AI is coming for everything. In this episode, we chat about how FieldPulse is changing the game for home service businesses with an all-in-one CRM that actually understands what tradesmen need. We talk invoicing, scheduling, QuickBooks sync, dispatch tools, and why custom workflows make all the difference.

Plus, Gabe shares insights on his company’s Series B funding, why AI won’t be replacing SaaS (but will make it better), and what’s next for FieldPulse.

If you're running an HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or any other home service business and still juggling paper invoices, whiteboards, or excel spreadsheets, this episode is a must-listen.

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0:00 Introduction

1:20 Introducing Gabe Pinchev

2:19 Gabe's Background & Starting FieldPulse

3:20 Creating a CRM for Home Services

5:10 Overcoming Challenges

6:50 Building a Successful Start-up

9:15 Features of FieldPulse

13:20 Fixing Industry Painpoints

15:20 Core Features & Functionality

17:35 Building an All-In-One CRM

19:20 Software for Customer Support

23:24 Securing Series B Funds

27:10 Field Services Expansion

29:50 Improving Software with AI

35:30 Industry Investment & Emerging Trends

40:44 Misc. Service Businesses

45:00 Final Thoughts

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HUGE THANK YOU TO FIELD PULSE

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FieldPulse is a really awesome Field Service Management platform that helps you save hours every week and keep operations running smoothly. With features like scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, and reporting, it takes the headache out of managing the day-to-day.

If you're looking to streamline your ops, stay ahead of the competition, and focus on what really matters, FieldPulse is a game-changer.

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👉 Book a Demo with FieldPulse to get 15% off the annual plan when you mention Owned and Operated

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SHOUT OUT TO SUPPLY HOUSE

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Big shoutout to Supply House for helping us meet our fast turnaround times. With 250,000+ SKUs across plumbing, HVAC, and electrical, they get us what we need—fast.

Their Trademaster program offers free shipping, returns, and discounts, all with no membership fee. Check them out at www.supplyhouse.com!

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Episode Hosts: 🎤

‍‍John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on X

‍Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X

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Episode Guest:

Gabe Pinchev on Linked In

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Owned and Operated Episode #166 Transcript

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Gabe Pinchev: I like to describe it as definitely a punch in the mouth when you're getting started.

It's not only creating a better product, it's creating a better experience from start to finish. Everything is fed by our customers. We get a ton of feedback from them. I think you'll always need that combination of the human element assisted by AI.

John Wilson: Recently, I checked out FieldPulse as a field management software for our restoration business.

And honestly, I was pretty impressed. The big wins that we saw was it's got two way sync with QuickBooks online and desktop. It's got some really good dashboards and reporting. It's got custom workflows, and this is probably one of their most unique features. It does have CRM. Then it has a lot of the other things that you'd expect out of a field service management software.

You're going to have financing and payments, you're going to have customer booking portals, project management tools, price book, work order management, estimates and invoices. But where they really shine is the scheduling and dispatch, custom workflows, and the dashboards and reporting. It automated and streamlined our operation, and it gave us a bunch of easy tools for scheduling and dispatching our team.

And we loved. The workflows feature. Make sure you mention owned and operated for a special offer. 15 percent off the annual plan.

Jack Carr: Welcome back to owned and operated. We have Gabe Pinchev here of Field Pulse. How are you doing, Gabe? Great. How are you? Doing really good. Sorry. John couldn't make it today.

We've been out running in the field. He's negative 24. We hit three degrees here in Tennessee. Oh, wow.

Gabe Pinchev: We're based here in Dallas, Texas, and it's a little chilly here, too. You guys got a bit of snow, didn't you, recently? Yeah, A couple weeks ago, we get one storm a year. if you remember, a couple years ago, we had that, ice storm that took everything out.

That was pretty bad, because a lot of pipes burst. a lot of plumbing work, to be done around the city, but, one a year and we just had ours. So now it's just chilly, I think.

Jack Carr: Whenever I think of Dallas, I don't, think of snow and ice usually, but, we've seen some crazy weather recently.

I'm not complaining. We are in this, the trades, we benefit from that kind of stuff. So Gabe, FieldPulse, awesome CRM system. Tell us a little bit about your background prior to FieldPulse and, starting. Becoming the founder of that.

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah. So this is about 10 years back. when I started FieldPulse prior to that, I was doing IT consulting, and specifically mobile application stuff.

back then, 2015, mobile was still relatively newer, right? iPhone came out like 2009 or something like that. so I was doing a lot of mobility work, different small business applications, but really, heavy emphasis there and, dealing with different service contractors, that I was working with were creating different mistakes and none of them were really using any technology.

And first and foremost, it was to create an app on the iPhone as a prototype, because it was really thinking for the owner operators out in the field to really run their business. And so that's where it started. And then, Obviously expanded across and, here we are today.

Jack Carr: but specifically, you, you fell into a, booming market that since 2016 to today has seen, in an enormous amount of growth specifically, surrounding kind of the CRMs and home services and how that ties together.

where did the idea come from? For home services, because you could have chose a CRM system for, healthcare or, just about anything, but, you landed on the boring businesses, plumbing, HVAC, roofing.

Gabe Pinchev: Where did that idea come from? Yeah, so I would say first and foremost, I'm not from the industry, right?

For me, it's much more of a technology and software background. So your question is why this versus anything else? And, I think it's just such a large market that, did not have the tools and technology that maybe enterprise software has been making for a long time, and really focused on a small end of the market.

I think the unique thing about field service was the very mobile need, that. other companies don't have to the same degree. so some of it was a timing thing, right? When with mobile applications becoming more sophisticated during that time period and being able to do more advanced things, and still seeing just the underserved nature of the space.

And there are just so many field service companies out there. We think there are millions of them in North America. And so it's just a combination of the underserved market that I saw, and wanting to really build a great mobile solution for these field service companies.

Jack Carr: Very cool. I'm always interested because, people from the outside looking in, they don't have that experience, including myself, my background is not in home services.

I wandered my way in here and, blind in the dark. And, it's always interesting to see other people who've done the same. And so with that, like There's a series of challenges that you face coming into this industry as, an outsider. Can you talk a little bit about the early days of Field Pulse and what were the initial issues and, challenges you faced, to get a field service management solution up and running?

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah. I like to describe it as definitely a punch in the mouth when you're getting started . And, so she went, for me, it was a first time doing this kind of thing. and, It's very difficult, having never really fully started a company before. it's definitely new territory, especially I think one of the interesting things about doing a software application is it's.

and something that while there were a few other players existing, it's not a business model that's been done, specifically a million times over. So there's a lot of things you have to figure out and you have to figure out the economics of everything to make it work as a business. And that's the part that, I feel like I didn't necessarily understand to the, level I needed to going in.

And you learn over time, because every business model. In different industries is very different. and some work better than others. Some don't work at all. and that's something you have to learn is you have to find a business model that really works. And it takes time and something that's relatively newer of a concept, to get into in a new industry, right?

Because, you have different. Deal sizes coming from different customers, different sales cycles, different costs to acquire customers, different retention of customers. and these are all things you just learn over time doing it. So

Jack Carr: we're, so you're talking a lot about the initial model and those kinds of things.

I find that extremely interesting. So as your first startup, going on solo. It was, back in 2016, so there wasn't a ton out there. I think Service Titan was around, but there really wasn't the kind of slew of options that you have today. so you were really early in on this. And then There wasn't really anybody to copy, right?

There's a lot of people who just go in and try to, copy, current platforms. that, that's absolutely incredible. in, just, and then going into a new industry that you don't have, the ethos or the, foothold in, I'm just flabbergasted. That's awesome.

Gabe Pinchev: It's an interesting dynamic too, because, and this is me talking overly transparent probably about the business model of a SAS company, but, they're, different customer segments for us naturally that work better than others.

And that's part of what you have to find, figure out. but going into it, like you were saying, there weren't a ton of players. There were a few. I remember a couple notably that I saw were like jobber. And Breezeworks was another, but I'm not sure, how active they still are today. Yeah, I was saying that as well.

and, even back then, I remember, I forgot, one of the platforms only had for iOS, but not for Android, for example. and it's because people were early back then. And, there were other also desktop solutions, right? Desko that had been around for a while. and, but, They had to rebuild essentially into a cloud solution because people really wanted field service management out in the field, right?

Not just on their computer, not just on their desktop. and so a SAS based model for small service contractors was. Was newer. and something that we all had to figure out and people attacked it in different ways. for example, Java, I believe, still looks at it mostly as like a self service transactional high volume for smaller businesses, while service Titan really went the other end to much larger companies.

long contracts, larger deals, and just a different business model, entirely. And that's something I had to figure out over time. and you just learn through trying different things, seeing how the economics work out and evolving from there.

Jack Carr: So as we talk about the model, I'm sure that you had to also build.

you figure, you're figuring out the model, you're, lining it up, but now you have to figure out the features to work for that model. Can you talk about a little bit about the features of FieldPulse and how they tie into that model specifically?

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, and I think, that's, where maybe we're a little bit different than, Other players and for better for worse.

It depends on who you ask. But the way I designed it was a little bit off my background in some previous work, designing some systems, but I will admit that some of them were more enterprise level. And so I naturally built a lot of flexibility into how the application is designed while we do see some of the other players.

created workflows that were very specific and catered to an industry and how they operate. We naturally designed it much more flexibly and open so that people can really do the business how they want to run it. and that kind of came from also then dealing with many different field service industries.

So I would say We didn't decide on one industry and hone in on that. we wanted to make it flexible for different field service companies. They did have to be field service, so we didn't want other random businesses. So it was catered to field service, which does have a, a consistent need in different areas that we cover.

and then it's about having the flexibility and customization in the software to adapt to them. but you're asking a little bit about where it came from too. Sorry, go ahead.

Jack Carr: Yeah, but so out of curiosity, right? A lot of our custom or a lot of our listeners, excuse me, are, they're, under 5 million.

They're starting to think about their first year. I'm there, they're graduating from, Excel and word and a whiteboard, can you talk about this customization specifically? Can you give us an example of something that we're able to customize on? Your platform on FieldPulse that, maybe we wouldn't be able to customize somewhere else.

Gabe Pinchev: For example, I would say our biggest industry is HVAC. and you might have more consistent flows of how they operate, whether it's install, service agreements, repair. but we also service other industries that have a very different flow sometimes. Maybe they're doing a lot of purchase orders or doing.

Multiple different site visits for different things with different team members. And so we built the flexibility so that you can really create the workflow how you want it on. You're not pigeonholed into a very specific flow where, if that isn't how you do business here, you're stuck in it. And so whether it's.

It's the sequence of events between estimating, invoicing the job, taking payments, site visits, purchase orders, how you deal with your maintenance agreements, everything around that. You can customize the order, to just the, elements that you want to use in the application.

Jack Carr: Yeah. No, that, that makes a ton of sense because I know that's a pain point for On a lot of different softwares as you're starting is you're stuck with whatever they have and you have to use it in their workflow, even if it doesn't match how we are doing our business, how we set it up and then it creates, I remember early days where we had to jump around and send data written reports over to this place and then export them and import them back in because it was just an absolute nightmare because the software wasn't good.

It didn't allow us to really get in there and yeah.

Gabe Pinchev: Customize our workflow. that's really neat. No, and I will say there can be advantages to having that very specific flow because it creates. natural guardrails and puts you in a more streamlined process. But the problem is, when you want to deviate it for your own reasons and your own advantages, you can't do that.

And having the flexibility I think is important and what people specifically do like about us.

Jack Carr: And so with that, where do you see, right? So we in the field, John and I, we view you guys, these providers, whether it be, a VOCA who's doing stuff on. AI on phone systems or these other companies, you guys get to see all this amazing background data on the industry.

What are some big common. Industry pain points that you're seeing, from your side, Hey, the companies are trying to do this, and they can't do it. So we're building X, Y, and Z for them. Where are you seeing these, pain points in the CRM systems of today? So

Gabe Pinchev: specifically if they're against other CRMs versus moving from pen and paper, I think moving from pen and paper, there's, naturally a ton of, a ton of, ways that we bring value.

But if you're moving from like another system, it does depend on the system you're coming from. if you're coming from some that we would consider like maybe from a smaller end, it might be because you've outgrown it, right? You need more sophisticated tools. because the other thing, the way these applications are designed is that not all of them are meant to be a good fit for everyone, right?

So one might be, more. Easy to use and self service oriented, but that does come at a cost of features and complexity that you might want. And so you might get the simple nature of it, but you might not get all the bells and whistles because that can take a lot of training and onboarding. that can take away from the ease of use.

On the flip side, you might get something that has all the functionality. like a service Titan, but it comes with a lot of training required to be able to get up to that speed. So some of it is just a balance of that nature and also the support model you get with it. so for us, we're not the cheapest.

and, we're in the middle between, let's say a service Titan and a house call pro. but you get a slightly different experience and some people love that want to pay for and others. don't want to, and they want something maybe that's more basic that won't necessarily scale to the same level or have that in depth training support and implementation that we offer.

so some of it comes down to fit and what you're looking for at the same time.

Jack Carr: Yeah, that's awesome. So where do you view yourself then, right? So you said you have the, this, these, if one is. somewhere like a house call pro in tennis, somewhere like a service Titan, and you're putting yourself somewhere in the middle in terms of price.

I know one of the big pain points that we had when we onboarded with service Titan initially was that the, actual onboarding process is so rough and, so difficult. What's the onboarding process look for you guys? Where do you put yourself on that one to 10 scale and how do you guys overcome that with the contractors coming from.

Pen and paper or from a different service.

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, and that's a, good question and a good nuance. I would say that we, because of the nature of our platform being more sophisticated, that we do take you through an implementation and onboarding. and that's something we do very well and we do it very efficiently and we've done it.

So many times, with different industries that we know how to do very well. and ultimately, where we're somewhere in the middle, right? Where it won't be as simple self service on your own necessarily, unless maybe you're on the smaller end and you're not using all the features, but we want to get you in all the features cause that's where you unlock the value.

And so for us, it's really aligning, your goals with ours and us spending the time training you deeper into it. unlocks more value in the product and for us, it makes you a stickier customer because we're all about retaining customers for the long term. And so that's why we put the effort into it.

versus a self service model, but there has to be a balance, right? Because people don't want to be implementing for six months. And so whenever we build features and functionality, we're always also looking at, okay, how do we make the onboarding of this easier, whether it's templates that they can put data into upload or pre filling stuff or making it intuitive.

however, we don't typically leave you on an island to figure it out yourself. We are there along the way to guide you there.

Jack Carr: That's good. it's such a nightmare doing that onboarding on any platform, but to know that there's those templates and, that you guys are actually helping them walk through.

Cause, cause it makes sense. You want a longterm customer who utilizes the entirety of, the software. And so just wanting to, talk up field, pulse a little bit. You guys, I know there has to be a scheduling feature. There has to be an invoicing feature, a customer management feature.

Talk about some of these other features that field

Gabe Pinchev: polls provides. Yeah. So we're very comprehensive. So when I look at the basic core that's around CRM, scheduling, dispatching and estimates and invoices. but typically you'll find that once you start there, you want to keep going and getting deeper and running your business, especially as you grow.

and so it evolves. And. So naturally it allows us to scale with the companies much better. And so you start getting into things like customer booking portals, inventory management, asset and equipment management, timesheet tracking, location tracking. there's just a ton of different modules and we're continuing to build more and evolving.

And sometimes we're also using partners to build out our ecosystem with it. So partnering with a company camp, for example, if you want to get, very powerful on your photography and, capturing of images of all your work. and so really extending it with partners is another way to really add that feature.

But ultimately, we want to be that all in one platform so that you're not trying to cobble together too much. And we cover a lot of those main elements to run your field service business, especially as you grow. Because the one thing you'll find is that you might start in a simpler system, and that's great.

But you might want to start Doing maintenance agreements for your customers and tracking their equipment and logging updates against it and recording their warranty information so that you know when to reach out before it ends, stuff like that. and these are all nuances that you grow into and having it all built into your.

core platform and operating system, can make a big difference. Yeah, definitely. You said something extremely

Jack Carr: interesting to me. You talked about a customer portal. So FieldPulse offers a customer portal. Can you talk a little bit about that? I don't have much experience with customer portals. I'm

Gabe Pinchev: interested.

No. So we have two different type of kind of. Portals. So one is a customer portal where, if you're doing recurring work with your customer, and again, it depends on the industry, right? If you're doing kind of one off service work as an HVAC company and maybe not as much mainstream and stuff, or just recurring nature in general, you might not use our customer portal, but we have different industries where they're consistently doing work for the same customers, like commercial.

That's, very, it's very common. And essentially it's a portal where the customer can see all their work history. and so you're viewing, previous jobs, quotes, invoices, your own assets. and so people use it also to report back on their work over time or be able to look back on it. And then our other portal is really our booking portal.

And so that's where, you can set up your services and have your customers scheduled jobs. to your calendar based off availability, you can set the prices of the items and either require them to pay a deposit. You can require them to pay the full amount or not at all. and really have a service offering because a lot of people these days, they don't want to have to call and schedule and talk to someone and come out.

They just want to book the service on their computer and know that you're coming and doing the work. And people like to leverage that to really, to really grow and scale without. Without having the man input to take every job. That's awesome.

Jack Carr: Yeah, no, I definitely can see that. everything that you said there makes a lot of sense.

We're actually looking for a solution for kind of a customer portal at the time. Because I think that's the idea, right? I know you were saying that the customer portal is helpful for commercial jobs or reoccurring services. But that's the end all be all goal of every HVAC company is to be that reoccurring service where we are getting out every, twice a year to these houses, and then we're doing plumbing.

So then we're getting out for plumbing once a year to these houses, and then we're doing electrical, and then you get out for electrical as well. And so it eventually stacks so that you create these customers. That their average value of their home and the work over the next 10 years is going to be, six figures.

that's the ultimate goal. So I find that extremely interesting. Yeah, you want them tied

Gabe Pinchev: to you, right? You want that anytime they have any kind of MEP issue, they're going to you in that case, if you, do all three. And, that starts with, being there. One stop shop for everything, but then also where they go to see any history, any work that you've done.

thinking about it, let's say it's been a year or so or, and you have some work done, who are you going to go to? You're going to go first, probably to someone you have your maintenance agreement with, but if you don't have one, you might look for who, did it last time and then finding the historical information can be powerful for that.

Yeah,

Jack Carr: definitely. And, it's another tool in my mind that keeps you at top of mind, right? If they're going back to this specific portal to get old information or to get, old invoices for tax purposes, whatever that they're utilizing that. And it's helping from a marketing perspective to keep you at the top of the mind.

Oh, yeah. Another point going back and forth versus an email in their inbox or. Versus a, even worse, a paper slip that they left in some drawer six months ago that they now have to dig through and find,

Gabe Pinchev: all really messed up. The information they have is, can be very powerful. So not everyone does this, but, some people really cater their outreach to their customers based off the information they have from them.

I gave the example of the warranty information they store. We have some customers who look at upcoming expiring warranties and reach out. if, they did this type of work, they might need X, Y, Z, but having that information and then being able to use your data to curate your outreach, to keep your customer close is important.

Jack Carr: You have this great product, does it sounds like it does an amazing job for. Contractors, home service contractors. you guys just closed on a series B funding. Are you allowed to talk about that? I'm always so interested. Yeah, that's such a neat

Gabe Pinchev: thing. Yeah, it was a, big moment. and it was a lot of validity and for us in the future.

And, you also see service Titan going public. that was another one that kind of shows the market size. And I think. for us, it was really to continue growing, expanding. We've been growing very quickly, and, that requires resources to be able to do that. we have an option to be profitable, but we're reinvesting to grow bigger because we see.

We see the market opportunity. if you look at service Titan, they're still much larger than us, because it's such a large market and, and we want to continue serving it. So Gabe, I have to ask you, how did it

Jack Carr: feel to close on that?

Gabe Pinchev: No, it feels good. And it. It takes a while to get, to that point.

And, it's several months of, different investors, due diligence and everything to get through. And when you finally get through it, it is definitely a relief that, okay, now I'm done with this. Cause well, when you get into fundraising, it is a process that is time consuming. as a CEO, it's actually something you almost do all the time.

I, had a call this morning. I have a late lunch later today with another one. And so you're, almost always doing it. I think I have 10 meetings in the next two weeks, just on investors for the future, because it's just. That's a key to how we grow and how we can do scaling because that's the plan.

Jack Carr: So with that, though, now what, does this, new money that's being injected into the business, what does that mean for the team and how you are planning on growing in the next few months, few years?

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, definitely. so it, it goes in a different area. Developing our product further, and enhancing our suite.

but I'll also say, that's not the only place it goes. whenever you ask a CEO or founder, after they do a raise, they always say it goes all into the product. I'm not going to say that's entirely true, right? we're also beefing up our go to market, right? We're trying to get bigger reach.

We're trying to grow. And, that comes through. being able to grow our marketing, our partnerships doubling down there, really growing that. And it's not only creating a better product, it's creating a better experience from start to finish. We're investing a lot in our, CS, our implementation, our onboarding.

because we are firm believers that A really great implementation and onboarding sets the foundation for the rest of their time on the platform. And so we do value that very heavily. and so that's where some of the investment went. And then of course, to help grow the business as well.

John Wilson: One of the benefits of working with Wilson is that we are basically a same day, next day company.

So what that means is if I sell a job today. I'm gonna aim to get it in today, tomorrow, or the next day. we aim for a really fast turnaround. And because of that, we have pretty high expectations of our suppliers. Getting parts in time has been a real challenge, and SupplyHouse. com has been a really awesome partner for us, because of that.

They've got, a quarter of a million SKUs, they've got it across plumbing, HVAC, and electrical, so they cover all our different lines. And they can get stuff to you fast, and they have a ton of it. Plus on top of that, they have best in class pricing, and their new Trademaster program gives you free shipping, free returns, and a bunch of discounts over retail on top of it.

And the Trademaster program is free to join. So check out SupplyHouse. com, and make sure to check out their Trademaster program.

Jack Carr: Can we dig into that a little more? I'm really interested. it sounds like it goes into a few different buckets. Some of them are go to market, some of them are actually, making the product better, making the onboarding better when you say that, what does that mean from, a more nuanced specific level?

Like where do you think that you guys are going to focus in the next? Three to five years, maybe even a shorter time from one to three years that you can, change That is really good to drive the value infield pulse

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, and each different area that you mentioned is a little different, right?

So of course, there's the product growth where, we're continuously enhancing the product, and that's something we'll do forever. but that also comes in a few different ways, right? and you're deciding how you want to grow the product. Do we go deeper in very specific verticals like HVAC, which we will and are, but we're also expanding.

generally across field service. And we're, also picking a few industries that we're starting to go deeper into based off of our own fit. and that's something you're constantly evaluating is, where do you want to continue building into? Where does the value come from? Who are the right customers that we want to target?

and then also, what are the. Add on products that they might want that we also want to offer them. as there's different AI tools popping up everywhere, and everything like that. And it's a decision, but naturally, we have to invest there. and on the other side, you mentioned like the implementation and training element that is important to us.

what does that look like to invest there? at our stage as a company, we're also just maturing all of our operations, right? Cause, yeah. We're still not enormous. we're over a hundred people, but, you're maturing our operations so that we can make it. faster, repetitive, consistent when we go from customer to customer.

And so we're improving the quality, right? Because when you're a small company, let's say you have two people, three people doing implementation for, for new customers. People are weighing it. You're relying off the talent of the individuals. You're, they're maybe making up as they go. Maybe that's an extreme case.

But, but one of the differences now at our level is that we can really mature our processes so that we deliver more and more consistently a very excellent experience. and that just comes with adding management layers, adding all the, safeguards and everything that we do to build that. So that's what I talked about when we get better in those areas.

Jack Carr: Yeah, that makes actually a ton of sense. You did mention a buzzword that I did want to hit on. I've been itching to ask you about it. AI, right? You guys are in technology. AI, John and I talked at the beginning of the, of last year of 2024, how do you use this? We, use it to help out with making sure our team is, saying emails faster and boilerplate documents, like very basic.

And by the end of this year, we have now. call coaching and, you have field listening that then this coaching text and there's just so much implementation across the board so quickly. How are you guys investing in that to stay ahead of the curve here?

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, I really view AI, I don't think it's going to in the next year, at least like Turn software upside down by any means, but it's definitely something to augment the software in different areas, right?

So you mentioned like the field recording one where it's listening to the recordings and then coaching on it So there's spots here and there to put it in to just improve the workflow but if Just like replace or just do everything automatically. I don't think it's there yet.

And I think the question I also have generally is what is the appetite for a full AI experience from customers? I don't know. I'm not sure people want that fully. I think it's, I think you'll always need that combination of. The human element assisted by AI. And that's really what we're focusing on. I don't think we're naturally trying to replace every human in what we do.

I don't know if that's a good thing for society in itself anyway, but, but I think it's, picking and choose the right areas to really make people better and more. And that's where the biggest value is today. It could, change and it could evolve over the years, but I think that's how it's most, most valuable is really just augmenting.

The experience of what you do today.

Jack Carr: Yeah, fully agree. I'm, we're, me personally, I'm hoping we don't want it to replace people. What we do want it though is to make our systems and our processes much, much easier through our whatever CRM system we're using or field software we're using. because at the end of the day, like there, there's so many low hanging, low value tasks that can be easily snapped up.

I'm just itching and waiting for it to happen. but I, like you said, I do think it's, a while out, but just the incredible growth we've seen, it's always something that we have to ask because it's at top of my mind.

Gabe Pinchev: I think where I look at it a little bit as a somewhat of a risk in some areas, too, is that I do feel it has to be almost 100 percent accurate in what it does, because if you're trying to automate something where a human is viewing it and confirming that it's good, but you're skipping that step and it sends something crazy because it makes a mistake.

That's not it's not a good thing, right? So I think the risk of where you're using is important, and I don't think it's quite up to the level to really replace a lot of very key elements where you do need that human oversight to make sure it's right. but, and, that's, so that's how we're tackling too.

We're trying to focus on the areas where maybe the risk is lower if the, if it doesn't do exactly accurate what you want, until it really develops to that accuracy level.

Jack Carr: it very eloquently put because, we all, just want it to work, but the fact that it doesn't work and just spits out.

incorrect information. you'd be sitting in a world of hurt because my first thought is, have it handle all these background. How do we, how do we know job costing and gross margin and all these things that, these softwares have all that data in it, right? FieldPulse has a slew of so much data from POs to, tech time to, how long were they on the job?

You could theoretically calculate all these things, but if you think your gross margins is 60%, but they're really closer to the software's messed up and sending you out, something else, then, you're going to be in a world of trouble. So I definitely get where you're coming

Gabe Pinchev: from. Yeah, and what you alluded to is like some of the stuff where we're working on as well is around the data sources.

but it, the thing is, you can't just turn on AI and say, figure it out. You do have to point it in the right direction too. and so naturally, if you look at. different industries, they also operate differently, right? So the way that has to look at the data kind of changes depending on the industry as well.

So there's some training involved, and guidance on it. and then there's just the, like I said, the validity of the data, right? We have to just be very careful on it because, because people rely on that. And, you just need to make sure it's accurate if you're going to use AI to share it. but there's a lot there.

there's a lot in kind of the generative. Text and voice elements. some of it, we're also using partners for AI where they're doing the R and D and they're developing and we're partnering with them. because there are a lot of them popping up too. And so we're also keeping an eye on the landscape generally.

and that might be one way we acquire companies too, is that we look for, great new AI technology. And that's how we. maybe buy a company and, add it to our stack that way. we're, doing it. We're, working on it, but we're also cautious about it and, trying to put it in the right spots and put it to good use.

Jack Carr: Yeah, no, that, definitely is. That makes sense. And so with that, they're the field has actually the home service industry has had a, a boom year in terms of backing from investors and private equity. And there's a lot of money coming into the industry, on the support side.

And how can you talk about how the. This is changing And the emerging trends that we're seeing from this And how field polls plans to stay ahead of its competition in the future. Is there any big, 32, 000 foot focuses that you guys are looking at to make sure that you continue to gain market share and continue to grow

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, and I think what you're alluding to is a lot of equity kind of coming in and buying companies and, and HVAC and other field service and rolling them up.

and that is, it is a thing we're seeing. I think, the interesting impact of that is that, you're seeing a lot more business. Demand from in terms of the needs from the system, right? Because they are heavy into the data and reporting and the business model and all the economics that go around that.

And so that element in general is something that has to keep getting better to serve that demand there. The other element that us that we're focusing on is more and more functionality that allows them to see multiple companies at the same time that they own and really operate them together because ultimately, the more they can centralize their operations of it, the more effectively.

They can run those businesses. So we have functionality that lets you roll up multiple accounts into one and you can jump into different accounts. You can see roll up reporting. You can standardize processes and data across them. let's say you want all the same kind of job and estimate invoice data and information across all your companies.

You can manage it centrally to deploy it across. But at the same time, I would say, that isn't the focus or bread and butter of our customers. It's still more The independent owner operators that are running their business. And that's still who we mostly think about and focus on. but there's definitely, we're definitely hearing a lot more noise of, people coming into the industry, buying companies.

Buying multiple companies, trying to grow it, and then ultimately sell it,

Jack Carr: And, so for your owner operator, your independents, how are you, watching those emerging, same question, those emerging trends to make sure that FieldPulse is staying. is continuing to resonate with them and continuing to keep current customers.

What, are the, right? Cause the future has everything kind of changes and ebbs and flows. I would imagine that your company is changing and ebbing and flowing to try and to meet the changes in the market, the changes in the home service industries. there's just so much, Is there any big items that you guys are focusing on to really make sure that you guys are staying ahead of, the other?

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, I would say first and foremost, and this has been something, that we've really done from the get go. And I think that's also why we can serve many different field service companies. Generally is that, everything is fed by our customers. we get a ton of feedback from them all the time. And, that's what shapes our product roadmap.

It shapes what we want to do. And ultimately, they are who we're trying to serve. So there's no one better to listen to than that. And so a lot of it just comes from what we hear from them, what they're looking for. And, and, but the interesting thing, it's typically not huge, fundamental new elements.

It's going deeper in certain areas that they want just to streamline how they operate, To cut down on steps, to be able to track such and such information better. and so we do a ton of, little increments and keep improving the product based off our customer feedback, because that's ultimately what's fueling it at the same time.

We do have to keep a pulse on the broader market, and we are always looking at. Is there a new technology out there? what you're saying, like the ride share stuff. do we want to get into that? And we're evaluating it because we don't always want to get into everything. Sometimes we only rely on partners.

sometimes we might want a white label where we're taking their product and branding it under FieldPulse and then integrating it. Sometimes we might want to build it ourselves. we're, very proficient at building. that was a decision we actually had to go through, less than a year ago on our like custom forms, for example, we were deciding, do we, buy?

Maybe a small company. Do we white label someone's product? Who does it? Or do we build it ourselves? and ultimately, we decided to build it ourselves. the team did an amazing job building it very quickly, very powerfully, but it lets us really customize it to, How we need and integrate it fully into our system.

But it's something that we have to look at constantly when you're making these decisions is, how is it playing out in the rest of the market and what do we want to do on our end? I don't know if that answer your question.

Jack Carr: No, it does. That really does. and then I have a left field question more.

Like I said, you get to see behind the scenes of home service businesses. A lot of them. Are there any specific industries that are starting to boom that you, that's a surprise to you? So for example, The one, the, influencer one that I saw the other day that somebody, some guru talked about was, barbecue cleaning, right?

I'm not saying that your service would do barbecue would be good for barbecue cleaning, but are there any that are, I guess 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it would have been solar, right? You would have seen this boom of solar companies. door to door solar sales and service pop up. Are there, is there anything like that you can tell us that is just blew your mind?

I'm trying to think of what

Gabe Pinchev: specific ones. I think the ones that interest me the most in that regard are these miscellaneous service businesses. So I'd say they're definitely more service oriented than project based and often doing commercial work. I think that's where you start seeing a lot of the interesting.

Industries where maybe there aren't even many players and you wouldn't have even thought about it that people get in and they don't have as much competition. and I think the name of the game for them is to be very efficient. be able to do a lot of small work, and be able to charge enough. And typically if you're charging commercial, it is higher than residential.

those are the ones I typically see, but I'm trying to think of a specific one. I, okay. I have a few in mind. I don't know how our customers would feel. One in particular, like I said, if it, oversteps the line, feel free not to say anything, but, no, there's one more is interesting that, yeah, there's one very interesting one, but it's a very, it's.

All the ones I'm thinking of are very niche, but they also have an interesting in into it. So one, I'll say it's involving car dealers and, servicing the cars in some way, but a little different than what you imagine. But, they get into that because they're around the car dealerships already, for example.

and, but those industries, they, I think that one in particular, I don't know how many other people are doing that same type of work. And so I guess it allows them to command probably a higher dollar because there's not pricing pressure pulling them down. And I think that's a strong thing to look for.

Jack Carr: Yeah. I'll share one that, that I was given the other day that kind of blew my mind. And what I find interesting is you see these little niche ones, you see them, they're, usually the same as a bigger company. They just chose this niche of a niche. and so this one was. It was a company out.

They did residential HVAC service, Standard, not, anything crazy there, but they made most of their money actually on servicing houseboat ACs. So they had these giant contracts with this houseboating company out in, I think it was Lake Powell or Lake Mead on, the West coast. And they went around and service all the ACs and they made.

It's ridiculous amounts of money doing it because the, units are so, unique. and they had all the contracts cause that's, they're

Gabe Pinchev: the

Jack Carr: only ones that do it. That

Gabe Pinchev: sounds like a great one. Yeah. And you're, selling to customers who have money, right? And that can be important in

Jack Carr: your profitability.

Exactly. And then the other one I loved was the, wind turbine maintenance crews that just go around. So I used to, my old job was, when I was W2 was I worked in, Napa, California for, as the, director of facilities, director of operations for a bunch of wineries. And when it gets too cold, they turn on these, fans.

That blow air across the grapes so that the grapes don't freeze. once a year we have to get them serviced and the price was outrageous because there was one company that just did a giant loop every year and they just serviced everything on a schedule and absolutely crazy economics. But,

Gabe Pinchev: I digress.

a big barrier to entry and you can protect that can be then that allows you to command a higher price point, right? especially if it's specialty equipment or something that you really have to have a deep learning curve or you need specialty equipment to be able to service it. I think those are all things that create that interesting barrier like that.

So no, that's a great example.

Jack Carr: Yeah. maybe offline we'll chat and you can give me the secrets. But for now, I appreciate you coming on today. FieldPulse sounds like an awesome software. It has all the capabilities, and the individual modules that you would need to grow.

your business and to expand your business and to scale your business while being not as expensive as some of the, higher, cost services. It sounds like you guys have a great onboarding process, which makes it fairly seamless. You're, you just raised a bunch of money. You're going to reinvest all that back in the team, back in future growth.

Can you wrap up anything that I've missed here? Anything that's big about field polls that really just. Would drive the needle for our listeners.

Gabe Pinchev: Yeah, I think why people pick FieldPulse, I think it's a combination of, a software platform that's very, extensive and has a lot of functionality. So that scales with your business.

and you get a great experience from start to finish with the people you interact with. That get you set up and put you in success. We take a lot of pride in our people. where we're Dallas based. and, I think that's, the feedback we get the most from our customers that they love the support.

They love the people they work with. And I think that. That can that makes a big difference, but it's not for everyone and some people that want a simpler, easier self service solution. I would say that's probably not us. But I would say that if you're investing in a system, not only is it a big deal for your company, whatever operating system and platform they get on, but getting it really set up right and having the support and people to make sure you're getting the most out of it is important.

And I think that's why people love field polls.

Jack Carr: Yeah, I would definitely agree there. And so How can, if someone wants to get a demo, someone wants to run through the product, where should they go to get that

Gabe Pinchev: information? Yeah, I think they can go right on our website to fieldpulse.com. you can either schedule a demo right from there.

You can submit an inquiry and then someone will reach out. to take you through the product, give you a demo, tell you all about our offerings, the value, and then, see if it's the right fit for you.

Jack Carr: Very cool, Gabe. And of course, if someone wants to connect with you or follow you on any social media, is there anywhere that they can follow you personally?

I always got to ask.

Gabe Pinchev: No, I'm not actually publicly anywhere like that. maybe one day when we get really big, I don't know, but, no, not yet.

Jack Carr: Yeah. Awesome. thank you for your time today. I appreciate it. We love the service. Love to see, how, what the next couple of years bring for you. Thank you.

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