Roofbuddy processes USD $78.7 million as it transforms roofing
The first principle that became part of our DNA was to test everything under real-world conditions. To call the system we entered the market with in May 2022, a BETA would be generous, we pushed the envelope for what could be called a minimum viable product and went straight into the market to transact. It was messy, uncomfortable, time-consuming and incredibly manual, but it worked (just). 3 transactions in May, 15 in June and 10 in July - it was like the Wright Brothers prototype; off the ground, and we built the rest while we were in flight.
Ukraine's drone industry has transformed from nascent to world-leading in under 3 years. For this very reason, they didn't have the best people, tech, or abundant funding - the advantage they had was real-time battlefield testing. Test in the real world, fail fast, measure results, adapt, iterate and optimise - this is one of our core values we discuss internally as a "culture of continuous improvement".
Secondly, money talks AND pays the bills, transacting early generates revenue that fuels growth and covers costs. If you are profitable, the runway is infinite, you retain your autonomy, set terms for investors or eschew them altogether and exist in a healthy 'growth management' mindset. The Eisenhower Matrix, Pareto Principle and Elon's much-touted "First Principles Thinking" all guide the Roofbuddy team to the same conclusion - earning income and remaining profitable is core. It follows that supporting revenue growth has been the tech team's primary prerogative from the outset.
We have built more than our fair share of zombie features that didn't commercialise as anticipated - that's healthy attrition. However, if every epic, sprint and ticket is viewed through the lens of increasing revenue or decreasing cost, prioritisation becomes incredibly simple - estimate by magnitude and execute.
The Roofbuddy marketplace has been an ambitious, tech-driven reimagining of how roofing transactions are conducted - so far as we know, we are the greatest (only) roofing, sales, tech, price aggregation marketplace in the world. When Uber and Airbnb started growing parabolically, they got significant blowback from market incumbents with entrenched vested interests. We have seen a bit of that ourselves, too and anticipate more. Transcending these 'speed limit' warnings is all about value creation - how is our product and service making the lives of our users easier and better? Roofers can quote a job in 2 minutes instead of 2 hours - that's measurable value created. Customers can get multiple competitive, comparable quotes in 24 hours instead of 24 days - more value.
A core function of technology is to systematise and rationalise complex information and distil it down into its functional essence - in Roofbuddy's case, that means answering one question as quickly and accurately as possible: What is the price? The extent to which we have made that easier for our Roofing partners to calculate and our customers to receive and understand; that is the value we have created. True value is immutable; Trademe is not a garage sale.
Napoleon's Grand Armée conquered the entire European continent in an administratively led war of self-defence, ostensibly. This revolution in military affairs had nothing to do with better muskets, cannons or ships. It was a revolution of meritocratic management, administration, supply chain, logistics and information flow - doing the boring stuff several orders of magnitude better than competitors was (and still is) the path to total victory. Creating our own proprietary CRM as opposed to grafting our tech stack onto an existing offering was a huge inflection point but dividends abound.
It's allowed us unconstrained flexibility and freedom of movement to handle internal and external workflows in a profoundly efficient way. Like the proverbial marble run, our proprietary CRM now serves and automates the information and workflow between customers, roofers and our staff to achieve an unprecedented level of service, accuracy of information and end-to-end workflow management. Roofbuddy's tech excels in the 'boring' details, and it's been a boon for team morale and overall performance. Plugging another of Roofbuddy's values at this point seems inevitable - "esprit de corps"; my penchant for military history foisted on my poor unsuspecting colleagues at every opportunity - and now you too.
At Roofbuddy, performance is tangible and measurable across all departments. In 3 years, the Roofbuddy marketplace has served 35,469 unique customer enquiries, delivered 39,325 quotes and processed 3,594 orders totalling $78,707,202.51 in roofing services transacted; we measure innumerable performance metrics that instruct daily discussion and action. Our mature codebase (~2964 commits) sees ~3.3 commits and 1.5 deployments daily, with a robust CI/CD pipeline achieving 100% successful builds, thanks to extensive frontloaded checks. We maintain 71% test coverage, uphold a 99% uptime, and average a 2-minute rollback, ensuring rapid recovery from any issues.
New developers land their first meaningful commit within 10 days, reflecting our inclusive, fast-moving culture. Our developers aren't hidden away in caves - they're deeply embedded in real-world problems, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the front line team. From the very start, our engineers are shaped to be product champions, not just coders, ensuring that every line they write solves meaningful challenges. Without a scoreboard, it's just exercise.
Roofbuddy enjoys a fantastic culture of high performance and achievement, and I'm proud of the results the team have delivered over the last 3 years - we aspire to be a bright spot of innovation and kiwi dynamism during a bleak and attritional economic period for Aotearoa. We believe we are building unique tripartite, transactional, marketplace technology that can be adapted and utilised in hundreds of different countries and thousands of different industries; Roofbuddy's CTO, Igi Manaloto, just had an involuntary heart palpitation as I wrote that.
We have achieved profound product market fit, proof of concept and dramatically altered the transactional dynamics in the Roofing industry - to some incumbents' chagrin. So far, we have greatly improved the level of service and value for money customers can expect from a roofing service provider, that's only been possible with our tech-first approach, and there is much more work to do! Our proprietary tech stack is portable, dynamic and can be deployed into different verticals and horizontals at scale; so we are extremely excited to see how far we can go in New Zealand and abroad over the coming years.
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Techday NZ
15 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Roofbuddy processes NZD $78.7 million as it transforms roofing
Innovation occurs at the intersection of complementary disciplines. Apple entered the market at the intersection of personal computing and design, making the PC sexy and approachable. IBM was the dominant market leader, but until Steve Jobs introduced Apple's iconic design aesthetic, the PC was about as sexy as Bill Gates dancing on stage at the Windows 95 launch - an acquired taste at best. Roofbuddy sits at the intersection of the Trades and Tech and has found this a rewarding and somewhat neglected niche. The first principle that became part of our DNA was to test everything under real-world conditions. To call the system we entered the market with in May 2022, a BETA would be generous, we pushed the envelope for what could be called a minimum viable product and went straight into the market to transact. It was messy, uncomfortable, time-consuming and incredibly manual, but it worked (just). 3 transactions in May, 15 in June and 10 in July - it was like the Wright Brothers prototype; off the ground, and we built the rest while we were in flight. Ukraine's drone industry has transformed from nascent to world-leading in under 3 years. For this very reason, they didn't have the best people, tech, or abundant funding - the advantage they had was real-time battlefield testing. Test in the real world, fail fast, measure results, adapt, iterate and optimise - this is one of our core values we discuss internally as a "culture of continuous improvement". Secondly, money talks AND pays the bills, transacting early generates revenue that fuels growth and covers costs. If you are profitable, the runway is infinite, you retain your autonomy, set terms for investors or eschew them altogether and exist in a healthy 'growth management' mindset. The Eisenhower Matrix, Pareto Principle and Elon's much-touted "First Principles Thinking" all guide the Roofbuddy team to the same conclusion - earning income and remaining profitable is core. It follows that supporting revenue growth has been the tech team's primary prerogative from the outset. We have built more than our fair share of zombie features that didn't commercialise as anticipated - that's healthy attrition. However, if every epic, sprint and ticket is viewed through the lens of increasing revenue or decreasing cost, prioritisation becomes incredibly simple - estimate by magnitude and execute. The Roofbuddy marketplace has been an ambitious, tech-driven reimagining of how roofing transactions are conducted - so far as we know, we are the greatest (only) roofing, sales, tech, price aggregation marketplace in the world. When Uber and Airbnb started growing parabolically, they got significant blowback from market incumbents with entrenched vested interests. We have seen a bit of that ourselves, too and anticipate more. Transcending these 'speed limit' warnings is all about value creation - how is our product and service making the lives of our users easier and better? Roofers can quote a job in 2 minutes instead of 2 hours - that's measurable value created. Customers can get multiple competitive, comparable quotes in 24 hours instead of 24 days - more value. A core function of technology is to systematise and rationalise complex information and distil it down into its functional essence - in Roofbuddy's case, that means answering one question as quickly and accurately as possible: What is the price? The extent to which we have made that easier for our Roofing partners to calculate and our customers to receive and understand; that is the value we have created. True value is immutable; Trademe is not a garage sale. Napoleon's Grand Armée conquered the entire European continent in an administratively led war of self-defence, ostensibly. This revolution in military affairs had nothing to do with better muskets, cannons or ships. It was a revolution of meritocratic management, administration, supply chain, logistics and information flow - doing the boring stuff several orders of magnitude better than competitors was (and still is) the path to total victory. Creating our own proprietary CRM as opposed to grafting our tech stack onto an existing offering was a huge inflection point but dividends abound. It's allowed us unconstrained flexibility and freedom of movement to handle internal and external workflows in a profoundly efficient way. Like the proverbial marble run, our proprietary CRM now serves and automates the information and workflow between customers, roofers and our staff to achieve an unprecedented level of service, accuracy of information and end-to-end workflow management. Roofbuddy's tech excels in the 'boring' details, and it's been a boon for team morale and overall performance. Plugging another of Roofbuddy's values at this point seems inevitable - "esprit de corps"; my penchant for military history foisted on my poor unsuspecting colleagues at every opportunity - and now you too. At Roofbuddy, performance is tangible and measurable across all departments. In 3 years, the Roofbuddy marketplace has served 35,469 unique customer enquiries, delivered 39,325 quotes and processed 3,594 orders totalling $78,707,202.51 in roofing services transacted; we measure innumerable performance metrics that instruct daily discussion and action. Our mature codebase (~2964 commits) sees ~3.3 commits and 1.5 deployments daily, with a robust CI/CD pipeline achieving 100% successful builds, thanks to extensive frontloaded checks. We maintain 71% test coverage, uphold a 99% uptime, and average a 2-minute rollback, ensuring rapid recovery from any issues. New developers land their first meaningful commit within 10 days, reflecting our inclusive, fast-moving culture. Our developers aren't hidden away in caves - they're deeply embedded in real-world problems, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the front line team. From the very start, our engineers are shaped to be product champions, not just coders, ensuring that every line they write solves meaningful challenges. Without a scoreboard, it's just exercise. Roofbuddy enjoys a fantastic culture of high performance and achievement, and I'm proud of the results the team have delivered over the last 3 years - we aspire to be a bright spot of innovation and kiwi dynamism during a bleak and attritional economic period for Aotearoa. We believe we are building unique tripartite, transactional, marketplace technology that can be adapted and utilised in hundreds of different countries and thousands of different industries; Roofbuddy's CTO, Igi Manaloto, just had an involuntary heart palpitation as I wrote that. We have achieved profound product market fit, proof of concept and dramatically altered the transactional dynamics in the Roofing industry - to some incumbents' chagrin. So far, we have greatly improved the level of service and value for money customers can expect from a roofing service provider, that's only been possible with our tech-first approach, and there is much more work to do! Our proprietary tech stack is portable, dynamic and can be deployed into different verticals and horizontals at scale; so we are extremely excited to see how far we can go in New Zealand and abroad over the coming years.
Techday NZ
16 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Roofbuddy processes USD $78.7 million as it transforms roofing
Innovation occurs at the intersection of complementary disciplines. Apple entered the market at the intersection of personal computing and design, making the PC sexy and approachable. IBM was the dominant market leader, but until Steve Jobs introduced Apple's iconic design aesthetic, the PC was about as sexy as Bill Gates dancing on stage at the Windows 95 launch - an acquired taste at best. Roofbuddy sits at the intersection of the Trades and Tech and has found this a rewarding and somewhat neglected niche. The first principle that became part of our DNA was to test everything under real-world conditions. To call the system we entered the market with in May 2022, a BETA would be generous, we pushed the envelope for what could be called a minimum viable product and went straight into the market to transact. It was messy, uncomfortable, time-consuming and incredibly manual, but it worked (just). 3 transactions in May, 15 in June and 10 in July - it was like the Wright Brothers prototype; off the ground, and we built the rest while we were in flight. Ukraine's drone industry has transformed from nascent to world-leading in under 3 years. For this very reason, they didn't have the best people, tech, or abundant funding - the advantage they had was real-time battlefield testing. Test in the real world, fail fast, measure results, adapt, iterate and optimise - this is one of our core values we discuss internally as a "culture of continuous improvement". Secondly, money talks AND pays the bills, transacting early generates revenue that fuels growth and covers costs. If you are profitable, the runway is infinite, you retain your autonomy, set terms for investors or eschew them altogether and exist in a healthy 'growth management' mindset. The Eisenhower Matrix, Pareto Principle and Elon's much-touted "First Principles Thinking" all guide the Roofbuddy team to the same conclusion - earning income and remaining profitable is core. It follows that supporting revenue growth has been the tech team's primary prerogative from the outset. We have built more than our fair share of zombie features that didn't commercialise as anticipated - that's healthy attrition. However, if every epic, sprint and ticket is viewed through the lens of increasing revenue or decreasing cost, prioritisation becomes incredibly simple - estimate by magnitude and execute. The Roofbuddy marketplace has been an ambitious, tech-driven reimagining of how roofing transactions are conducted - so far as we know, we are the greatest (only) roofing, sales, tech, price aggregation marketplace in the world. When Uber and Airbnb started growing parabolically, they got significant blowback from market incumbents with entrenched vested interests. We have seen a bit of that ourselves, too and anticipate more. Transcending these 'speed limit' warnings is all about value creation - how is our product and service making the lives of our users easier and better? Roofers can quote a job in 2 minutes instead of 2 hours - that's measurable value created. Customers can get multiple competitive, comparable quotes in 24 hours instead of 24 days - more value. A core function of technology is to systematise and rationalise complex information and distil it down into its functional essence - in Roofbuddy's case, that means answering one question as quickly and accurately as possible: What is the price? The extent to which we have made that easier for our Roofing partners to calculate and our customers to receive and understand; that is the value we have created. True value is immutable; Trademe is not a garage sale. Napoleon's Grand Armée conquered the entire European continent in an administratively led war of self-defence, ostensibly. This revolution in military affairs had nothing to do with better muskets, cannons or ships. It was a revolution of meritocratic management, administration, supply chain, logistics and information flow - doing the boring stuff several orders of magnitude better than competitors was (and still is) the path to total victory. Creating our own proprietary CRM as opposed to grafting our tech stack onto an existing offering was a huge inflection point but dividends abound. It's allowed us unconstrained flexibility and freedom of movement to handle internal and external workflows in a profoundly efficient way. Like the proverbial marble run, our proprietary CRM now serves and automates the information and workflow between customers, roofers and our staff to achieve an unprecedented level of service, accuracy of information and end-to-end workflow management. Roofbuddy's tech excels in the 'boring' details, and it's been a boon for team morale and overall performance. Plugging another of Roofbuddy's values at this point seems inevitable - "esprit de corps"; my penchant for military history foisted on my poor unsuspecting colleagues at every opportunity - and now you too. At Roofbuddy, performance is tangible and measurable across all departments. In 3 years, the Roofbuddy marketplace has served 35,469 unique customer enquiries, delivered 39,325 quotes and processed 3,594 orders totalling $78,707,202.51 in roofing services transacted; we measure innumerable performance metrics that instruct daily discussion and action. Our mature codebase (~2964 commits) sees ~3.3 commits and 1.5 deployments daily, with a robust CI/CD pipeline achieving 100% successful builds, thanks to extensive frontloaded checks. We maintain 71% test coverage, uphold a 99% uptime, and average a 2-minute rollback, ensuring rapid recovery from any issues. New developers land their first meaningful commit within 10 days, reflecting our inclusive, fast-moving culture. Our developers aren't hidden away in caves - they're deeply embedded in real-world problems, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the front line team. From the very start, our engineers are shaped to be product champions, not just coders, ensuring that every line they write solves meaningful challenges. Without a scoreboard, it's just exercise. Roofbuddy enjoys a fantastic culture of high performance and achievement, and I'm proud of the results the team have delivered over the last 3 years - we aspire to be a bright spot of innovation and kiwi dynamism during a bleak and attritional economic period for Aotearoa. We believe we are building unique tripartite, transactional, marketplace technology that can be adapted and utilised in hundreds of different countries and thousands of different industries; Roofbuddy's CTO, Igi Manaloto, just had an involuntary heart palpitation as I wrote that. We have achieved profound product market fit, proof of concept and dramatically altered the transactional dynamics in the Roofing industry - to some incumbents' chagrin. So far, we have greatly improved the level of service and value for money customers can expect from a roofing service provider, that's only been possible with our tech-first approach, and there is much more work to do! Our proprietary tech stack is portable, dynamic and can be deployed into different verticals and horizontals at scale; so we are extremely excited to see how far we can go in New Zealand and abroad over the coming years.
Techday NZ
19 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Goodbye SEO, hello GEO: How AI is reshaping brand discovery
As language models replace traditional search, brands must master generative engine optimisation to stay visible In May, news emerged that sent ripples through the tech world: Google searches in Apple's Safari had apparently dropped for the first time in 22 years, according to testimony made by Apple's Eddy Cue during Google's antitrust trial. While later Google countered that "query growth" is up, the contradiction itself reveals a shift that's already underway. Whether the reality is declining searches or changing search patterns, the trend points in one direction: people are increasingly turning to LLMs for answers. Ask ChatGPT about the best car brands for families, and you'll get a curated list. Search for laptop recommendations, and the AI serves up specific models with reasoning. But notice which brands make those lists and which don't. This represents more than a technological preference. The rapid transition from traditional search engines to AI-powered language models represents a complete restructuring of the discovery layer between brands and customers. And many businesses haven't noticed they're already losing. This trend has given rise to what is being called generative engine optimisation (GEO), the new discipline of optimising content for AI-powered responses rather than traditional search rankings. The visibility challenge The shift from traditional search engines to AI-powered language models represents a complete reshaping of how consumers discover, evaluate, and engage with brands. Those that fail to recognise and respond to this shift risk becoming invisible at the moment of decision. Brands that are not surfaced in LLM-generated responses will see a significant decline in visibility, resulting in downstream impacts on customer acquisition, brand relevance, and market competitiveness. Importantly, this isn't a reflection of product quality, but of digital discoverability: if a brand isn't mentioned, trusted, or properly structured in the sources LLMs rely on, it may simply not exist in the eyes of the AI, or the customer. This transition marks a new brand-customer dynamic, where visibility is no longer about search engine rankings alone, but about being contextually relevant, credibly cited, and machine-readable. Brands that embrace this reality early by adapting content, enhancing structured data, and embedding themselves in trusted digital ecosystems, will establish a lasting competitive edge. Those that delay will not merely fall behind, they risk being excluded from the AI-powered discovery layer entirely. Who wins and who loses While the shift toward AI-mediated discovery poses challenges across all industries, the impact won't be uniform. The degree to which brands face existential risk from this transition depends largely on the nature of their products, customer relationships, and purchase drivers. Understanding these differences is critical for prioritising response strategies and resource allocation. Some purchases are driven by emotion or identity rather than logic, price, or features. Luxury fashion and high-end cars fall into this category, and as a result, are less likely to be impacted by shifts in consumer decision-making. In contrast, products like utilities are essential, broadly interchangeable, and often chosen based on price or promotional offers rather than brand loyalty. This divide will deepen as AI agents begin to play larger roles in decision-making and action pathways. When decision-making occurs without humans in the loop, brand presence such as mental availability becomes less relevant. Instead, the agent's choices will be driven primarily by product attributes, features, and consumer reviews. Consider a future where your AI assistant automatically switches your energy provider based on quarterly rate comparisons, or books travel based on optimal price-to-convenience ratios. As the way people search and discover products changes, brands that adapt to this new environment will be best placed to succeed. This means actively engaging with how AI systems interpret and present information. Mastery of tools like prompt engineering, investment in training partnerships, or the development of custom GPTs can all help confirm products and services are accurately and favourably surfaced in AI-mediated environments. Brands that fail to understand how their audiences now phrase questions, conduct research, or engage with offerings will miss opportunities to evolve. Without these insights, businesses won't be able to redesign digital experiences, particularly websites, to support discovery and decision-making in an AI-driven Brands Must Do Where they once poured much marketing effort into search engine optimisation (SEO), brands must now rethink their digital presence for GEO, optimising not just for humans, but for the machines mediating those interactions. A brand's digital presence and content need to be more conversational and context-rich, rather than just keyword-dense. At BRX, we specialise in AI-driven marketing and have developed strategies to help drive GEO success: Audit your brand's presence across trusted sources. Are you mentioned on CHOICE, Canstar, Reddit, Whirlpool? If not, why not? Update your structured data. Use schema markup and keep pricing, availability, and product specifications always accurate. Drive positive reviews. Be a part of brand dialogue that matters to your category like Trustpilot, Google, TripAdvisor. Optimise for natural language. Rewrite content to reflect how people actually ask questions in LLMs, not keyword-stuffing. Format your language for skim readers and scanners with a "too long; didn't read." Create content that simplifies decisions. Think comparison tables, FAQs, expert explainers, and product fit guides. These steps form the foundation of AI-ready brand presence, but success requires more than checking boxes. The brands that will really thrive in this environment will also share some common characteristics. At BRX, we think brands that win will be those who: Sit outside the dynamic of price and features Create conversational content that answers real questions Prioritise structured clarity in product and service info Maintain consistency across official and third-party sources Earn trust through verified experiences, not just promises Provide highly specific answers to hyper-individual questions In this new environment, the marketer's job is no longer just to shape consumer perception but to influence the AI's perception of their brand. To "win" in AI-generated conversations, content flooding is no longer just a visibility tactic, it's a visibility imperative. Brands that dominate the content space are disproportionately represented in LLM outputs. Flooding without a customer-centric lens, however, risks damaging the post-click experience. The challenge is balancing volume with quality. The emerging reality is that websites are increasingly serving LLMs first, customers second. This creates a tension: you may be designing an experience that LLMs find useful, but human users do not. Time to act AI systems now influence how customers discover brands, and brands need to get out ahead of this. As AI and AI agents will be increasingly making decisions without human input, brands need to audit their AI visibility, create conversational content, and balance quantity with quality in their digital presence. The first step is simple but critical: audit what AI systems currently say about your brand. Ask multiple LLMs about your product category and see if you appear. If you don't, investigate the sources they cite and understand what ecosystems are influencing their responses. Modern LLMs with research functions provide sources that serve as helpful research starting points. Use this intelligence to understand where you need to appear to start showing up in LLM results. Given the complexity and rapid evolution of AI systems, partnering with specialists who understand this landscape can accelerate your progress. BRX helps brands navigate GEO with AI-native strategies that deliver measurable improvements in AI visibility and engagement. The brands that recognise this shift early and master GEO won't just maintain their market position; they'll capture market share from competitors who remain focused on traditional search optimisation. In a world where AI increasingly mediates brand discovery, being invisible to artificial intelligence means being invisible to customers." This emphasises the value proposition of working with experts who understand the complexity and fast-moving nature of AI, rather than trying to figure it out alone.
