The story of Buildertrend: A talk with founders Dan Houghton, Steve Dugger and Jeff Dugger

Show Notes

Buildertrend co-founders Dan Houghton, Steve Dugger and Jeff Dugger kick off The Building Code podcast with the story of how Buildertrend came to be, as well as anecdotes that speak to the rapid growth and success of the company.

Buildertrend is a software as a service solution for construction professionals and is based in Omaha, Nebraska. With over 400 full-time employees, Buildertrend has consistently seen 50% year-over-year growth with no sign of stopping. Clients log into a desktop and/or mobile app to access nearly 30 core features that help them better manage their construction businesses in the field, from the office or from home.

Before Buildertrend was founded, Dan, Steve and Jeff managed a separate software company called Dimension Technology, which had the goal of turning paper forms into online business processes. A few years and several beers later, our three heroes evolved their initial idea into a full-fledged SaaS solution targeting the construction industry. Why construction? Homebuilding was hot at the time, and a lot of contractors had bid work with Dimension Technology to get help with their business processes, so our three heroes became interested and educated on the industry.

Several years and many iterations of Buildetrend later, Dan, Steve and Jeff have created not only a successful product, but also a holistic business around construction project management software.

Some secrets of their success:

  • Take advantage of opportunities
  • Look for the positive beneath the negative and make something from it
  • Know your numbers – inside and out
  • Partner with people who balance others out
  • Understand what kind of company you want or what you have, and be sure to think about it in the right frame of mind
  • Pick up the phone!

The men behind Buildertrend

Dan Houghton – Co-founder & EVP
Dan has earned a distinguished sales and marketing career with both private and public technology organizations. At Buildertrend, he oversees Sales, Business Development, Strategic Partnerships, HR and Culture, as well as has led Buildertrend’s expansion in the global market.

Steve Dugger – Co-founder & EVP
In 2006, Steve Dugger co-founded Buildertrend with his brother Jeff and friend Dan Houghton. As Co-Founder, Steve oversees corporate strategy, as well as financial and customer operations. He’s proof that an idea sparked from a basement can bloom into one of the United States’ fastest-growing tech companies. Today, with nearly one million users across the globe, Buildertrend empowers the construction industry with a better way to build.

Connect with Steve

Jeff Dugger – Co-founder & EVP
Jeff is a software company entrepreneur specializing in the creation and management of construction offerings. He’s always looking to innovate and improve in order to bring value to the Buildertrend team and customers, as well as to the marketplace.

Connect with Jeff

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Transcript

Tom Houghton:

Episode one, โ€œThe Building Code.โ€ I’m your host, Tom Houghton joined by.

Paul Wurth:

Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Paul, VP of sales.

Paul Wurth:

Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Creative production manager.

Paul Wurth:

You may have seen him on popular videos like What’s Coming Up in Buildertrend?

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Paul Wurth:

If you’re a customer.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

And everything else.

Tom Houghton:

Or if not, and you’re checking out our YouTube channel, you’ve seen us in carpool karaoke.

Paul Wurth:

Boom.

Tom Houghton:

That’s a classic.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a good one.

Tom Houghton:

Check that out if you haven’t.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

We’re already off topic.

Paul Wurth:

We’re already off topic.

Tom Houghton:

Wow.

Paul Wurth:

Welcome to your next favorite podcast.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So you’re listening to The Building Code. And in this podcast, we’re going to talk about all things Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

Product and company because a lot of our clients want to know about our company.

Tom Houghton:

Industry trends. We’re going to talk to some of the best builders in the nation right now, that are building unique properties.

Paul Wurth:

Homes, remodels, renovations. Let’s hear about your business in your location. What’s the market like? How’s your business set up? What are your challenges? Because I think a lot of people who’ll be listening to this are fellow business owners, right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Hopefully the common tie is Buildertrend, whether you’re a user or a client, or even an employee of our company, there should be a little bit of everything in there.

Tom Houghton:

I’m going to go a step further and say the common tie should be better, period. Right? That everything we want to be better at, ourselves, our company, your business. So, if you want to be better, you’re listening to this podcast.

Paul Wurth:

Better. Thatโ€™s good marketing. I like that.

Tom Houghton:

Thanks.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. You’re good. All right. So what’s today look like?

Tom Houghton:

First episode here. We’re taking a look back in the history of Buildertrend with the co-owners, Steve Dugger, Jeff Dugger and Dan Houghton. And we have a great conversation with them just to recap the history, but also talk about the rapid growth and success of the company. Challenges they’ve faced along the way and just the positive outlook for the future here. So, let’s take it away with Dan, Jeff and Steve.

Today, we’re joined by the co-owners of Buildertrend, Steve Dugger, Jeff Dugger, Dan Houghton. Houghton.

Dan Houghton:

Houghton.

Tom Houghton:

Would you prefer the T?

Dan Houghton:

We’re still trying to figure it out.

Tom Houghton:

I know. I can’t figure it out. Thanks guys for joining us on the show today. Obviously, we thought we’d start off episode one of the Buildertrend podcast with you guys. Talk about the Buildertrend story and your successes along the ways, your challenges that you faced and overcoming them to be the number one software platform for construction. So, let’s just introduce yourself, get to know you guys a little bit. Steve, why don’t you go first?

Steve Dugger:

Hey guys, my name’s Steve Dugger.

Tom Houghton:

Steve, your role in the company would best be described as?

Steve Dugger:

I’m not really sure what I do here.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good.

Jeff Dugger:

We ask him that a lot.

Steve Dugger:

Now or 10 years ago?

Tom Houghton:

Right. Yeah. Let’s go with now just so that people know, marker in time, and then we’ll go back.

Steve Dugger:

So, I oversee the company from a financial and a customer success standpoint.

Tom Houghton:

Yep. Good. Jeff. Jeff Dugger. Steve and Jeff, the Dugger brothers. Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

Missing one.

Tom Houghton:

Missing one. Yep.

Jeff Dugger:

Yep. We’re brothers. I guess, my day-to-day really revolves around our product, the platform, our engineering team and how we continue to make sure that Buildertrend’s the best software platform out there for construction.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Dan?

Dan Houghton:

Yes.

Tom Houghton:

Tell us what you do here every day.

Dan Houghton:

I spend a lot of time with the Sales team and the Corp Dev team and generally, just like to walk around and talk to people. That’s my favorite thing to do.

Tom Houghton:

Weโ€™ve got a lot of great people here at Buildertrend. We’re at 425 now?

Dan Houghton:

I think so. Pretty close.

Tom Houghton:

That’s the record right now. And that’s up, we’re already up 30 plus people this year I feel like, three months in.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. I think our goal was 30 new hires per month this year.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

Close to that.

Tom Houghton:

Aggressive growth.

Steve Dugger:

Finish the year over 500.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

That’s amazing. Well, let’s go back. Let’s hop in the time machine and go back to the very beginning. Steve, tell us, where did you first come up with the idea for Buildertrend?

Steve Dugger:

So, I came up with it by myself after a couple of beers.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

No, but actually, it did start after a couple of beers and this story goes back to 2004.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Steve Dugger:

So, we had a separate software company before Buildertrend called Dimension Technology.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Steve Dugger:

And if you think back to that time, most websites were just like a brochure online.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Steve Dugger:

And what we did with Dimension was take people’s… If you also think about that time, people used paper forms, pen and paper was for pretty much everything.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Steve Dugger:

So, what we did with Dimension is we took people’s paper forms in business and turned those into business processes online. That’s the first part of the story. If you fast forward then to ’06, construction was hot, there were a lot of contractors. They were coming to us and asking for us to help them with those processes.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Steve Dugger:

We developed a prototype that was very basic compared to what we have today. We had change orders, we had scheduling, we had photos and we thought we could sell that in Omaha.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

Yeah. Enter Dan into the picture. We’ve been friends with Dan since high school, known him forever. We were always looking at what each other was doing in our lives at that time, and Dan was selling software for an insurance company.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Steve Dugger:

So, Dan took a look at what we had for the prototype. It wasn’t even called Buildertrend at the time. And he said, no, we can’t sell this in Omaha. We can sell this all over the United States.

Tom Houghton:

Nice.

Steve Dugger:

And we said, well, let’s do it. And we quit our day jobs.

Tom Houghton:

Just like that.

Dan Houghton:

Well, we quit our day jobs after somebody gave us a $4,000 check.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Dan Houghton:

It was the first deal. I remember it was before I went to work. I had to start work at 8:30 and Steve and I went to this gentleman’s house. And the guy, literally, we were there for half hour, wrote us a check for $4,000, and you have to have a company to have a bank account, so we incorporated that day or the next day.

Steve Dugger:

Yeah. We couldn’t deposit the check.

Dan Houghton:

And I think that was like June 28th-ish. There is a stub of the check somewhere from 2006.

Jeff Dugger:

It’s framed somewhere in the office.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

And I quit my job right before the 4th of July, and we started. It was fun.

Tom Houghton:

That was it.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. That was it.

Tom Houghton:

Do you โ€ฆ

Jeff Dugger:

It happened really fast.

Tom Houghton:

Do you remember the prototype name? Did it have a name?

Steve Dugger:

I think we called it…

Jeff Dugger:

Home Tracker.

Tom Houghton:

Home Tracker. Okay. Well.

Dan Houghton:

Trying to find the name of this company is a great story. We were literally. It wasn’t GoDaddy. Do you remember what site we were using to find the name of? Was it GoDaddy? So, we’re just peppering through these different names, Builder Pro, Pro Builder, Builder Ten. I don’t know what we came up with then Buildertrend popped up and we’re like, alright, we’ll take that one.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. So, there was a lot of โ€ฆ a lot of thought went into it.

Steve Dugger:

It’s Buildertrend.

Tom Houghton:

Buildertrend.

Dan Houghton:

And thereโ€™s no โ€˜sโ€™. Itโ€™s not Builders Trends. Trends Builders.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

I’m still trying to get my parents to say it the right way but …

Tom Houghton:

Tell me about this $4,000 check that you guys got. So was that from a builder? That was where it came from.

Steve Dugger:

It was. Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

I think something that surprises most people is that from that moment onward, we’ve been funded completely internally.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. No outside funding.

Steve Dugger:

That’s right.

Jeff Dugger:

We don’t have a typical startup story.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. We donโ€™t have a venture capitalists or anything like that that came in.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Jeff Dugger:

But this was 13 years ago. Now, it’s just starting to catch on.

Dan Houghton:

Venture capital in Omaha, Nebraska wasn’t really …

Tom Houghton:

A thing.

Dan Houghton:

A thing.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

There wasn’t a scene around startups and entrepreneurship and this wave of technology almost being glamorized in some ways, especially in the last 10 years. And really, I think Facebook and Twitter and some of these great social media platforms have changed the way people think about technology. But back when we were doing this, our thought, at least my thought was, okay, we can make more money doing this than I’m doing at my current job. Therefore, it makes sense for me to do this.

Tom Houghton:

Right.

Steve Dugger:

We were a sales-driven organization early on.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

A lot of software companies, they feel like they need the perfect product before they can launch. So, they put all this money into R&D and none into sales. And we actually took the exact opposite approach we said, we’ve got a decent prototype here, we think we can sell it. Let’s hire some salespeople.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Good. Yeah. That actually brings up a good transition to, what sets Buildertrend apart from other software companies? Jeff, you think you could give us some examples of that?

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah. Do you mean as a product or more just as a company?

Tom Houghton:

I’d love to hear both. Let’s start with the company though. Just because we’re going to talk about that.

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah. Playing off what Steve was explaining about the origins of BT. Yeah. We actually had technology, we had a prototype that we thought we could sell. We proved we could sell it. And then we went to market. We wrapped a business plan around that, right. It’s an MVP is the acronym that flies around now. That wasn’t an acronym when we started the business, but that basically means we start small, we put functionality, we put a product in front of our customers, and we let them help us craft what that product needs to look like to really hit the ball out of the park in the industry.

So, I think just staying really connected with our customers and taking a crawl, walk, run approach with our technology helped us get there. It really helped us get there when, what? Two years after we started the business, the housing crisis hit. And we had to make really tough decisions in the business to pivot and expand our market approach and our appeal outside of just where we started, which was homebuilding, to other areas of the construction industry. So, that helped us because we hadn’t put all our eggs in one basket. Yet, we were still building and staying really flexible and paying attention to the market.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Let’s go back to those early days, that 2006 period, 2007 period. So, it’s just you three, then you bring on your first hire, I think in October?

Dan Houghton:

Yep.

Tom Houghton:

That Right?

Dan Houghton:

World famous, Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

World famous, Paul Wurth. Right. You brought Paul on and then โ€ฆ

Jeff Dugger:

Don’t blush, Paul.

Tom Houghton:

How quickly did it grow beyond that?

Dan Houghton:

We hired our second in December.

Steve Dugger:

One month later. Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

And then, I think we hired, our first four hires were all sales reps within about the first year we started the business. And they were all great. They’re still with us. I think nine or 10 of our first 11 employees are still at Buildertrend 13 years later. Which is pretty wild.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

Because these guys weren’t making any money, literally. They were making a little money, but there was no promise of stock options. There was no promise of we were the next Facebook. Everybody worked really hard and weโ€™re very thankful for that group. Still, thankful for that group that’s with us today. They set the foundation for our company and have been great examples to a lot of the younger and new generation of Buildertrend, which is pretty cool.

Tom Houghton:

So, we’re growing out of this recession period. So, you’re hiring these people and then now, the recession hits. So what happens next?

Steve Dugger:

I mean really nothing. We didn’t lay anybody off. We maybe slowed our hiring a little bit.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Steve Dugger:

But we actually continued to grow and evolve as Jeff mentioned earlier. We started targeting the remodeling industry a little heavier during that time. A lot of people that were home builders specifically before the recession picked up remodeling during it, and we powered through.

Dan Houghton:

Well, it was an interesting time in the history of technology because there were these crossroads of the great recession meeting technology. So, if you think about the iPhone, for example, that was coming out relatively the same time as the great recession. And the home building industry was at the tip of the iceberg of the great recession outside of some financial instruments in New York or whatever. But all of a sudden, our customers who were pivoting their business, as Jeff mentioned earlier, started to think about, okay, how can I operate? I used to have 10 employees, now I have five employees or four employees. How can I operate more efficiently? So, they would lean on Buildertrend to help their business operate more efficiently. It was horrible. It was a really hard time because … I’m a big believer.

We have some of the best customers in the world. Really down to earth, a lot of family businesses, just genuine people, salt of the earth people. And people were really struggling during this time, and they were very loyal to us. We were loyal to them, but it was hard to watch an industry really get โ€ฆ almost half of them get wiped out in a matter of two years. But we were very lucky that some of the best of the best were using Buildertrend at that time. I know for me personally, it was a really hard couple of years. It was really a hard, I think, couple of years for our foundational employees that I just mentioned. And I think there was a moment where Steve and I were having a conversation in your office and it was like, we’re going to go for it.

We’re not going to lay anybody off. This might suck, but we’re just going to keep our foot on the gas. And one thing that Steve, I’ll give credit to Steve, is we didn’t take our foot off the gas in the marketing. And I always share that with anybody that’s an entrepreneur. Whether you own a construction company, a tech company, or you own a laundry mat down the road, when things get hard, you can reel back or you can take advantage of the opportunity. And the opportunity we had was everybody else was reeling back. And so, we put our foot on the gas and if anything, we had one year that was pretty slow growth, but we still grew. We call that the lost year, the lost year of Buildertrend. But it was great, it gave us time to mature our business. Quite honestly, it gave us a little bit of a longer runway to be a stronger company. But it was a wild time. It was a really wild time.

Steve Dugger:

Yeah. The lesson learned is recessions are actually a great time to build a business because to Dan’s point, if you do things right, and you do put your foot on the gas in sales and developing your product, you can really emerge as a leader when your competitors are taking the foot off the gas.

Tom Houghton:

Sure. Definitely. Yeah. That’s a good point. So, Dan, you talked about marketing as an opportunity there. Do you have any other advice to business owners that are starting out? Because obviously, again, you guys have now seen multiple phases of growth. So, your experience is unique to most businesses. Would you have any other advice for them?

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. Well, from my vantage point, there are a few things I always think about … And tech is different than construction. If I’m going to start a construction company, the way you think about it may be different than tech. One thing I see in tech that happens a lot, building a software program for example. They will paint themselves a bit into a corner, so Steve and Jeff were talking a little earlier about how we had a few customers in Omaha, but none of those customers were driving us to do something just for them.

As hard as it may be, we have to tell a customer sometimes, no, that idea is great, but it only works for your business. We’ve got 15,000 customers we have to apply this solution to. They maybe have one big customer and they’ve got to do everything for that customer. But on the other side of it is something that I’m not good at that Steveโ€™s done a really good job at, a self-taught CFO in some ways, is youโ€™ve got to know your numbers. If you can’t budget your business โ€“ and this is a specifically, especially important for contractors โ€“ if you don’t know your numbers, you will not be in business very long. There’s this, you’ll see a lot of contractors specifically, sometimes can’t even explain why they were successful or not successful.

And that’s really about understanding your finances and your budget and all those types of things. So, if you have an entrepreneurial mind, or you really want to go out and do something, and your strength is not finances, find a partner that has a strength where your weakness is. And I think the three of us are particularly a really good example of that. All three of us spend our time in different areas of the business. I would never go down and tell Steve how to run a proforma on a budget for 2020. It just doesn’t make sense. I trust his judgment and same thing with Jeff. Jeff’s a product mind, he’s a self-taught developer. I’m not going to run over and be like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, here, let me get in front of you and type out. I don’t know how to do that. So, I think that’s a big part of it. Find great partners that you can trust and lean on where your strengths are.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. That’s a great comment there because obviously you guys are co-owners. You each own a part of this and you each handle a unique set of the company. Maybe you can share some of your daily interaction or again, trying to stay out of the way of the other person, right? That’s sometimes is a struggle for business owners. They get in the way of themselves, right. So, how have you guys had to wrestle with that?

Jeff Dugger:

I think it all starts at the beginning and back to Dan’s point. If you’re going to start a business, you’re going to need good partners. And especially in tech because there’s a lot that goes into getting something off the ground and getting the business rolling. But we knew each other in high school, Steve and Dan were in the same class. We’re really good friends. It’s a marriage when you get in and then 13 years later, here we are and we’re still in the same boat and we’re still growing this thing. That a foundation was really important to get us to where we are now. Today, our day-to-day interactions are around strategy of the company, our people, our culture. They’re just critical parts of the business and us growing and getting to where we are today and what our plans are next.

Steve Dugger:

And if you don’t have a partner that fills those shoes, then like you said, you do have to take a step back sometimes, and we call it, get out of your own way and hire what you’re not good at. A lot of construction companies are โ€ฆ I’ll call it a one man show. If you’re the one actually completing the project, who’s selling your next job? And if nobody’s selling your next job, you’re not going to be successful.

Tom Houghton:

Right. Yeah, definitely. Good stuff. Yeah. So, let’s talk about you guys getting out of your own way. We’ve hired so many people since the three of you started this. Can we talk just briefly about, I guess, recent changes, and you bringing on more people to target financial. I know we’ve hired a VP of finance. We’ve obviously continued to give people more promotions inside. We promote from within. We believe that we hire great people, and they’re 10s, and they’ll just keep rocking it if you just give them more rope. Maybe we can talk about that experience.

Steve Dugger:

I think to really dumb it down, the basic philosophy is, you need great managers. Whether you hire them or promote them within and develop their talent. You need great managers because people, at the end of the day, are going to work harder if they feel like their work matters. And they feel a sense of accomplishment from their work, and a great manager is going to put goal structures in place and communicate at a cadence that provides those employees that reinforcement they need to succeed.

Tom Houghton:

Sure. Yeah.

Jeff Dugger:

It’s one of the most fun aspects of this business. And 30 people start in a month, like Dan said earlier, that the opportunities are just unfolding out in front of our team and our company every day. It never ends. And that growth, it creates lots of new opportunities for people within the company and for new hires from outside BT. That’s one of the most fun aspects of the business.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

I think it’s the difference between the three of us or when we have 10 or 15 or 20 employees is. Especially when you’re smaller, every decision you make has a relatively big impact on your future.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Dan Houghton:

We’ve got a little bit more breathing room now to make mistakes, which is not something you want to do, but also, you approach it saying if it’s not perfect, that’s okay, we can tune it up down the road. But the biggest thing for me was just letting go of certain things. I’m not an expert in HR, but I ran HR for a long time. I shouldn’t have done it, but letting go was a really positive thing for our company and myself. Steve’s not an expert in everything. Jeff’s not an expert in everything. Part of it’s an ego thing. You start a company, you want to make decisions.

You want to be a part of everything. And I see a lot of our customers specifically in that same situation where they have to touch everything. They have to touch production, they have to touch sales, they have to touch HR, they have to touch accounting because they were forced to. You hear this in every business podcast in the world. It’s once you decide to get out of your own way, work on your business, instead of being in your business, you start to see some really solid things happen. And it’s fun to see that. To Steve’s point, you see managers grow up within your business and become great leaders. You hire great leaders from the outside, that’s part of it. Finding people that don’t think about things the same way you do, that challenge you. Those are all things, I think, from our perspective over the last three or four years, we’ve seen some really positive results because we got out of our own way, in some way.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

Yeah. You hear business owners say, if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done right. And that, to me, that means, well, that’s your own fault. That means that you didn’t either hire the right person or train them correctly. At the end of the day, that’s your fault.

Tom Houghton:

Sure. Yeah.

Jeff Dugger:

And it will hold your business back. You can’t scale yourself, you can only scale yourself so far.

Tom Houghton:

Right. Because you’re one person.

Dan Houghton:

I think the hard part is just that though. This is the conversation I’m having with our customers, how do you find great people? And once you find a great person, what do you do with them? How do you train them?

Tom Houghton:

Right.

Dan Houghton:

And so, I think one of the challenges that I’m seeing a lot of small business owners, a lot of contractors have right now is how do I go source that great person? Once I source them, how do I train them? And we’ve hired some people that I’d never thought in the world that we would hire, but you open yourself up, especially in your local community. You ask a lot of questions and if you’re really positive about your business and where you’re headed, usually people will feel that vibe, and people will feel that energy and they will, in some ways come to you, it will come to you more then. And you’ll have to go out and pull people in, too.

But a lot of it, I think, for me, it’s just asking questions outside of our company. I know Jeff and Steve had done the same, and people can call that networking. I don’t look at it as networking, it’s just, I need advice on something.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

How do you think we should do it? And then all of a sudden, that can turn into a whole other situation. You’re a perfect example of it. You were helping us on videos what, three years ago? Four years ago?

Tom Houghton:

Yep.

Dan Houghton:

And we saw just an opportunity to try a video and now you’re with us full time, right. So, that’s how it works.

Jeff Dugger:

Best decision of your life.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly.

Jeff Dugger:

Best decision of our life, Tom. Best decision of our life.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Good. Yeah. People are so crucial, and we have had such great success hiring 10s, these great people. We’re based here in Omaha, Neb. If you tell that to the other 48 States, they’re scratching their heads and theyโ€™re going, why? Why are you here in Omaha? And I think people are a huge part of that. Would you guys correct me if I’m wrong?

Jeff Dugger:

Absolutely.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So, I guess the relationship part of it too, obviously. Omaha is a pretty well-connected city for people who don’t know it. So, people know good people and those people stand out above the rest, would you agree?

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. We’ve got so many people here that are related.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

Or best friends or college roommates, brother-in-laws, cousins. And I think that’s a pretty good indicator that people like what they’re doing, and they know good people, and they want to bring them in. I think our biggest source of new talent by far is employee referral or team member referral. It’s well beyond anything else. It’s almost interesting that we’re pushing 500 people, and I don’t think we did these new hire meetings where somebody walks in here almost blind, not knowing … It does happen from time to time, which is great. I wish we had a great balance of it all, but being in a town with about a million people, it seems like everybody is somehow connected. But we’re all connected when we started.

Steve Dugger:

That strategy’s really scaled well for us, too. Speaking to every stage of your business life, if you’re a one man show, you have friends, you have family.

Tom Houghton:

Right.

Steve Dugger:

And then once you get to five, now you’ve got five people with friends and family. And so that’s something that really scales and has continued to scale for us. And like Dan said, on day one, it was our biggest employee source and it still is today.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I can remember, I was sitting in a meeting probably about a year ago with 30 people. And the question was asked how many of you were referrals of Buildertrend? And I’m pretty sure 29 people raised their hands and said I was a referral. And it just speaks to the power of good people know other good people and those are the people you want to work with.

Dan Houghton:

Yep. Yep. And we broke the rule right out of the gate about not doing business with relatives and friends. We’ve just continued to break that rule as we grow. It’s worked. I always say, this is like, if you’re going to work with people, why wouldn’t you like working with the people you work with. The no friend rule or no family rule. As long as you’re direct, and your communication is clear on what the expectations are, especially from the beginning before they come on board, then nine out of 10 times it’s going to work out pretty well.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Let’s pivot from there and talk about people. Obviously they relate heavily to culture and the culture here at Buildertrend is fantastic. And if you don’t know what we’re talking about, you should definitely come visit us for a Buildertrend University just to really get a taste of it. But, it’s a great opportunity for our clients to see the place and just feel the culture. Let’s talk about culture. What do you think sets us apart? How did we get there? Anyone want to take that one?

Dan Houghton:

Culture for me has been all about the people. So, we’re a people-driven company, right? So, we don’t have machines in the back that make what we do. We’re not building widgets. Our people are building, managing, supporting, selling our software.

Steve Dugger:

And that’s much like the construction industry.

Dan Houghton:

It is much like the construction industry. Yeah. So all of our investment, it’s all in human capital. And so, we’re a big believer in this is a modern world that we live in, that people should really enjoy what they’re doing. And people work mostly because they all have something outside of their life that’s more important. You have a family you want to support, you like going to church, you like traveling, you like spending time with your kids, whatever it may be. You’re working really hard, so you can really enjoy the things that matter. And that’s something that we put a big emphasis on when we hire someone. That’s the culture we want for our people. So, we really promote a 40-hour work week. We have a pretty clear and one standard no asshole policy at Buildertrend.

Tom Houghton:

Yep.

Dan Houghton:

And a lot of people giggle at that when we talk to our customers about that when they come in for BTU, but by the end of it, they’re actually using that same policy for their own business. And really, itโ€™s all about that we’re human beings. We’re all trying to do the best thing. And a lot of people don’t even know, I use this example all the time. Maybe somebody on your team screwed up and you CC their boss on an email. There’s no reason to do that. Right? It just doesn’t make sense. That’s not good for them, not good for the boss, not good for the person that sent it. It’s just not a good situation. So, there’s the little things, treating people really kind, doing the right thing. And usually it’s just like the golden rule, as long as you do that, life is pretty good. So, that’s how I think about our culture at least.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Steve Dugger:

It’s cool for me to see that our culture doesn’t really feel like it’s changed that much from when there were five of us to now, just shy of 500. We’ve always had that work hard, play hard culture where success is rewarded. I would call it a competitive culture, but it’s not one where we want to necessarily always win it’s that we hate to lose.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Steve Dugger:

And, I think, that’s actually more powerful sometimes than needing to win. It’s just hating to lose, and you walk around here, and you can just see that everybody โ€ฆ they don’t want to lose.

Tom Houghton:

Right. Yeah. They’re in it to win it.

Jeff Dugger:

Really driven people, results driven. I think, one of the things in the engineering department that’s been big for us over the last few years is making sure that we can keep a handle on the outputs. Right? Like what does success look like? Let’s celebrate that and not really have to focus on things like the inputs. So, 40-hour work week takes care of itself. Those kinds of things, and we can recognize that success and celebrate it. It’s a lot of fun.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Dan Houghton:

We’re really good at celebrating success. That’s been part of our model for 13 years.

Jeff Dugger:

We’re the playful hero. We want to win, we want to make people happy, but we also want to have fun doing it.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Let’s talk about our clients. Obviously, they’re the reason we’re here. Jeff, you talked about the beginning. How has it changed over time? We started off listening to clients to help guide things. Now, 13 years later, we’re still doing it.

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah. We had a really good … To my knowledge, Steve and Dan haven’t built any houses. I haven’t built a house before, right?

Steve Dugger:

Just a lot of remodeling. That I didn’t do.

Jeff Dugger:

You watched, right? So, we had a good support network of builders in Omaha and then contractors that we started out listening to. In the consulting business, like Steve mentioned, listening to our clients was the most important thing we could do. And that’s still huge for our product and our engineering team and our company. So, we take care of our customers. There’s lots of different ways for our customers to get in touch with us. Give us that feedback, and we seek that out. There’s a couple of spots in the program, the drop down, there’s a forum. Let us know, tell us how we’re doing. I encourage anybody listening to this to do that. Every single piece of feedback that our customers give us, we look at, and we try to prioritize putting updates out for them.

Steve Dugger:

I like to always say that we’re a customer service company, but we just happen to have the best construction software in the world.

Jeff Dugger:

Oh, that’s good.

Steve Dugger:

And it really is the truth.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, yeah. It is. Yeah. One of my favorite stories that I hear, obviously, I get to talk to clients and hear their successes with the program is. They’ll say, oh, I just sent in an email and said, hey, I had this idea or hey, I was curious, this wasn’t working like this, and I thought it was going to work like that. And then two weeks later, or whatever, there’s a change that happened. Maybe we could talk about that just briefly, too, and how our software is structured differently than most traditional companies. We’re constantly evolving. Maybe you can talk about the pros and the challenges with that.

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah. We release features and functionality every day, sometimes multiple times a day we will release. Right? So the challenge, obviously, that comes with that is we’re moving fast. We want to make a lot of updates, we want to bring value to our customers. We’re occasionally going to stub our toe and there’s going to be a bug that sneaks out there, and we’re going to fix it as soon as we can. Right? Those are the challenges. We don’t want to hide behind a curtain for six months, build up a bunch of really cool stuff and nobody can see but us and then just unload it all at once. We want to keep a constant connection with our customers and our software. So, that in and of itself, just moving fast, comes with some trade-offs, and we’re okay with them. Because what I love is that is one of my favorite moments to have with the customer. When we talk to them, they ask for something and then boom, there it is a couple of weeks later. That’s a neat moment for everybody.

Steve Dugger:

Yeah. Especially in a world where they’re not used to that.

Tom Houghton:

Right.

Steve Dugger:

They ask us for something, we say we’ll put that in the pipeline and get it done as soon as we can. And then four weeks later it’s done, and they go, whoa, what? You actually listen to me.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Where else do you see this though? Like, you’ve got a question for Amazon about, why does my package keep getting broken on my doorstep? And you’re trying to submit ideas to them. They’re not going to listen to you.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. You look at Elon Musk, he responds, right.

Tom Houghton:

It’s true.

Dan Houghton:

It’s kind of interesting. He actually responds to people’s tweets, and I think it’s humanizing the business. Right? And quite honestly, like I mentioned earlier, if it’s one idea, it’s probably not the greatest idea for the entire platform, but there’s a good chance we’re getting those ideas and from multiple customers. And that’s what I love about our customers. That they’re not shy about sharing their feedback. And we’re not shy about soliciting for their feedback.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Dan Houghton:

On Jeff’s team, we’ve got product influencers, and we are talking to our customers every single day. Again, the challenge you have with that is, we are setting the bar real high for ourselves, when we tell our customers, hey, give us your feedback. And if we don’t deliver on their feedback or at least communicate back to them, why or why we’re not doing something, then we failed.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

And that’s a good point. Because we do say, no, if it doesn’t make sense then we do say no.

Dan Houghton:

Youโ€™ve got to say no, but we’re also in the business of constantly earning our customersโ€™ business. That’s one thing that’s a little unique about being in software as a service, SaaS, is our customers don’t have to use our product. You send us a couple hundred dollars to use Buildertrend or whatever it might be. Our goal is to make Buildertrend better next month than it was last month. And weโ€™ve got to continue to make our product better and better. And so, really, the pressure is on us. If we want to make this thing the best, world’s greatest software, which is our goal, internally we have to keep our foot on the gas. We’re still putting our foot on the gas from a sales standpoint, but how this business has evolved, like a lot of our customers, our business has evolved, it was all sales 13 years ago.

Well, today we’ve got a team of 100 people on our engineering team. All they’re doing is trying to make our software better tomorrow than it was today, which is pretty cool. It’s not supposed to be a shameless plug about, oh, Buildertrend is great, but that’s our commitment to our customers. It is what it is.

Steve Dugger:

That reminds me. I had somebody walk through the office the other day, and they looked around and they said, what do all these people do?

Dan Houghton:

It’s a good question. Right? There’s a lot of them.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah. How much time do you have?

Steve Dugger:

So, wait a minute, you make construction software. What does everybody do?

Tom Houghton:

Right. Yeah. I don’t see any hammers anywhere. Yeah. Good stuff. Let’s try and wrap this up and talk about the future, if you guys don’t mind. Obviously, the future, we don’t have a crystal ball here, but obviously if there are big plans. Again, this continual evolution of the product, of our people, of the software, of making businesses better. I feel like that’s the goal, right? We’re just going to stay true to that.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah. So, if you think about our platform, so we used to be a software solution. And now we’re a platform that’s just an industry term. Not only do we want to provide the best software, but we also want to bring in the best possible experience for our customers, their customers, their trade partners, subcontractors, whoever it might be. So, we’re doing all these really great things. So, we’re offering insurance through our platform. You have payment processing through our platform. You can get a website from Buildertrend.

You can do all these things that make your business better in one central spot. So, the goal is that the heartbeat of our business is Buildertrend the software and outside that heartbeat, we’re trying to do all these other things that can help our customers. And that’s really, in my opinion, the evolution of where we’re going and where we will be over the next five, six, seven years is wrapping our arms more around our customersโ€™ businesses to help them, to support them and make them better. That’s our goal.

Steve Dugger:

Iโ€™ve got one thing to leave you with.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

I just want to say, if you’re listening to this, you’re probably a customer.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

So, a shameless promotion here, please come see us at Buildertrend University. It’s awesome. It’s so awesome.

Tom Houghton:

It’s great.

Steve Dugger:

It’s so fun.

Tom Houghton:

It’s a great program. In fact, check out a podcast here in the future we’re dropping. We actually did a podcast live at Buildertrend University and got to talk to some of our customers and hear about their experience. It’s a great opportunity to get to see us. Of course, the owners, all three of them will be here, so you can shake their hands. You can ask questions, you can give feedback and we’ll listen. That’s what’s so great about it.

What a great conversation we have with the co-owners there.

Paul Wurth:

Love those guys.

Tom Houghton:

Great stuff. If you want to learn more about Buildertrend University, about the podcast in general, please check out our shownotes at buildertrend.com/podcast. That’s where you’ll see a list of all the episodes and anything we talk about things like MVP. What does that stand for? You’ll find the definition there in the shownotes.

Paul Wurth:

Minimum Viable Product.

Tom Houghton:

Well, now you’ve just ruined that.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, shoot.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

You’re the real MVP.

Tom Houghton:

Oh, you’re too kind. Go check it out online buildertrend.com/podcast for more information. Thanks for tuning in. And next time we’re going to be talking to some of our builders from IBS, from the International Buildersโ€™ Show.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Youโ€™ve always got to explain IBS.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, that’s a …

Paul Wurth:

That’s a weird one.

Tom Houghton:

That is.

Paul Wurth:

But it’s the International Buildersโ€™ Show, it’s our 13th year. It’s the biggest show in construction industry, and it’s a really great time for our team. Seeing our clients, meeting new clients. And we have four interviews from some of my favorite clients. Really good.

Tom Houghton:

So, stay tuned for a four-part series on the International Buildersโ€™ Show.

Dan, Steve and Jeff | Buildertrend


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