Episode 80 - How Adaptive AI is Revolutionizing Builder Financials: A Chat with Matt Calvano & Reece Barnes
Episode #80 | Matt Calvano & Reece Barnes | How Adaptive AI is Revolutionizing Builder Financials
In this episode of The Curious Builder, host Mark Williams chats with Matt Calvano and Reece Barnes about the magic of blending tech with homebuilding. They dive into how Adaptive’s AI-driven software is revolutionizing builders' financial management, making bookkeeping a breeze and ensuring timely, accurate data. Plus, they share exciting news about their new podcast, "Builders Budgets and Beers," aimed at helping builders handle project financials in real time, all while enjoying a good brew.
Listen to the full episode:
About Adaptive
About Matt Calvano
Matt is the Co-Founder and CEO of Adaptive, an AI-driven construction financial software. Before Co-founding Adaptive, he worked in real estate investing and investment banking.
About Reece Barnes
Construction is a huge part of my life. I grew up with a home builder (screeding concrete is my hidden passion), have been in construction technology for nearly a decade, and my wife and her entire family are in construction. Before joining Adaptive, I learned a lot about the business side of construction as I sold software consulting to builders to further streamline and systematize their business processes. I joined Adaptive after I saw the need in the industry for a more automated way to track project cashflow, ultimately creating a more efficient back office. I'm now leading our sales team to ensure builders have a quality and educational experience as they find their way to financial clarity. I'm here for the Fine Contractors of America.
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Mark Williams:
Today on the curious builder podcast, we had a repeat guest. We had Matt calvano from Adaptive, one of the founders, and the head of their sales team. We had Reese Barnes out of Colorado, and awesome conversation. We really dove deep on some AI technology. It's always kind of fun with a repeat guest on the show is to find out, you know, if where they were when you first interviewed them, and where they're at today. So we talk about some of the new features, and because, personally, as a building company myself, I can speak firsthand of some of the things that I've noticed and some of the things that I've appreciated as a builder. So without further ado, let's talk to Matt and Reese from adaptive. Welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today, we have a repeat guest on the show. We've got adaptive. We've got Matt calvano, one of the founders and Reese out in Colorado. Welcome adaptive.
Reece Barnes 0:48
Thanks for having us. Mark. Excited to be on the curious builder podcast. This is my maiden voyage.
Mark Williams 0:53
That is Matt's repeat guest. But yeah, I'm excited to have you guys on so for those that aren't familiar with adaptive, there's many that listen to the show that are you one of our main sponsors as well. We actually interviewed Matt a year and a half ago, Episode 15 for so if you want, just like the full episode of everything that adaptive can do, I'd recommend the listeners tune back to Episode 15. We're going to do a brief five minute intro here, just for those that you know are listening to this episode. It's going to be a great one, just to hear what adaptive is. We're going to talk about basically the progress. You're a new company. You're only two years we're almost the same age. The curious builder and adaptive are almost, you know, we're basically twins on the playground, and you know, we're fastly growing into adulthood. So without further ado, respond. Should give us a little five minute intro of what adaptive is and who you guys are. Yeah.
Reece Barnes 1:41
So adaptive. We are a financial technology company that has built automated financial software specifically for builders. We sync directly to QuickBooks. And when I mean automated financial software, what that really means is is we're using artificial intelligence to eliminate the manual data entry that it takes for builders and their back office teams to categorize bills and receipts appropriately, make sure that they're getting the proper approvals and that bills are getting paid in a reasonable manner, keeping QuickBooks up to date, ultimately keeping budgets and draws accurate as well, along with Reporting purchase orders, vendor compliance payments, the whole gamut. So that's kind of the short snip of what adaptive is.
Mark Williams 2:25
I think another accurate summary is, you guys make accounting sexy. It was funny because, right, I think that'd be a good time, because I've been a client now for a year and a half, I think, or almost two years, I guess, and when I was first introduced to you, well, obviously I'm familiar with QuickBooks. Most builders are. It's the predominant, you know, accounting software. But you know, it's a lot more than the PNLs. It's all the processing and seeing like our draw time and the financial reporting time, and really, all the unsexy work that goes into preparing, not only draws, which we'll get into that in a minute, but just getting all the information in accurately is kind of a slog for it to all kind of be done, pretty much automated. And also, you're, I'm a big fan of user interfaces. I just think it's, it essentially is a compliment to you, because it's a lot like apple. You know, I think I heard a study once where they took like an iPad to like the jungles of Borneo, and they had like an eight year old, and within like, one minute, the eight year old was intuitively figuring out how to like swipe through an iPad. I think what's really cool about adaptive is how just it's so easy to figure out. And if I can figure it out, trust me, other people can too. So anyway, that's my additional plug to what adaptive is. It's pretty amazing.
Matt Calvano 3:33
Yeah, I think, I think Reese described it well. I think Mark, I would change it from sexy to easy, you know, like, I guess it could be sexy once you have nice reports, but more about easy. I was on a podcast with Paul sanneman recently. He runs a business called contractor staffing source, and he described adaptive as kind of an AI cost accountant, which I thought was a good description, a good way to talk about our product. To your point, accounting is a big part of being a builder, right? If you think about being a builder, you kind of have two main jobs. You're like, project managing the overall build, and then you are handling the payments and the accounting. A lot of builders are really, really strong at the project management and build side of things, but don't have the background in the accounting. So we're trying to do that for you, and that's what we're progressively trying to do more and more of over time, is how do you use AI automation, and to your point, really intuitive design to do the accounting for you?
Mark Williams 4:31
And I would say, as someone who's been building for 20 years, you're right. I have a very strong building design background, and I did not prioritize enough the analysis of numbers, margin and markup, and, you know, really knowing your numbers. And we did really well, but it was almost like doing well by accident. It's like, you just charge more, and it's kind of like, you know, speeding a ship faster with holes in it. And so you're like, Well, man, if I go faster, you actually sink faster. But one thing that I. Learned so much. My Financial acuity has gone through the roof with the analysis and the reports and really just the awareness. And, you know, so much time goes into I've always had a bookkeeper on staff just because of something I didn't want to do. And I know a lot of builders actually do their own books as well, and especially the sole proprietors, if they're out in the field working, and then at night they're doing their bookkeeping. It's just a lot of time. And, you know, I work with a lot of, you know, again, the people that are doing their own work in the field, and it's a little bit easier for me, because I'm, you know, essentially office builder. I'm in the office a lot, so it's a little bit easier for me to do that. But I've noticed with my bookkeeping talent that I have is now they can spend a lot less time just manually pushing stuff around and compiling reports that you need to do, but if it can be handled with your AI technology now they can spend more time looking at, you know, analytics, trends, recommendations, you know, cash flow, whip reports, all the things that really open up at a much higher sophisticated level. And I think people with a big business background do really well in building, because they come in maybe from, you know, corporate America, and they understand whip reports, they understand forecasting cash, they understand all of these things that if you started with a building background, you don't. And so I think really a big part of what you're doing is educating, you know, the people that are really good at building. And I think that's extremely valuable. Yeah,
Matt Calvano 6:21
yeah. On that point, Reese, you want to talk, I think the education piece, you want to talk a little bit about what Reese and I have been cooking up on our side here, a little bit, what else we got new on the adaptive side,
Reece Barnes 6:33
what are you referencing builders? I'm
Matt Calvano 6:35
talking about builders budgets and beers. Here. Got the early, early plug,
Reece Barnes 6:39
the early plug, for sure. Well, yeah, I mean, so we're, yeah, we're Matt and I were spinning up a podcast builders, budgets and beers. It's on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all that stuff YouTube. But I think even going back mark to your point is like, is, yes, it's rarely, and this is when I'm talking to prospects and customers, is, it's rarely that the work is not getting done, right? Usually in a building scenario, they are having the back office work getting done. They have somebody who's managing and owning that process. But when you really start to think about it as it can get intimidating, just even based on the timelines and the accessibility of data, right? And that's one thing that I've learned just doing the podcast, obviously talking to builders purely about financials, is it's yes, we're getting the information, but are we getting it at the end of the project, or are we getting it on a monthly basis, or are we getting it in real time to make better decisions on our business and to tie this back into the builders budgets and beers podcast, is the entire concept is to, like, reduce the intimidation, or at least give a better opportunity for builders to say, I can own and manage my project financials in a real time basis. That's what adaptive is doing. That's what we're doing with builders budgets and beers. And that's our entire goal over here as a company
Mark Williams 7:50
well. And we'll talk maybe more towards the end of the podcast, specifically about why you started the podcast and even what you're fine. I think you've got 1010, episodes in the bank, and you're sort of releasing. Are you guys going weekly or bi weekly? With that?
Reece Barnes 8:03
It'll be weekly.
Mark Williams 8:04
It'll be weekly. Yeah. So maybe we'll hold that, because I want to dive into that, maybe towards the ends. But what I would really be interested in is tell us a little bit what's changed from a year ago when Matt was on telling us about adaptive to what where you are currently. And then once we get through some of those things, I'd be kind of curious. Like, what features are happening in the next, you know, six to 12 months, because you guys are, one thing that I really appreciate as a as a user of adaptive, is we get to work with you. And so it's a lot of the things that we are either struggling with or giving you real time feedback on. You're immediately implementing it. Or I'll say, Hey, we're looking at change orders. We're looking at doing draws. You're like, well, that's a great question mark. This was like six months ago. We're about to actually launch the draw feature, which for me, specifically, you know, it used to take our office manager probably several hours to compile, and it would always take us a couple days by the time we send it to the client. Then they ask for backup data, they sign off on it, then you send it to the title company. It can honestly no joke, be done in under a minute or two. That report, obviously that you click a button on is seconds. But then up guys, you send an email to the client. They have to send approval back. But all that information is all compiled in a nice, formatted way. And one of the things about other softwares that you know you might use is, you know, you might upload something, but then the actual invoice gets dropped. So then, you know, when you're presenting the draw to the bank or to the client, they're like, Oh, what is this $10,000 bill for? And you go to click on it, and it's like, air. And then you got to go find it. It's just, it's a nightmare knowing that all of the information because you're uploading it, whether it's your phone, a dedicated email, there's so many easy ways to import it from the user standpoint, from my point as a builder is now it's all right, there you get right in front of the client. I can click on it like, boom, 10,000 Oh, that was the down payment on the cabinets. Okay, great. No problem. Let's pay it, and then it just, it's just so easy. See. And so I think that is why you're finding such great adoption from other builders, and when they can see it to me, you know, I think that if you can get a demo, I imagine your close rates are really high. If you can actually get a demo with someone like, what do you know, what your close rate is of actually demonstrating your software to people? Yeah,
Matt Calvano 10:17
yeah, the close rates are high mark. Let me give you a quick overview of what's changed since last time, and then let Reese go into let Reese go into some more of the details. I think that we were on here. When was that? March 2023,
Mark Williams 10:27
so I think it was, Yep, yeah. Okay. So
Matt Calvano 10:31
I think it comes back to what Reese was just talking about, like, how do you get real time information into your projects, right? That is the main thing that has changed. So if you go back to the beginning of the company, when we first identified the problem, what we heard from builders such as yourself was things like, what reset? I never know if a project is profitable till the end. I don't really have clear visibility into what's going on. There are these errors happening, etc. And we said, Well, why is that right? It's not that there isn't budgeting software that exists, right? There is budgeting software that exists. What's the problem? The problem is in all the day to day tasks of keeping the budget updated, right? So where we started was with a heavy focus on trying to automate and streamline bookkeeping. So a lot of our features were around bills and bill payments and receipts, the things that you were talking about, as we got those in place and those were working, well, we then have spent a lot of time building out all right, let's circle back. What do you want? Builder? You want real time budgets? Well, we're tracking all the information we can give that to you now. So what we've been building is the budgeting side, the reporting side of the product, and that's what we've been investing a lot in over the past year.
Mark Williams 11:41
What? What other features have changed? You know, I think one thing that's always kind of a marvel to me is, like, you know, you have someone working in the back room, you know, working on coding, which always sounds really cool and mysterious, because I don't do it, so I have no idea how to do it. You know, how long does it take? Let's say, like, there's an idea. So, I know you guys have, I think change orders are coming out at some point. Correct? How long does something like that take to develop on the back end? So you already have sort of the base blocks of your pyramid. So let's just say it was day one, and I was saying Reese as a builder. You know, we have online tracking software that we use with the client. But, you know, let's do change orders from the time that that is sort of like on your board saying, hey, our software developers are working on that. How long does it I think it would just be interesting as a consumer and also a listener. How long does it actually take to develop something like that, so that it's then now it's plugged into, I assume there's a beta test, so maybe even walk us through beta testing before it gets released. Bruce,
Matt Calvano 12:40
do you want to talk about this?
Reece Barnes 12:43
I would like to say, Dude, it's within 24 hours. I'm such a liar. From from idea to end the product is about 24 such a liar. Um, no, Matt, you hit this one. I mean, because, and here's my take, I will add one piece on this is, and one thing I've grown to appreciate just being adaptive as long as I have, and from the early stages of seeing the company progress is how methodical you have to be with building software. There's a lot of thought that goes into it. There's a lot of consideration that goes into the architecture of the product and the future of where it's going to be going. So you do have a very firm foundation to accelerate through and do more of the kind of the fluffy features, as I say. So there's a lot of thought into it from that standpoint. But Matt, I mean, you're running with product on, yeah,
Matt Calvano 13:23
so, so mark, it's kind of we talked about this last time, right? We talked about the the trade offs you make when building software. You can build quick, simple versions of products in short order, right? But then they might be very rigid and hard to build more functionality on top of over time. So it depends on what your vision is for the product line, right? So for example, lean waivers, we talked about that last year we were considering developing we chose to not develop it because we wanted to do it really well. Now it's being developed, and when I say, do it really well, right? There's a bunch that goes into a lien waiver. We could give you a simple, standard, one template that you can attach to bill payments. You can't edit it. You can't what. You can send it to subs, but there's no conditional payment associated with it, so it's kind of like separate from the payment. You can't include it into the draws after the fact, right? We could have built that really simple, but we wanted to do all those things, so we built a pretty comprehensive lean waiver product, and then that product takes longer to build, right because you're sitting down and you're saying, I'm going to build a really strong foundation to build an amazing lean what waiver product over time? This
Mark Williams 14:32
right here is why you are built having a software company, and why I could never be an employee of adaptive. I can sell it. I could never be on the intersect, because me, I'd be like, get that done 20. I want your 24 hour turnaround. Yep, at it, like, it's terrible. I don't care. I want to sell it. Be like, actually, that's a really bad I mean, I appreciate the intention. Is where I'm really complimenting one. It's like, just hearing you talk about it, it's so counter to my own personal nature that I really appreciate the thoughtfulness. And I guess it's true of building a house. Right? I mean, someone says, Hey, I want to build a house, like, right now, like, No, you need to spend four to six months in design, architecture, into your selections, maybe a year, depending on how complicated the home is. And then guess what? This house is going to take a year, two years to build, depending on, again, on the size. And if you rush it, you're not going to be happy with the end. Actually, it's very analogous to building a home. It's built for builders, because it's actually quite similar, you know, you have to obviously start with the foundations. And, you know, even painting, right? I had a painting contractor on a couple episodes ago, or actually had a painting business. Brad Robinson from Bradford homes down in Atlanta. He his first company was painting company, and we were talking about the number of coats of paint. I like two coats of primer and two coats of finish, because it just has this nice, buttery finish. But again, if you're not building it up, right, the end product is going to look like junk. And so, actually, so many of these analogies work for what you just said, Matt, I'll
Reece Barnes 15:52
throw on that just because there are, I mean, there that's really important to the consumer, right? And when we're talking to prospects, we're talking to builders, and they do, they ask about, like, how long does it take to turn around product and this and that? I think, as a builder, when you are choosing a software provider, it's going back into what's important to you, is it speed of delivery, or is it long term quality of product? Because there certainly are software's out there that are building names for themselves in terms of very quick turnaround. But what does the longevity of that product actually look like in the future build out, you also mitigate a lot of risk right, of shipping out product way too early, not as methodically built out. And then you have a bunch of consumers that are saying, You rolled out a software you rolled out a feature, you rolled out a product that isn't applicable, isn't relevant. This isn't what we wanted. This isn't solving problems for us. So that's again, going back to Matt's point of, we're a very intentional software company, from that standpoint of really wanting to anchor into what is the, what is the actual problem at hand? It might be, it might be, not just the pain, but what is, what is causing that pain and digging into it to deliver a great clean experience for the business. So would
Mark Williams 16:56
you say, what six months to develop? Four months a year? What would you say? I mean, each one of these going to be slightly different, but, like, what is a reasonable expectation for your own team to say, hey, lean waivers. This is really when we seriously started working on it, and now it's going to be, you know, unleashed. Lean
Matt Calvano 17:13
waivers is going to be about, it depends. So it also depends on, like, how many engineers you have working on it, right? So, like, you can't it's how many are working on it. You know, how complicated is it? Etc. I think the Lean waivers, the build itself, to get the version one of Lean waivers out, is about two months of engineering time. And prior to that, there was about six weeks of product work upfront, of scoping everything out in terms of how we wanted to be built, deciding what would be the initial version, and then what we can layer on top of that, after the fact. But then, yeah, I think that the Reese, the point Reese made, I think, is a good one on, you know, how software companies have have operated, where they'll, you know, in the Mark D Williams software company, it would be like, build a feature, sell it, yeah, get, like, just so you can get the customer to give you their credit card. And then a lot of those companies also will sign you up for annual contracts. You're kind of locked in, right? So that seems great in the demo, and then you get into the product, it doesn't work well. We're trying to have the product sell itself, and you can see that in our pricing model, we just do monthly subscription, no commitments. If you don't like it, leave, you know. So that's
Mark Williams 18:19
I have to imagine, that leads to a pretty high sale rate, too. So Reese has got to be pretty be pretty happy with that, right? I mean, that's, it's kind of like, you know, given a catch up, or, sorry, given a popsicle to, you know, someone in the desert, like, okay, yeah, that's a no brainer, yeah? Well,
Reece Barnes 18:31
and I will say too, like, a, like, a part of it, and it's real. It sounds salesy, but it's the truth. Like, it takes us longer to sell adaptive than it does to set it up. And that was, that's a great line. Well, it does. I mean seriously, like, and we're even piloting like on the front end of our sales cycles of like, Hey, if you want to demo out of your own data, email us within 24 hours before, and we'll get everything synced up and literally run a demo on your data. And that's a testament to the quality of product, right? Because, to Matt's point with like these annual contracts and subscriptions, I mean, there's a ton of literature out there in terms of pricing models and how do you run this out, but you could get sold a monthly subscription, but you're also looking at a six to 18 month implementation timeline before you actually can get into the product to the point of opposing value, right? So that's where Matt's saying, we want the product to sell itself as we make it extremely easy to get into. Our onboarding is two to three hours across a 15 day period before our customers are crossing thresholds of adoption, and we maybe to our default or to our fault not default. It's very easy to get out of because of the quality of product that we have built. So
Mark Williams 19:41
that's amazing. What is you know from growth of clients? So you've been around for coming up on, what, two and a half years, what from a year ago? Where were you client wise, and where are you at today?
Reece Barnes 19:54
So I started with Matt, Frank and Henry in january 2023, and. And at that point they had converted about 10 of their beta customers into paying customers. Okay, so we had not sold to the public at that point in january 2023
Mark Williams 20:11
so that means I was a beta client then, because I was in 2022
Reece Barnes 20:13
That's right, that's right, you, you were one of the conversion clients. You're
Matt Calvano 20:17
an alpha client.
Unknown Speaker 20:18
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Williams 20:20
Forget beta. I want Alpha. I like that. Thank you. We're getting
Reece Barnes 20:22
ready to send out badges so you can have an alpha
Mark Williams 20:26
adaptive. Is the Alpha adaptive? Double A double squared, a squared. Okay, so two A's right on the front pot, yeah. So you've got 10, you know, year and a half ago, where? Yet today, we're at about 320 customers. Wow, that's amazing, yeah, 120 customers
Reece Barnes 20:40
over 2530 states, we're tapping into Hawaii. Hawaii's huge in Hawaii, but yeah, no, it's been great. It's been great. And I will say too is like in terms of the volume and like in our sales process, how we how we really do make sure to get the right fits in is we go through a lot of process scoping right. We really want to make sure that the consumer understands that. Here's our current process today, and they can start to understand because it is a pretty disruptive product. And going back to the point of the work's getting done, right? It's, it's kind of the do I want to install subfloor with a hammer with a nail gun type concept, and that's where you really start to dig in with the process and getting the consumer to understand this. This bill is touching three different hands before it ever gets recognized as a payable, which adds time to what we're doing. So when we go through these sales processes, we want to make sure that these are consumers that are forward thinking. They are disruptive. They are focusing on, how do we make the most out of our overhead? But even more so, what's the value of accessibility to data for these consumers, because that's where the money's made. It's truly the difference. Go ahead. Have you
Mark Williams 21:44
guys seen the movie Ford Ferrari, yes. Do you remember the scene when Matt Damon was with Mr. Ford he was going to get fired, and he said, why should I not fire you? And he goes, I was thinking about that very question. And then he points to the red folder. He goes, and as I was sitting in your lobby for a half hour. I saw that red folder right there. Passed through 20 different hands, and everyone was looking at it before it got to you. And its comment was, is, you can't run this by committee. I need to work with you directly. And if people have seen that movie, it illustrates, I think, my point really well, because that's just what you've done. You've eliminated all these 2030, other steps, and now it's basically, it's you as the owner of your company, interacting directly with this widget you're making. In this case, it's a house, not a Ferrari and and you can have real time impact. I mean,
Reece Barnes 22:34
I was talking to a builder mark that it was literally a matter of two weeks that scorched his margin. It was, it was a bill that got approved by a project manager, bookkeeper, paid that sub two weeks later. They realized that they were over on the PO. They didn't have that data, and they overpaid from what they had initially scoped out on the project, and that came out of margin. Wow. So if those types of concepts, builders are like, Yes, it happens and it hurts every time it does, but it's just been built into that's just the cost of doing business, and that's just not the reality anymore. You don't have to run a business like that. Yeah,
Matt Calvano 23:08
yeah. I think that that point by reason. I'm glad you brought that up. That's so part of the The goal here is to get real time financial information so you can make smarter decisions, right in your business. But then when you have this kind of offline email based, paper based bookkeeping process, or manual bookkeeping process, disconnected with your accounting software, it does open you up to a lot of errors. So we onboarded a builder recently. They connected their QuickBooks, they saw the budget page and realized that they had completely forgot to bill for, like, a $6,000 purchase, right on a cost plus job. And they're just like, oh, well, there's my adaptive subscription back, right? Yeah, there. You know,
Reece Barnes 23:50
it's really not hard to tie an ROI back to this thing. And that's, I think a lot of people, either they get excited or they get intimidated about what adaptive is doing from like, an automation standpoint. But I really do think that the value comes when you become a customer and you start to see what that accessibility to data does, and then you can really start to quantify what those $6,000 $20,000 $100,000 mistakes really are doing to your business. I
Mark Williams 24:15
think one of the things that I wanted to talk about, obviously we especially in the day and age where now everyone talks about AI, this, AI that and and I'll just speak for myself. I mean, I understand it stands for artificial intelligence. I understand chatgpt. You ask it to do something it, it's a language model. So it just goes blah, blah, and just spits out a bunch of stuff. Can you speak to? I think a lot of builders are to your point. They're either they're intimidated by AI, they don't understand it, they don't know how to use it. And I think a lot of people don't think they use AI L that much, but I think people maybe partner with companies that do use AI, and they might not realize that they are becoming efficient by partnering with companies that really know the tech space. And I'll use obviously, it's. Going to, you know, us using you, right? So someone asked me their day mark, how much do you use AI? And I was like, Well, yeah, you know, I draft what I'm going to write in LinkedIn, and I had rewrite with AI. My wife even commented, because I my, she always comments on my English, and she's like, Hey, you're learning, you're learning something better. And she's like, wait a minute, did you have aI rewrite that for you? I'm like, Yeah. And she was just like, whatever. But the point is, we're starting to use it more and more, even builders, you know, which aren't necessarily known as being cutting edge, but you know, our partners. Then I rephrase the question. I'm like, actually, one of my, you know, my, my entire financial system is actually, you know, is built on some AI technology, and I don't understand it. And I kind of turn the mic over to you, explain to us, but as your clients, but to those listening out there that aren't as familiar with it. How does AI, how are you harnessing it? How are you using it, and could you it? Could adaptive even be a company without AI,
Matt Calvano 25:56
um, am I still here? I think I might have come, Yeah, you're good, yeah. So I can give you, I'll just give you some, some overview of what I think that AI can be good at, and then how we're using it in the product. Okay, so generative AI is, like, is quite good at giving a lot of like, context and information, and they're able to, like, draw conclusions from it, or draw, like, fairly accurate guesses from that information. So let's take your email inbox as an example of a collection of information. Right? You are probably receiving bills in your email inbox. You are probably receiving receipts in your email inbox. You are probably receiving quotes from subs in your email inbox. There's probably some back and forth about what's happening on a job in your email inbox, etc, right? There's a lot of information that is in that email inbox. And if you think about the job of a bookkeeper, what part of their job is to scan that inbox and figure out what what is in there, right? So this is a job that AI could be quite good at, right? Is that? Oh, I see this document that looks like a bill, I see that document that looks like a PO I see that document that looks like a receipt, right? That is something that AI can be quite good at, right? Boom. You've eliminated the job of scanning the email inbox, downloading files, manually moving them to a system, because you just identify it and pull it into our system, right? The second piece of the bookkeeping job would be, then, okay, what is this for? What is this for? Meaning, what job what cost code, is the work done, etc, right? That's, again, something that AI can be quite good at, because now, if you introduce the context of, well, we have your quickbooks file with all your job codes. We have the Cost Codes you've added to the budget. It can start to say, this looks like a bill. I see the client's name on the invoice, I see this address that relates to that client in the accounting software. Let's assign it to the job, right? So those are the those are the ways that we're kind of using AI in the product. So quite good at that, right? A second piece that I think I personally use GPT for and is quite good at is providing you with advice, right? And that advice is kind of the sum total of, like, the wisdom of the internet, right? So an example of providing you advice is cost codes, right? A lot of builders will come to us and say, like, what's an ideal cost code list for me, right? GPT is quite good at that, and we're kind of working on a tool that will build this into the product where you can just, hey, maybe I'm not thrilled my current cost code list. Maybe I need to clean up my cost codes and QuickBooks, whatever. Just upload your budget GPT that can then take all the information of like, well, here's the NIH B here's the CSI, here's what I've read on this blog post from these builders. You respond, well, I think that's too much detail for me. They're like, okay, we can simplify it. Give me some more information. Here's a great list. So those are, those are the buckets, right? I think it's good at, like, figuring things out, coding that type of work, as well as kind of providing advice. And there will be multiple other use cases as we build the company.
Mark Williams 28:52
And so, what is it so for? And I think that's a great answer. What is it specifically that AI is being used for in adaptive?
Matt Calvano 29:00
So figure so the two things that I mentioned to start right? So, like basically trying to eliminate the process of data entry, just completely eliminating data entry from what is this? What type of transaction is this? And what's it for, which, in and of itself, saves a huge amount of time and then cost codes we're working on now,
Mark Williams 29:26
yeah, that's what we gonna say, Reese,
Reece Barnes 29:28
I was gonna add, I mean, even just like, for a more applicable, like, example, like in adaptive, you literally forward bills into our product and then our AI does the data entry to Matt's point. I mean, it's scraping the vendor, the invoice number. That's dude. That's what mounts.
Mark Williams 29:44
That's what appealed to me. You know, we have a sworn construction statement. I think ours is, you know, 180 lines long. And you know, one of the ones that's always sort of a tricky actually, for like, we've hired a new bookkeeper about a year ago now. He's doing a great job. But, you know, and he was actually from had a building. Background, but before him, I had two office bookkeepers that were not and they would always get the they would always have to in our weekly meeting. They would have to check in with us. So you'd get a trim bill, which we have trim material and we have trim labor. You know, they're both under trim, but under different subcategories in the sworn and you know, inevitably, you would see something that was way out of budget. And you're like, we only had $20,000 in budget, but that was at 40,000 and then you open it up, and you're like, wait a minute, you put the trim material in the trim labor, just because it had a similar name, where I actually, personally have never seen it go wrong and adaptive. It always somehow was able to figure it out. And part of it could be the vent, which I assume the vendor, like, we use a company called trademark. So it gets smarter, it learns, obviously, I would imagine, and it's adapting to your systems. And so, you know, when we obviously review it, you know, we obviously have it before we approve a bill. You know, I've found that one of the things, we're a small company, but I could see how this thing scales, amazing. You know, small company as a, you know, I have a you know, I have a company of four, like, I'm going to be pretty involved with a lot of things. It still speeds it up, but I'm still involved. But if you have a company of 2050, 100 your chain of command, I've never owned a company that big, but the way we used to do it, I mean, if you have to wait once a week for, let's say, Bill Pay me, that could take like, a couple hours to, like, go through and be like, hey, project manager, vet this, vet that, or even, I bet you people used to do with big paper stacks and then dropping so that's such a waste of time. All of that is automatic. I mean, it's no it's no joke to say that you're saving hours a day and you quantify that over a year. I mean, it's mind blowing at how efficient it becomes. And that's accurate. Not only efficient, but it becomes more accurate, totally
Reece Barnes 31:43
well. And I think that's the big piece. Like one of our investors, they they came out with an article, or, like, a blog, it was a few months ago, and they were talking about how artificial intelligence is getting introduced into multiple different verticals, and specifically, it's very applicable for financial processes. It's it's not to the point of, like, totally eliminating people. And specifically in construction accounting, right? There's so much nuance to it and understanding, like, Where does this need to go? Where does that need to go? So this goes back even to how intuitive of a product we've built. Of you have far more control over your process, specifically in like, approval workflows. You forward a bill into adaptive we pull off all the information give you a preliminary job cost, and then the insights that we give you based on the criteria of that bill, it will quarterback it and send out approvals for this bill is for this job, and this job is being managed by this project manager, and then it has to go to the office manager, the owner. So now everybody is having the chance, in a real time scenario to go through and make any adjustments or make decisions based on what they have so they can catch miscategorization issues, which enhances the quality of data that's going into your accounting software that's ultimately impacting how we're budgeting and how we're drawing for receivables. But even more so it's to the paper folder side is it's not even the time, like when you ask somebody, how much time does it take you to track bills, the answer is always interesting. Sometimes it's brutally honest, and they're like, it takes me hours, hours, hours, hours a week. Other times they're like, you know, it's like a 1015 minute task. It's not a big deal to me. It's when we forget that it's might be a 1015 minute task for this individual, but then it's on the desk of somebody who can't get to it until Friday, and all that time that's involved, of this portion of the job is done here, but now I have to wait for this other individual to get involved, to complete this process, to then go back to the original person to get everything in. Those are those timelines that adaptive shrinks down significantly, and then that's where you start to eliminate those up or those situations of, had I known that this was over a PO amount two weeks ago, we might not have paid the bill, and we missed this communication chain. And now we're chewing through margin, right? That's where
Mark Williams 33:51
we start to manage analogy that comes to mind, going back to, you know, home builders, which obviously is a primary audience here to the podcast, would be scheduling. You know, when, when your project, when you project manage a schedule, let's say it's a year build. You know, there is obviously some overlap, you know, between your let's say, you know, you're at rough end. So you've got, you know, plumbing, electrical and HVAC. And you know, you give some people some some leeway here, but if you are able to not have any downtime, I mean, we obviously building a home outside in the elements. You need some margin for air there, because you've got weather delays, you've got other things that come up. But from I know one thing that national builders do way better than us, and to me, it's a little ruthless. I personally wouldn't have the personality to do it. I mean, they set their schedule, and you either meet their schedule or you're done, like, I'm sorry, you have three days to do XYZ, and if you don't, like, Okay, well, that's the only time you get and like, they don't allow for any fluff. But the but what they're able to do is take a 12 month build and come down to like, eight months. Now, you know there's, there's a whole nother debate. I was built in that arena, but I can appreciate the efficiency of it, because now they are super dialed in on their cash burn, their. Flow, all those different things, and on a financial with the way you build your financial processes is just becoming really effective with scheduling. If you want to analog, does that seem like a good analogy?
Reece Barnes 35:11
It totally does. But I think even more so, like it's it's giving the non production builder, the large national builder, the opportunity to run like one, yeah, right. And they're able to do that as a large national builder because they have the volume, they have the staff, they have the processes and the clout and the space to hold these types of trade partners and these types of processes accountable. And that's, again, what adaptive is doing, that's giving that accessibility to run a business closer to a more efficient business with artificial intelligence and intuitive software.
Mark Williams 35:45
Yeah, that's amazing, just because I have several other questions. We'll maybe move on from there to you know, you guys just publicized you had, I don't know if it's your second series A and I don't know, not being in financial America, I don't totally understand how this works. I know you raised a lot of money, and having more money is good, you know, it's be a builder. You know, hey, if I got a bunch of investors together, I was able to go buy land positions. I was be able to build spec homes. So I get, like, that side of it. But can you kind of speak what goes because it seems kind of cool and mysterious, but like, what goes into a series a fundraising like, explain to us that aren't from Manhattan and don't understand how this all works. Can you explain how this all works? I find it. I Matt explained, by the way, like five times, and I can never really grasp, like, what he's saying. But
Reece Barnes 36:33
Matt has been getting chewed up about this the day I started, just Stanford, Morgan, Stanley,
Matt Calvano 36:40
yeah, somehow, somehow it happened along the way. So, yeah, so Mark, you're right. So we raised $19 million which is great, right? Software, as we talked about earlier, if you're going to do it, well, can be a little expensive. So now we're in business for the long term. There's no risk with our company. And right? We're gonna be able to pursue all the things we want to pursue on the product side, which is super exciting. So let
Mark Williams 37:03
me pause right there. So you raise 19 now, but you had original funding. So how many rounds of funding Have you gotten at this point? So
Matt Calvano 37:11
two main rounds of funding. We've raised $26 million in total. Okay, so I can give you, I can give you the summary of what is happening at these different stages. You might hear in the news, our initial round of funding was in April 2022, that was our seed round. And then most recently, we did the 19 million that was our series, a round, okay? Generally, when people think about seed, what is happening at that stage is you have an idea, right? You have an idea. And some early proof points that your idea might be legit. But your goal is then to go out and prove what they call product market fit, which means your idea was good. You're solving customer problems. They want to pay you for it. Okay? So that's what we've set out to prove. And I think going from, you know, the 10 to 300 customers, Reese mentioned, that was the proof that we had done that, right? Once you get to that level, you're like, Okay, you found something here. Can you really grow the business? Can you get the word out? Can you scale it? That's what series A is about, and that's why you go and, like, raise a Series A round, right? Is we got something good. There's a lot more we want to build, and we need to invest in sales and marketing. Here's the money to go do that. So that's those are the differences. Seed is idea series A is good idea. Grow it so
Mark Williams 38:30
seed, yeah. I mean, it makes sense. Now, when you say it that that was should have done that last time, this makes sense. Now, maybe I've only heard it 800 times, but I'm like, I'm thinking of a plant, you know, you know, throwing out the seeds. Now we've seen the buds of life, and now we're cultivating it. Or, you know, hey, yeah, and now, and now you've got, now, you had to create a podcast, builders, budgets and beers, which we'll get into to, you know, we're and, you know, curious. Build it all the people that you've helped support to also essentially work, because most of it's been word of mouth, I would imagine, which is really powerful, because I the conversion rate on word of mouth, obviously, is going to be way higher, referrals, things like that. We can speak to it, but now it's marketing and and that, I was imagine that's gonna be jet fuel. How does that translate to down the road? I mean, do people do is the next series, series B, even, do they go all the way to Z? Like, how far do these series go?
Matt Calvano 39:17
Well, you could, yeah, you could keep writing the series book, Series B, C, D, E. The thing is, though, when you set when you raise money, as you know, right? They will the investors get ownership in the company, right? So it's not always a good idea. You don't want to just raise money, just for raising money sake. You want a good you want a good reason to raise the money. And I think we have a lot of cash right now, so there's a chance that we won't have to raise another round. I mean, we'll see how things go. But we have a lot of cash. I think we've been pretty efficient. We might not have to do, you know, Series B, Series C.
Mark Williams 39:55
So again, more of a technical question. Do you get? So you have 19 million? Did they do? Get 19 million, and you don't use it all the way. You put it, like, in a you put it in a bank account, you get interest on it. Or is it like a bank when I'm building a spec home, I'm only, I just draw the money I need as I need it. Like, where does this, you know, 19 million, yeah,
Matt Calvano 40:13
yeah, yeah. So the money is, the money is fully transferred to our bank account and cut a check. We're actually, we don't even sell software. We just make interest income. That's No, no, yeah, they give you the cash right when it closes. It's not, it's not a draw product, yeah, okay, I
Mark Williams 40:31
was just curious, just because I was like, you know, we're considering a spec home right now, and one, you know, one way to do it is borrow it, all of it, and then just, you know, use against. But obviously, a lot of builders are, if I'm going to buy from a bank, I want to pay as little interest as possible. So I'm going to, you know, kind of drag it out. So I was just curious. So okay, then, yeah, for sure,
Matt Calvano 40:49
for sure. No, yeah, Mark, that's the key difference between. That's the key difference, right? With the with that verse equity, right? If you if we took all the cash up front and we ever paying interest on it, that would be pretty silly, right? There's no, there's no interest, right? This is a, this is equity investment. They bought ownership in the company.
Mark Williams 41:05
And I assume, like anything, I mean, if you're gonna have partners, you have to, you know, you're weighing, hey, I need the money to grow the business, and I'm giving up some of my company. And so, you know, you're having partners, essentially, right? I assume most of them become non voting partners or not, because we still, you know, you would want to retain the autonomy to create your product. I mean, the people believe in you, right? And so you as a company want to be able to, you know, do what you need to do. And while you appreciate their financial support, it's not like you want, you know, Bob Wellington the third from Tennessee. I don't know if there's a bob Wellington the third. It sounds like a regal name and but, you know, you don't want him advising you, unless you ask him, right? I mean, these, is that correct? I mean, most of these, series, a funds, are really, you've already proven the proof of concept. You get some of our ownership, but you don't necessarily get a seat at the table to make the decisions on what we're going to
Matt Calvano 41:58
do with it. Yeah. I mean, I would say at a high level, you know, series, a early stage venture capital. They're not, they're really betting on the team, right? They're not trying to come in and change things. There's not that much to change, right? That you have proven an initial product market fit, and then you want to grow it. So there's not really many operations in place that they want to alter. So they are betting on you. So that's like the attitude coming in. I do think that you can have different types of partners. Some partners will be fully hands off and just give you the money, and then, you know, wish you well and check in every once in a while. Or you can work with partners that really understand the space. I think the investors we, we partnered with, are really focused on what we do, right? They've invested in many other software companies that have done quite well, zoom, Salesforce, etc, so they've seen best practices in software, and they only make a few investments per year. So they've actually been really good partners to us. Which is, which is great, right? Yeah. I
Mark Williams 43:00
mean a strategic partner. I mean, then, then it's obviously different. Not only do they have a seat at the table, I found out recently, in this just for my I have a small team, as I've mentioned previously, I have found so we're looking at doing a spec home, and I'm looking at bringing on a partner just for that one spec home. And you know, we're going to make a lot less money on it if it goes but honestly, I'm really excited about it because I'm doing it for two reasons. One is, I want to build a home that fits our brand, and I want to sell homes off of it. But then, two, honestly, it's kind of more fun to go with a team and being sort of a solo protruder. You know, I spend a lot of time not alone. I mean, I have a big community. I'm very extroverted, as you guys, know, but the point is, is, like, sometimes it gets a little lonely at the top and not having a team, like I appreciate partners. I think I've been conditioned early on. My dad was a builder for a long time, and he's not wrong, just that partnerships can be difficult. You know, sometimes if you have to either split the profit with 10 people or, you know, if you have 10 people having an equal vote at a table, it's really hard to get stuff done. However, there is something really exciting about having a team, where it's a camaraderie and it's encouragement, and you pick up other people's ideas. So you know, there are, you know, like anything, there's pros and cons. And right now, I'm at a point in my career where I really love this quote I heard recently, which is, if you want to go fast, go alone, and if you want to go far, go together. And I'm really embracing that go together thing. And it's just, you know, more enjoyable even the podcast has taught me a lot. I mean, you guys, early on, believed in the messaging and what we were going to do, you know, with the curious builder. And frankly, it's gone way, way beyond that. I could even imagine that, you know, I think we've got seven platforms now, some of them, we haven't announced to the public. You know about most of them, but it's like knowing that you essentially are making a judgment on a company and a person and what their vision is and really what their core thing is, whether it's adaptive or a building company or, in this case, the cures builder podcast, is like, Hey, I just want to be a part of that. And then you kind of coalesce these people that are sort of like super fans, but they're also have a vested interest. Just and there's something really, really powerful about that. I wish I would have discovered that earlier on in my career. And for those listening, you know, you don't have to launch a podcast. You can if you want. We'll talk maybe about budgets, you know, builders and beers here next. But I just feel like we live in a day and age where collaboration is becoming like the new currency. And I've said it a lot. I'm not the one who generated the quote, but I love it. It's, you know, collaboration over competition. And I feel like, when you really own that, like, it's kind of like the safety net is gone, you've got jet fuel, and you are flying Superman with a cape. And it is, it feels really good. And it's really, I don't know, it's a different kind of energy that I'm really excited about.
Matt Calvano 45:39
No mark. I totally agree. I mean, I honestly, like, I feel a pretty strong bond with you, honestly, being one of our alpha beta customers, early on, buying into us, believing us, promoting us, and then, yeah, we've got to help you with curious builder, it's honestly, that's, that's what makes this fun. I mean, Reese joining early. We couldn't have got here without Reese. It's, it's, it's fun. That's, like, a huge fun part about it? Yeah, for sure.
Mark Williams 46:01
Well, let's talk about builders, budgets and beers. We've got about 15 minutes left on the pod. So, you know, what was it that, you know, you guys obviously helped us launch the curious builder. You guys have been on, you've been seeking a lot of podcast interviews. Obviously, that's part of a natural word of mouth, you know, marketing strategy that's very effective as well. But what made you want to start one yourself, and then, you know, tell me a little bit about your experience so far as you've kind of what? How has your perception changed about podcast? I mean, you obviously supported mine. You've listened to it, you've been on. How is it different now being a host versus being a guest? I think, you know, listeners would find that interesting.
Reece Barnes 46:44
Yeah, Reese, so, yeah, I can I actually, I have a meeting with the prospect starting here, like a minute. I have the Zoom meeting pulled up, though, so if they join, I'll have to jump. But the entire intention was, is to educate, right? It was to educate and also bring on guests that our audience could identify with to make tracking project financials seem more palatable, right? Something that they could actually attain, and it didn't seem like this big task that it's kind of getting done and we're making money, and, you know, we're getting all this stuff into an opportunity where it's like there are fixed price builders out there that really view a budget as I don't lose money on jobs, I lose money on line items, right? And motivate builders to view those products that way, cost plus builders looking at it and saying, you know, you can't plus what you don't cost, right? I have to track every single receipt, every single bill, to ensure that I'm making the markup, which carries through into my margin as a business. So that was the big intention of the prod of the podcast, was to bring guests on that the audience could identify with and share stories. Of this is where we've lost. This is where we've won. This is the way that we can do this successfully.
Mark Williams 47:55
Yeah, and right now tell us, I mean, what I like about it? I think I was one of your first guests, if not the first guest. And, you know, tell us a little bit about, I mean, obviously I love iteration, so you've got the 3b right, builders, budgets and beers. Tell us a little bit about the beer portion of it, because I totally got that wrong. Plus, I'm training for a race, and so it's like I wasn't gonna have a beer. So our I'll tell my side of the version story, and then you tell your side of what you wanted. Or maybe I should go first, because I'm the one that messed it up. So correct me if I'm wrong, but you're basically like, hey, we want this to be, you know, casual, very approachable. We don't relate to the builders in their space. We don't want numbers to just be this dumb thing. We want people to tune in and be relaxed. And so, like, we're also going to ask our guests, like, what their favorite beer is. And then this is where I got the messaging around. I thought you were gonna send me, like, you know, DoorDash, like, a favorite beer to try it, and then we were both gonna, like, basically open it up on speaker, right, like some IPA from Colorado, where you are, or whatever, some bespoke beer. And then I was gonna drink it. You were gonna drink it. We're both gonna relate it. And so I told you to get a, like, a bubble tea, like a child, like, some sort of a bubble tea, or whatever, which I did, which is delicious, but I'm sitting in my studio, like, where is this bubble tea? Like, how am I gonna drink it? And then, and then you come on and you're drinking. I'm like, well, where's mine? You're like, this isn't for you. This is for me to rate the builder's favorite. It
Reece Barnes 49:16
was a flop.
Mark Williams 49:16
I mean, oh man, this is just one. This is such a one sided relationship. I thought I was going to get a bubble tea out of the deal, but anyway, I thought that was really funny. So with that in mind, how, how have your other guests enjoyed that portion of the recordings?
Reece Barnes 49:33
I mean, that's that's been said. We've kind of, we've kind of shied away from it because there was a lot of logistics. I mean, we kind of went into, like, what is, what is the beer of choice from the listener? And then ultimately, you know,
Matt Calvano 49:46
how do we get that's bubble tea, you know, well, and
Reece Barnes 49:49
so here's the thing. We're even talking like, Wait, can you guys hear me?
Matt Calvano 49:52
Yeah, you did cut out kind of slick. I But, um,
Reece Barnes 49:56
I think the big piece maybe, I, I. There we go. See we still have technical difficulties every once in a while, but it was like, guys up in, like, New England, and they're like, Yeah, this is my favorite brew from this brewery up here, and these, and it's like, Shit, no, I'm in Denver. Like, we got to figure out and get these beers to do a liquor store in Denver. So now we're just, you know, casually drinking beers and join them. We need we're still finding our no
Mark Williams 50:24
it'll take you a while to find your stride. I just thought it's a cool concept. I don't think you should get rid of it. I just thought it was, it's unique. And obviously you're finding out. I'm waiting for someone and be like, Ah, my favorite beer. Beer is from the or, you know, the island of, you know, Borneo. It's gonna like $5,000 beer to get it shipped over here, or whatever. So anyway, how are you finding the episodes in terms of recording, and what was your goal? I mean, you wanted to, are you? Are your listeners? You just really want to dive into Financials, or what are your guests saying about the show?
Matt Calvano 50:55
Yeah. I mean, the the goal, the gap we saw, was there's really no great content out there around construction, financials specifically discussed in a digestible way. So we did want to focus on financial topics, right, so that customers can use it as a resource, and hopefully also, you know, enjoy Reese, enjoy listening to Reese talk. But yeah. I mean, we're we what we're kind of orienting the podcast around is, what is the theme? What is the key lesson from each of these? For the first one with you, we talked about your experience getting a loan, and the whole journey of how that affected you around the financial crisis with the remodels, and we decided to create the podcast around debt, right? So if you go to your episode, you'll see an article explaining, what are the three things you need to know about debt when you're thinking about whether you should take out debt.
Mark Williams 51:46
Reese, can I stop him for a second to ask you about this? Like, does Matt have, like an addict memory, where he remembers every conversation he's ever had? Because right now, Matt, you're like my wife, you're like you quoted your episode from two years ago that you recalled what we talked about. Like, I have zero idea what we talked about, other than we talked about, other than we talked about something with adaptive and my wife has always given me crap, because every Monday, I re listen to the episode when it airs, and she's like, Well, you were just in the conversation, like, three weeks ago. Can you not remember what was talked about? I'm like, I'm interviewing someone. Like, I don't know. I'm sort of focused on, you know, my general feel of it, but it seems like Matt remembers everything that's ever been
Reece Barnes 52:21
said. Brains work very differently. If I've learned anything from working at adapt, brains work very differently, and that goes back into having, like a very strong team to answer your question, yes, all of our co founders, all of our team members, are exceptionally smart, and one of Matt's strengths is remembering everything like he read out of addiction. It's
Mark Williams 52:40
impressive. I mean, it's an impressive skill. It really is. It's one that I don't have. Why do salesmen usually not have at Reese? I feel like you and I are probably more akin to that. Would you agree? Oh,
Reece Barnes 52:50
undoubtedly, undoubtedly. I mean, I would say that. You know, I'm pretty sharp myself. You know, I remember stuff. But, yeah, you know, I don't know why sales guys are like this. I don't know. We're just, we're just EQ heavy. You know, we're looking to identify and work with humans. And you know the analytical memorization read a sentence from a book six years ago, and remember it just is not in my repertoire. I
Mark Williams 53:16
will say this. I mean, tell me if you agree with this. And I think everyone can, well, we'll see how you react to it. My wife says it all the time. I actually feel like it's very powerful statement, that people will forget what you say, except for Melissa and Matt, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. I would say I'm a big feel like, if I meet someone like, I'll know like, Hey, I felt very comfortable around that person, or I really support that person, or I like what that person is doing. I'll lose some of the specifics around it. But I, you know, maybe in sales, I'm trying to make pretty quick decisions on especially like a big open house, if I have 100 200 people through or, you know, sometimes we'll have 1000 or 1500 people through a house in a weekend. You know, I cannot give every person the amount of time that they need or deserve, frankly, to just talk about their house. So I'm triaging extremely quick. You know, it's five to 10 seconds. Like, okay, do I spend five minutes with those people? You know, how much time? Because I can't spend five minutes with 1500 people. You know, clearly, that doesn't work. Do you feel like you would? You agree with that sentiment Reese in terms of, like, how you relate to people's feelings, or how you feel about them, totally,
Reece Barnes 54:18
totally and, I mean, I think that's like, I mean, Matt mentions that he's from Michigan. I mean, I'm from Nebraska, and I put a lot of, a lot of clout into that, just of like, you know, in Nebraska, you don't have many people to talk to, so when you get the chance to, you make the most of it, type of thing. And, yeah, I mean, totally. I mean, I'm all about, you know, really listening to people, a lot of active listening, like having true, genuine conversation with people. And people do, I mean, they make those comments. Mark about like, you know, like, oh, we had a great experience with Reece, or we had great experience with Caitlin and Nate. We had a great experience with your sales team. Is because you really do. I mean, you have to genuinely convey the care and their experience and their needs and making sure that they are getting into it. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's just like a nap. Actual characteristic for salespeople, at least good quality salespeople, yeah, yeah.
Mark Williams 55:05
Well, and I think you can obviously do both. It's not that Matt is an uncaring, you know, AI robot, you know, but,
Unknown Speaker 55:12
I mean, it just,
Mark Williams 55:14
it is interesting seeing people's skills on display. I mean, I'm really impressed. I think maybe I tend to almost get more impressed with skills I don't have. So that's why he's like, when Matt started bringing it up previously in the episode, I'm like, I think he remembers everything that has ever been said to him, which is a super useful trait. So anyway, just, I
Reece Barnes 55:31
mean, and now let's dig into this, Matt, since you're the, since you're the the science project here, you're the the wonder child here, how I mean, it was, it's just like you read a lot of books, like, how do you how do you how do you get good at this? Or is this just something you've
Matt Calvano 55:45
always been get good at memory? Yeah, get
Reece Barnes 55:48
like, seriously. You're like, yeah. March of 23 we talked about this topic. It was about debt, and there was 13 3.3% over here, and there's a quarter million over there. Like, how do you do that?
Matt Calvano 55:57
I don't, I don't. I mean, I don't know. I think that there's not many guides on memory generally. Like, things are interesting, I think I'll remember them. I think a lot of Yeah, like, that's what right memory is kind of tied to emotion. Like, interesting things will drum up some level of emotion right or difficult situations will drum up a level of emotion that creates the memory associated up. Maybe get more emotional. More emotional. I
Reece Barnes 56:30
need to get more emotional.
Mark Williams 56:31
I get more emotional. Need To Cry more on your sales calls. Reese, you know, if you meet him in person, maybe snuggle that beard up a little bit. Be like before we break the ice. I'd like you to stroke my beard and see how close it is. Or here's some beard conditioner. Well, maybe in the last four minutes. Why don't we talk about what's, what eat, what, you know, what's exciting for the rest of the year? You know? What are you guys excited about? Either adaptive or, personally, I know Matt, maybe Matt, you go first. You've got, you've got some big family changes happening that I'm pretty excited about, yeah,
Matt Calvano 57:01
yeah. I guess that's what I'm excited about. Gonna become a dad. So got that coming up soon, baby. What
Mark Williams 57:07
do you guys do in January? Okay, so a little bit of time. That's amazing. I'm super happy for you. That's congratulations,
Matt Calvano 57:14
yes, yes, yeah, but I forgot the due date. Now I'm just kidding. I remember
Mark Williams 57:20
it wasn't emotional enough. Was not emotional enough for you to register a memory. Yeah. How about you? Reese,
Reece Barnes 57:30
yeah. I mean, we've got, I'm honest. I'm gonna spend a lot of time work. I'm excited about what's happening over here at Adaptive personally, I mean, my wife and I, we've got, we've got some pretty cool vacations. We're gonna go up to the northeast here at the summer, we're going to be hosting Thanksgiving at our home and in Denver. So I'm excited about that, but I would say the things I'm most excited about is we're really we're really starting to scale out and build out our sales team, and we have a lot of really solid hires, a lot of really solid employees contributing. And I'm excited to see what what we do with the challenge ahead of us. So getting that scale down is going to be the big piece, and just help as many find Contractors of America as we can.
Mark Williams 58:06
I like that. That's a pretty good reason. Well, we'll have everything tagged in the show notes. We'll have your social handles, your websites, hopefully, after people listen to this episode, if they haven't, before they're going to schedule that demo. And you know, the fact that you can go month to month is kind of a no brainer, just to try it out. I mean, it's, you know, take that bike first then, and you're not going to give
Reece Barnes 58:25
it up. Take it for a spin. Of course, we want to close deals. But I think really the bigger piece is, is giving yourself the chance just to even explore what's new opportunity. I mean, I talked to a lot of builders out there that have software fatigue, that are pretty resistant to the idea and the concept of it. Don't have the problem. Don't have the problem. Just from a business exploration standpoint. If this was interesting in the slightest, just go fill out a contact form. We're not going to sell you to death. We're going to get you into a demo. We're going through process scoping. We're going to make sure this is a good fit. We're going to make sure there's actually problems that we can solve. And then to your point mark, I mean, it genuinely is logging into QuickBooks and syncing it too adaptive, and your account is built, so very little friction to get involved, especially if you have that inclination for AI in your business.
Mark Williams 59:07
Yeah, excellent. Well, appreciate your time and for everyone listening, and we'll see you next time. Guys, appreciate it. Mark, this
Matt Calvano 59:15
is great. Hey. Mark.
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