. But I think they do understand SaaS. And I think they're actually pretty sophisticated buyers, because when you get to the high enough level, like, they all want to work through the same things. Give me customer testimonials, what's the ROI?

How do I know if this is not working? Give me a pilot. It's it it feels like it would be the same purchasing process in manufacturing. Though, you know, I have limited experience.

It's probably not the same as like selling security software, but they're still pretty advanced. And I want to rewind a little bit to like, you're not a salesperson. What what I've experienced when we work together is actually you you've always been the best salesperson as you're growing a company. And this is one place where I think so many founders get it wrong, is that they they try to figure out like, I can sell this little piece, but then I got to give it give it away right away.

Like I got to I got to offload that part of my job. And through our work together, I know that's not you, and actually you sit in on sales meetings, you have conversations with your sales team, you're taking on sales opportunities, even though you're working on product and working on financing and and but you've always stayed in the sales cycle. And you've always been included in like the biggest deals in the company. So I think from a a a lesson standpoint for people listening, like you got to stay in the sales cycle.

And even even you, you didn't believe you were a salesperson, but you hit a million dollars in ARR before you started bringing on sales people. So, like, that dichotomy is very interesting. Uh, yeah, that's interesting. I what I love about sales is that you are truly once you're authentic about it, you are truly trying to help the other person accomplish something.

And I really do believe in our product. So in that way, it's really just been, you know, a conversation, like you'd have with a family or a friend. family member or a friend, and just advising them on what you think they ought to do based on the information that that you know. Um, sales a lot more formulaic than that once you go into team building, and I think that's, you know, part of what I needed to uncover, and also the framework for selling, I think at scale and repeatedly, that's also what I need to uncover.

But yeah, like I think leading with empathy and leading with authenticity is very important. And plus you you knew the problem. You lived the problem. Like you're like, I know how powerful it is.

That's why founders, and every founder that I've ever met who doesn't come from a traditional sales background, says something very similar to what you just said, Luigi, like, I'm not a salesperson, right? And every founder that says that is typically the best salesperson the company's ever seen. And it's because of exactly what you guys are saying. You deeply understand the problem, number one, and you deeply more so than anyone is ever going to, believe in your product, hence why you started a company.

So people can relate to that and you come off and you are so passionate about it that it's it's hard for someone to not buy from you. That passion is contagious. And because you're not a salesperson and you're just talking to them like a friend or a family member, it makes it so much easier to close the deal because no one wants to buy from someone with commission breath, but they want to buy is from someone who deeply understands and like, listen, like I've been there. I want to help you so that you don't, you know, have XYZ bad outcome.

Um, and that's what we try so hard to get out of your head, down onto paper and to replicate to sales rep and sales rep and sales leader. Because arguably, even five years from now, you could have all the sales process in place, but you and a sales rep on the phone with a client, you're going to outsell them any day of the week. And that's how it always should be. I think I think we've done a a good job at downloading that to the team.

I don't think I think it's so much harder for them if they don't come into a conversation with these anecdotes, you know, with that ability to relate based on thing that you things that you've seen in the past, it's a lot harder, right? This is why we also tell the team, become very familiar with the product. Become very familiar with the tool. Become very familiar with the problem.

You know, we do empathy building exercises where we say, take these contracts and answer these questions and see what it's like to be a contractor. So you can relate to them. Because I I I do I really do believe now that, um, I can make up for my lack of sales training with just a really intimate understanding of the problem and the product. And I think almost I think that carries.

I think Jason Lemkin really advocates for those two things, because it cuts across, right? Like you can have the best frameworks and no spice in and out. And that's really good for advancing certain deals. But ultimately, you have to be able to tell the customer, I know what you're going through, this is specifically how it's going to help you, and all these features are also going to complement your process.

That's the thing that's really been helpful. I mean, if I were to start a career in sales, I probably would just only do research on the current problem and just talk to our customers about that. I love it. I love that.

Luigi, what's what's been your biggest surprise in like early sales cycles? So, you know, you you are not a seller, but you are a seller. Like, what shocked you about the sales process as as you were building up. You are there's two things.

One, the transition between optimis and pessimis, this is actually I'm not answering your question correctly, so I'm going to talk about the later later part of the sales cycle. You you could go that route. Dale will tell you I'm a pessimist. I I love being an optimist during the sales cycle.

Like the whole the whole process is I think inherently optimistic. You know, you're telling about solving a problem and helping them alleviate some pain. And then once you get into contract review with them, it becomes very pessimistic and you're talking about, you know, preventing each other from hurting each other in very bad ways. And so that was kind of a surprising transition.

And when we work with our customers, especially the larger ones, and I tell them about how transformational this is going to be and then we talk about, you know, what our limit of liability should be for some for something else. That's a bit surprising. Um, in the in the early stage, what's surprising is you have to be very systematic about how you organize your outbound, how you organize your top of funnel so that you can triage issues quickly. And I'd wish we'd done this earlier because you can really use your top of funnel as a bit of a bellwether for how the industry is reacting to your product offering.

And if you don't have that infrastructure in place, it becomes very hard to do later. It's crazy. You could, it just takes a lot of work. Yeah, it's great insight.

You don't have the data. You don't have the data. And you can you can use that data almost like a superpower, right? Oh, our connect rate has just dropped 50%.

Okay, something's odd here, maybe our numbers have been flagged. We can catch that really quickly if you really have your eyes on the data. Oh, we're getting this objection more and more every single week. Something's wrong.

Competition's coming in, horizontal tools are are proliferating, we're being evaluated against a higher standard. I mean, if you have your eyes on that data week by week, you could, I mean, you can move so much faster than everyone else. You don't have to be on the phone. Um, you can still scale, but now we look at that very frequently because the kind of insights that you can get from your BDR team can really help influence strategy.

And they have Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I I could tell you, you're optimistic, but when you do some deal reviews, you become pessimistic. So it's really funny watching you flip-flop on the sales leadership side of of what you do.

So, yeah, you want to make sure that these deals aren't slipping and not, you know, going and actually exist. And I I think the I think part of it is the team doesn't have as much experience as you do in the problem solve the problem domain that you have. So you have you can actually provide a lot of insight. So when you hear something, like it's like, when you hear it, it could be ting, and when they hear it, it's like thud.

Or they hear it, it's like ting, and you hear like a thud, and it's like, sounds right, but that's not really the way it works. So, um, You've seen so many of these you've had so many of these conversations that your pattern matching is just kind of off the charts, right? I can hear a couple of things that people have said and, you know, I can categorize it as like, this is not a deal now. Right?

And unfortunately, you learn that the hard way when you're bright-eyed entrepreneur starting out and starting out, you talk to someone they say, oh, this could be interesting. You think this is amazing, like, they love the product. It's going to be this is going to be a quick sale. They said it's interesting.

They're going to close next week. Yeah, I could this this looks this looks cool. This looks cool. This could be interesting.

Those are marks of death, you hear that. You said this could be interesting. Yeah. See Luigi's Luigi's learned this in only a few years.

Like, sales people go their whole lives and never learn this. I can't believe that to be true. I can't believe that to be true. It I'm telling you.

It's I'm telling you. I I was coaching a seller 20 years worth of selling before this call. And like, when I tell you rose-eyed, like, oh, they they they said that this this looks really great and like there could be an opportunity. So I'm going to go ahead and put this in in like commit.

What? It it could be great. Okay. I mean, sure.

I'd like I could win the lottery tomorrow. I mean. I think the hardest part is balancing your kind of your deep optimism for how you want the world to work with a incredibly pessimistic view of what could kill you at any given time. And that's that is a a tension that you have to navigate when you're running a business, as you both know.

You both deeply believe in revenue reimagined and you know it's going to be successful. But you're also so incredibly pessimistic and so you're looking for customers or you're optimizing some part of the process. Else, you would just be happy with current state and you wouldn't be interested in growth. And Yeah.

And it depends on the business obviously, but you know, startups by definition are growth. You have to grow, and you have to grow fast, and if you're not growing, you're effectively dying, you're not interesting. And I and I think the other side the other side of that is I think sales people a lot by definition, like, they want to hold on to what they have because building pipelines is very hard and difficult. So, like, the path of easiest return is I got someone on a call.

They said it's interesting. I'm piping an opportunity. It's like, they don't want to go back into the pick and shovel to find the next rock that they have to uncover. So.

Oh, yeah. And and I'm I'm so excited for our team because we are absolute dogs in generating pipeline. And I wish I would to go if I could go back, I would have spent a lot more money on marketing and building a brand. But for us to have gotten to our ARR with, you know, effectively no marketing, I think is great.

Once we turn that on and generate MQL consistently, it's going to be like a Eureka type moment, because we are good at scratching and client and getting deals when we really shouldn't be. I mean, we offer a great product, best in class accuracy, bar none. We win against competition all the time. Um, but once we get that predictable, uh, NQL coming in, I I think everyone's going to be, you know, ecstatic.

Yep. Well, it's it and we've talked about this and um, it the the sales team without a marketing, you're like the sales team by definition, the BDRs and your sales team are doing marketing. They're doing the awareness in a very long-tail situation. And so if they don't have anyone helping them, like, if they're calling people and they're like provision, like what's provision?

Versus like, oh, yeah, I've seen provision in the marketplace. I understand, like, the education's kind of already done. Like, you're paying your BDRs to be the educators versus a marketing team to be the educators. Yeah, that's a good point.

100%. So much so much knowledge and parallels. I think that you don't think of construction as like a high-tech industry, but it actually is, can be, um, and should be. As we uh and and I want to get there.

We we're going to shift into rapid fire. Um, as we only have a few minutes left. Um, and we're definitely going to touch on that. Uh, all right, so here's the rules.

Uh, 20 20 words or less. I'm upping it from 10 because I feel like 10 is possible. Adam's rules. I like I like rules.

I like rules, too. Right? Luigi, what's the hardest lesson you've learned as a founder? You always have to plan for worst case scenario.

Mm. Very true. A go-to-market belief from YC that you had to unlearn. Oh, let's get a little controversial, Dale.

I know this is supposed to be rapid fire with this really. Don't provide free trials. Interesting. Oh, I would love to sit and unpack that.

Um, what is the biggest misconception about construction tech? Unsophisticated buyers. They're very sophisticated. They spend money now, a lot of money on AI, and that's increasing.

I love that. Love that for you specifically. You too. One piece of one piece of advice for engineering engineers thinking about entrepreneurship.

Less risky than you think. Yeah. I will second that. I I just posted about this today on LinkedIn.

I feel more secure doing what I'm doing now than I ever did working for someone else. Let's be very, very clear. Yeah, being able to generate revenue yourself, puts you in a, you know, quote-unquote, like, kind of indestructible category, right? You it's really hard for you to lose a job if if you are innately your job.

Yeah. Luigi, what's your favorite book, podcast, or resource other than The Bridge the Gap podcast, uh that's kind of that's that's kind of reshaping your your thinking right now? Um, favorite podcast has to be Harry Stebbins' podcast, especially his interviews with sales leaders. They're always just so insightful.

Uh, favorite book has to be the second Elon Musk biography. Um, not the Ashley Vance one, uh but the more the more recent one. Just incredible. Goes really deep into his management process and he's he's actually like not an incredible business person but it's just so profound in his innovation that it doesn't even matter.

And so being able to see You don't to be good at business if you can see around the corners. Exactly. Yeah, you almost you can almost sacrifice your business controls. Um, I'd say those two.

Okay. Last one as we wrap up. Dream vacation destination with the with the twins. Oh, somewhere all inclusive.

I I I really loved going off the beaten path and traveling with my friends and doing, you know, six-week excursions in Asia or South Africa and I can't even imagine doing that now. I just would love to be able to have everything taken care of and relax with my wife. Um, which we will be doing shortly. But yeah, probably Mexico.

Mexico. I love that. I I I I love the off the beaten path. I love the excursions.

Dale gives me shit all the time, but like when I go on vacation it's like a three-week vacation. It it's not in main city USA. Um, definitely want to chat with you about some places you've been because that that that is my uh, my my dream those kind of trips. Yeah, those are incredible.

I'll tell you more about it when we chat. I love it, man. Thank you so much for joining the show. Uh, where can people learn about provision?

Where could they refer all of their friends in construction? Because everyone knows someone in construction. Of course. You can go to useprovision.

com, u s e provision.com. You can also follow me on LinkedIn where I post about the business. Good content.

Thank you. Founder that develops content. Yeah. And those two places are the best channels.

Awesome. Luigi, thanks for joining the show, man. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks gents.