From Homeowner to Eano to Eano Pro

From Homeowner to Eano to Eano Pro

A few years before I ever thought about building software,
I was just a homeowner trying to remodel my own house.

I grew up around construction — my parents both worked in the trades, and I spent summers watching crews pour concrete and frame houses under the hot sun.
I’ve always respected contractors — the long hours, the unpredictability, and the constant balancing act between quality, cost, and communication.

So when it came time to remodel my own home, I thought I knew what to expect.
I didn’t.

That renovation was confusing, expensive, and frustrating. Every small change turned into a delay. Every question required chasing someone down.
By the time it was over, I wasn’t just frustrated — I was determined to fix it.

That experience became the seed for Eano, which I founded in 2019 with one goal:

To make remodeling simpler, faster, and more transparent for homeowners like myself.

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The Eano Chapter

Eano started as a design-build platform helping homeowners navigate design, permits, and construction.
Between 2019 and 2024, we grew fast — maybe too fast.

• $1M+ per year spent on Google, Facebook, and Yelp and so many other channels to find customers
• 20,000+ homeowners signed up, thousands of meetings
• Avg 250+ projects per year, including 100+ ADUs
• $30M+ in construction contracts managed in 2024
• $15M raised in venture capital
• Hundreds of GCs partnered across California, Seattle, New York, Hawaii

Growth like that doesn’t come easy. Behind the numbers were constant fires — clients waiting on updates, designers walking out mid-project, subcontractors juggling too much, and contracts that needed rewriting for every new situation.

To survive, we built our own internal software — tools to track estimates, manage vendors, oversee contracts, and keep clients in the loop.

That internal system became our lifeline.

And over time, I realized something important:

Construction management isn’t a venture-backed business — but the software that powers it could be.

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You Can’t Fight Human Nature

We faced designer walkouts, subcontractor disputes, accidents, and lawsuits — each one a test of patience.

I’ll never forget the designer who was handling twenty projects at a rate he’d agreed to — until one day he just quit. When I asked him to finish his remaining jobs, he said a new client would pay him three times more, and if we wanted him to stay, we’d have to match that.

Technically, we could’ve taken legal action. But I had a choice — spend time fighting him, or find someone new and keep projects moving. I chose to move forward.

It happened again later, and it hurt enough that I created a rule: 


No subcontractor or designer could take on more than five projects at once, no matter how good they are

It wasn’t about control — it was about protecting both sides from burnout and disappointment. You can’t fight human nature; you can only build systems around it.

That’s why in Eano Pro, when you add a vendor, you can see exactly how many projects they’re already managing. That feature wasn’t dreamed up by an engineer — it came from real pain and real money lost.

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Why Photo Capture Matters

If you’ve ever worked in construction, you know how quickly trust can fall apart.
One missing photo, one assumption — and suddenly, you’re in conflict.

One of my closest friends once hired us to repaint his 3,500+ sq ft historic home in San Francisco.
A few days in, he texted me saying a section of the window frame was missing — and claimed our contractor had damaged it. The repair would’ve cost nearly $4,000.

My heart sank. The contractor swore he hadn’t broken it.

It was his word against the client’s — until our project manager found a photo taken before painting began. The missing piece had been gone all along.

I sent that photo to my friend. The conversation ended instantly.

That day, I learned: photos are stronger than relationships in this business.

That’s why we built photo capture and chat logging directly into Eano Pro — to provide proof, protection, and peace of mind, no matter how good the relationship is.

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The Harsh Truth — it’s exponential challenge as you scale

Running Eano taught me what no business book ever could:

Sometimes, success is your biggest stress test.

To meet investor expectations, we had to keep growing — more clients, more projects, faster timelines.
A traditional GC might stay healthy doing 3 projects a month. We were doing 30. Investors wanted double-digit growth month over month.

After TechCrunch covered our fundraising, expectations went through the roof.

We fought hard to maintain our five-star reputation — even when it wasn’t sustainable.

I still remember a homeowner leaving us not just one but two one-star google reviews because a few pieces of grout fell out three years after completion!

It’s one thing to build a 100 5-star reviews over ten years, but trying to get even 50 five-star reviews within one year? The level of difficulty isn’t linear — it’s exponential.

And to the end, It wasn’t just financially painful. It was emotionally draining for me.

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The Pivot — From Construction to Software

From 2022 to early 2023, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates seven times in just twelve months — one of the fastest tightening cycles in recent history.

Almost overnight, fewer people were buying homes, which meant fewer renovation projects. At the same time, our customer acquisition costs skyrocketed — ads that used to bring in leads for hundreds now cost thousands. Keeping that level of scale investor wants became nearly impossible.

After managing more than a thousand projects, I finally accepted what had been true all along: construction management isn’t a venture-backed business — but the software that powers it could be.‍

It wasn’t sustainable — financially, emotionally even physically — for myself or the team to run 300+ projects a year.

But with our internal tools, each project manager could handle 30 at once — something that would’ve been impossible before.

So we made the hardest but right decision:

That pivot wasn’t about giving up — it was about doubling down.

Every late-night mistake, every hard lesson, every system we built to survive — all of it became the foundation of Eano Pro.

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The $1 Million Lesson

Then came the hardest lesson of all.

One morning, I opened our company bank account and froze.
Nearly $1 million was gone.

At first, I thought it was a glitch.
Then my accountant called — quiet.

The EDD had issued a levy, freezing and pulling the funds from our Chase account — penalties and all.

During our early years, we hadn’t filed W-9s properly for some subcontractors.

From 2019–2022, every client-to-contractor payment went through us. Clients loved the convenience — digital, no checks or cash — but we didn’t realize the compliance risks.

EDD had mailed us several letters, but during COVID, our office sat empty. By the time we found out, it was too late.

For months, my accountant and I fought to fix it.

We built a 12-inch stack of documents, proving every subcontractor was independent.

We went to EDD offices, talked to lawyers, filed appeals.

Some nights, I cried in my car after long days of paperwork — my accountant crying beside me.

After six brutal months, we finally got most of the money back.

But that fear — the helplessness of watching everything you built almost vanish overnight — never left me.

That’s why Eano Pro includes automated subcontractor compliance tracking.

It’s not just a feature — it’s a $1M lesson.

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Built from the Jobsite Up

If you’re still reading up to this point — thank you!

Every feature in Eano Pro — estimating, photo documentation, vendor tracking, compliance, and client dashboards — came directly from lived experience.

We didn’t build it in an office.
We built it from the jobsite up — one hard lesson at a time.

Now, I want to share that with you. I want to help you reclaim your time, reduce your stress, and build a more profitable business.

"In our 1:1 session, we’ll dive deep into your business. We’ll identify your challenges and create a customized plan for success. This isn’t about a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s about you."

This is my give back to the community. I’m here to share my knowledge, my experience, and my passion to help you succeed. Let's build a better future for the construction industry, together.