Todd Saunders
@toddsaunders • 17,744 subscribers
CEO of @DaltonMillsAI. The platform the trades build on. Previously CEO of @Broadlume (acquired by @Cynclyco), @google. Long @townofwestfield.
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I know Silicon Valley startups don't want to hear this..... But the combination of someone in the trades with deep domain expertise and Claude Code will run circles around your generic software. I talked to Cory LaChance this morning, a mechanical engineer in industrial piping construction in Houston. He normally works with chemical plants and refineries, but now he also works with the terminal He reached out in a DM a few days ago and I was so fired up by his story, I asked him if we could record the conversation and share it. He built a full application that industrial contractors are using every day. It reads piping isometric drawings and automatically extracts every weld count, every material spec, every commodity code. Work that took 10 minutes per drawing now takes 60 seconds. It can do 100 drawings in five minutes, saving days of time. His co-workers are all mind blown, and when he talks to them, it's like they are speaking different languages. His fabrication shop uses it daily, and he built the entire thing in 8 weeks. During those 8 weeks he also had to learn everything about Claude Code, the terminal, VS Code, everything. My favorite quote from him was when he said, "I literally did this with zero outside help other than the AI. My favorite tools are screenshots, step by step instructions and asking Claude to explain things like I'm five." Every trades worker with deep expertise and a willingness to sit down with Claude Code for a few weekends is now a potential software founder. I can't wait to meet more people like Cory.
Todd Saunders1,010,175 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
The trades can build anything... except the software they run on. That changes today. We've raised $9.2M to build Dalton Mills. Software has spent its whole history getting closer to the people who do the work. First, the system of record. Software you stored your business in. Then, the agentic era. Software that did the work for you. Now, the bespoke era. Agentic software you build yourself, without code. Each era closed the gap and this one closes it for good. Software can finally work around your business, instead of you bending your business to make it fit. You ran on software made for everyone… never for you. That's over. Welcome to Dalton Mills. Let the builders build!
Todd Saunders72,362 просмотров • 17 дней назад
Welcome to Blue Collar Builders! Cory LaChance inspired me to start a series spotlighting folks in the trade who are building software using AI. Cory normally works with chemical plants and refineries, but now he's building AI software for his company.... with no pervious experience writing code. He built a full agentic application that industrial contractors are using every day. It reads isometric drawings and automatically extracts every weld count, every material spec, every commodity code. My favorite thing he said was, "I did this with zero outside help other than the AI. My favorite tools are screenshots, step by step instructions, and asking Claude to explain things like I'm five." I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. And I can't wait to meet more Blue Collar Builders.
Todd Saunders64,997 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
I keep saying the same thing and people keep not believing me.... So here's another one. Zac's family runs a $100M+ commercial roofing business. North Shore Masonry was a "side project" for the family, but since Zac took over, it's becoming a massive business. 5 months ago Zac couldn't find the terminal on his Mac... he had no idea what the "terminal" even was. Now his entire company runs on AI software he built himself. He built an AI agent named Mason... with his 58 year old dad who "still types with 2 fingers." Here's what Mason does: > Dad texts a photo of a business card. Mason researches the company, starts a cold email campaign, and launches a nurture sequence automatically. > Their coordinator Courtney used to hand type every lead into two different systems while on the phone. Now she gets off a call, sends the transcript to Mason, and he pulls every detail, builds the estimate, sets the task, creates the to-do for the salesman. Each call saves 8-10 minutes. She's setting 1.5x the leads she was before. Their salesmen were writing bid requests at 6:30 PM exhausted after a full day in the field. Mason writes the bid requests now. But the part that blew my mind was a feature he built with OpenClaw. A salesman sends a photo of a wall and says "I'm not sure what to do here." Mason identifies it as a historic building in Chicago, recommends Type O mortar, and advises that the lintel needs attention. Zac and his family are the future of software. THE BUILDERS ARE BUILDING!
Todd Saunders64,428 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
I posted that I built a land acquisition intelligence platform that looks at 1.5M parcels of land across the I-85 corridor for data center and industrial conversion potential. My DMs blew up, had over 130 real estate folks reach out. So I wanted to walk through some of my favorite features in the product, and show you the UI we built. ALL of this was done with Claude code. 1/ A full-screen map explorer rendering 1.5M parcels as vector tiles across 14 North Carolina counties. Click any parcel and get zoning, ownership, tax history, and acreage instantly. 2/ Proximity scoring to every I-85 interchange, power substation, transmission line, and gas pipeline. The parcels closest to infrastructure light up first. 3/ A farmland confidence score (0-100) that cross-references tax programs, land use codes, and acreage heuristics so you're not wasting time on parcels that look like farmland but aren't. 4/ A motivated seller detection engine that flags out-of-state owners, estates and trusts, tax delinquency, long hold periods, and declining assessed values. The sellers most likely to pick up the phone. 5/ Conversion readiness scoring that measures how likely a parcel is to get rezoned for industrial use based on what's already been approved around it. 6/ A composite acquisition score (0-100) with configurable weights. Every fund has different criteria. Drag the sliders and the entire map re-ranks in real time. 7/ Active listing integration pulling 2,100 listings from public sources so you can see what's already on the market alongside off-market opportunities. 8/ A document generation suite that produces institutional-grade investment memos, slide decks, and automated intelligence briefs. Click a parcel, click export, hand it to your investment committee. 9/ Alert monitoring for zoning changes, ownership transfers, and new listings that match your criteria. The platform watches the corridor so your team doesn't have to. Happy to record a longer video when I'm done.
Todd Saunders86,673 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
After a decade of building Broadlume and a year since joining forces with Cyncly, today is my last day. It's emotional, but it's the start of the next chapter. Here's the message I sent my team: I knew this day would eventually come, but now that it's here, it's surreal. As I wrote (and rewrote) this email a hundred times, it was hard not to get emotional. There's no way for me to properly put my thoughts into words… but here we go. There are so many people to thank and so many amazing memories. I am truly grateful for every single person who played a part in this 10+ year journey. For 10 years, I never had the Sunday Scaries or dreaded a single Monday.. not one. I woke up wanting to find out what problems we'd solve together and what milestones we'd celebrate. That feeling is what people spend entire careers searching for. And I got to live it for a decade, thanks to you. Every Monday morning felt like a reunion with friends, not work. I got to wake up and do what I loved, with people I loved working with. But beyond that, the work we did changed an industry. We fought for the small business owner, and that's something I'm incredibly proud of. Our work impacted 4,500 mom and pop flooring retailers across the country. They will forever operate differently because of us, and they'll continue to be taken care of by this incredible team long after I'm gone. We proved that when you take care of your team and treat customers like family, everyone wins. That's the legacy we built together, and one worth being proud of. Now, what comes next for me? I'm going to spend time with my family. Believe it or not, when you give your personal cell phone number out to the entire flooring industry, hours and days can slip away pretty quickly. I want to be present with my wife and two young daughters. My oldest daughter, Amelia, is two and a half, and her world runs on questions. Her favorite: "But why, Daddy?" And I can't wait for the day she asks, "but why did you name me Amelia?" And I'll get to tell her about FloorCon and how our final show was in Amelia Island, FL, right around the time she was born. My youngest, Charlotte, is just three months old. She doesn't know anything about flooring… yet. But I'm excited to explain to her why hardwood is better than LVP, and why she always needs to shop local. And lastly, my wife Jill has been the most patient, supportive, and understanding partner during this journey. I'm excited to just focus on being a dad, husband, and bad golfer for a bit. Working with you was the greatest honor of my professional life. The actual daily experience of being in the trenches, and doing the work together, is what I will always remember. Thank you for trusting me when I didn't know what I was doing. Thank you for following me into uncertainty. And thank you for making Monday, the best day. With love.
Todd Saunders66,007 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
I found the GOAT of blue collar builders. Scott Sans built goat tracking software with Claude Code and his story is incredible. Scott owns a land clearing company called Hudson Valley Forestry. One of their services is targeted grazing. Some slopes are too steep for machines, and some have high pressure gas lines underneath. So to clear the land, they bring in 60 goats and the goats clear the whole thing. But to scale, he needed a way to track the goats. And his current software said no to his goat module feature request. So he built the GOAT software himself... with no previous experience coding. You need to hear the full story from him. But one of the best parts of the conversation was when I asked him what the biggest impact has been since he started building his own software. "The more I build, the more I can be at home with my kids. And that's better for me." No software company would have built any of this for him. But Scott doesn't need a dev team anymore. He just needs the domain expertise.
Todd Saunders17,814 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
I keep hearing that AI is going to destroy small town America... But I just talked to a guy who's using it to save his. Luke Alvarez runs Black Hills Bronco Adventures in South Dakota, right outside Mount Rushmore. This past off season, when no tourists were coming, he sat in his garage every morning and started building with Claude Code. And when I say "started" I literally mean he has no CS degree and has never written a line of code before. But with the help of YouTube and Claude Code, he built an app that is saving lives. Luke volunteers as a search and rescue firefighter for his county. Wildfires have been rampant in the area for years. When they hit, the sheriff's department had no real system or way to know who evacuated, who has livestock, and who needs help getting out. They're a town of less than 2,000 people in the middle of South Dakota. And there is no budget, so the sheriff called the only guy in town who he thought would know a developer. He called Luke... and Luke built it. This is just another example of why I believe blue collar builders are the future of software.
Todd Saunders12,798 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
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