From Homeowner to Eano to Eano Pro

Founder Story: The Journey to Eano Pro

I grew up around construction — my parents both worked in the trades, and I spent my summers watching crews pour concrete and frame houses under the hot sun.

Construction has always felt familiar to me; it brings back childhood memories.

But when it came time to remodel my own home in 2017, the process was confusing, expensive, and frustrating — and that’s when I became determined to fix it

I launched a management consulting service that helped homeowners navigate renovations by pairing them with the right design firms and construction companies in 2018.

The Eano Chapter

Between 2018 and 2023, 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
• Managing 250+ projects per year (including 100+ ADUs)
• $30M+ in construction contracts managed in 2023
• $15M raised in venture capital
• Partnered with 100s+ general contractors across California, Seattle, New York, Hawaii

Most general contractors stay healthy managing 3 projects per month. We were managing thirty.

To meet investor expectations, we had to keep scaling — more clients, more projects, faster timelines. Investors wanted double-digit month-over-month growth.

After TechCrunch (news) covered our fundraise and story, expectations went through the roof. We fought hard to protect our five-star reputation, even when the pace became unsustainable.

I still remember a homeowner leaving not one but two one-star Google reviews because a few pieces of grout fell out three years after project completion.

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Building 100 five-star reviews over ten years is one thing. Trying to get 50 five-star reviews in a single year?

The difficulty isn’t linear — it’s exponential.

Behind the growth were constant fires: clients waiting on updates, designers walking out mid-project, subcontractors jugging too much work, contracts that needed rewriting for every new scenario.

To survive, we built our own internal software — systems to track estimates, manage vendors, oversee contracts, and keep clients informed.

Those tools became our lifeline.

The Pivot — From Management to Software

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

Almost overnight, fewer people were buying homes.

Fewer home purchases meant fewer renovation projects.

At the same time, our customer acquisition costs exploded — ads that once brought in leads for a few hundred dollars suddenly cost thousands.

Keeping the level of scale our investors wanted became nearly impossible.

After managing more than a thousand projects, I finally accepted what had been true all along:

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

Running 300+ projects a year wasn’t sustainable — financially, emotionally, or physically — for me or for the team.

But with our internal tools, a single project manager could handle 30 projects at once, something that would have been unthinkable before.

So we made the hardest — but right — decision.

I poured my heart and every lesson I’d learned into Eano Pro, the software company I’ve been building since 2023.

1. You Can’t Fight Human Nature

We dealt with designer walkouts, subcontractor disputes, accidents, even lawsuits — each one testing our patience and resilience.

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 contractor or Designer could take on more than five projects at once from us, 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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2. 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 manage 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 the our partnered general 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.

3. 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.

Built from the Jobsite Up

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

Eano Pro wasn’t created in a lab or by product managers guessing at workflows.

It was built from:

• real contractors
• real deadlines
• real fires
• real lawsuits
• real lost money
• real jobs saved by photos
• real teams pushed to their limits
  

Most software companies guess what contractors need.

We lived it.

And now, everything we learned is embedded into Eano Pro so contractors can work with clarity, not chaos. This is why I built Eano Pro.

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This is the story behind it.

And this is just the beginning.

"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."

Let's build a better future for the construction industry, together.