Articles
Data-backed commentary on market gaps, unsolved problems, and builder opportunities.
ServiceTitan's 30% Drop Isn't About Growth—It's About Trust in a Broken Market
A software company beats on revenue, expands margins, and gets rewarded with a 30% single-day stock drop. Jason Lemkin's breakdown of ServiceTitan's guidance cut is a masterclass in growth-rate math, but it misses the deeper story. Our tracking of 25,000+ problems across the trades shows why this slowdown is structural, not seasonal—and where the real opportunity hides.
Agents Are Eating the System of Record. But the Real Feast Is in the Field.
SaaStr's Jason Lemkin just documented how AI agents wrote 40GB into Salesforce in a month, turning the CRM into a cost center. That's a wake-up call for SaaS. But the data suggests the real untapped market for agents is in the physical world — construction, trucking, HVAC — where operational pain is severe and largely untouched by agentic workflows.
The Trades Are Drowning in Pain—ServiceTitan’s Growth Story Barely Scratched the Surface
ServiceTitan just crossed a billion in ARR with fintech growth and expanding margins, but raw data from the field tells a different story. Trades workers are navigating life-threatening safety hazards, broken licensing pathways, and repeated repair failures. The next wave of value for vertical B2B isn't just payments—it's solving the systemic pain that keeps contractors up at night.
The Plumber's Apprentice Is AI's Next Big Win
Marlize van Romburgh at Crunchbase News recently highlighted Probook's $40M raise for AI dispatch in the trades. But dispatch solves only part of the puzzle. PainSignal data tracking 966 plumbing problems shows that the real emergency is a deepening skilled labor shortage that no amount of routing software fixes. The biggest opportunity isn't dispatching—it's training the next technician.
The $10K ACV Trap: Why Your Vertical SaaS Should Solve a Daily Nightmare Instead
Jason Lemkin's $10k ACV rule for vertical SaaS is spot-on, but data on plumbing and HVAC pain points reveals a more nuanced path. Here's how to identify a 'core' app that justifies high price tags—and where the real opportunity hides.