Where the trades are going
The trades are about to be rebuilt around AI: the office, the sale, the way customers even find a contractor. These are co-founder Jay Ragan's predictions, written down so you can hold him to them.
The flagship thesis
The self-running contracting business
A ten-year prospectus: contracting businesses will run themselves, with AI handling everything between the customer and the crew, and the contractors who own that system will own their markets. The seven-stage roadmap to get there.
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The Agentic Contractor
Within five years, the best contracting businesses will have AI agents running the entire office: answering, quoting, scheduling, invoicing, chasing. Here's what that business looks like, and why the owners who build it first will be impossible to catch.
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Why Home Services Will Consolidate, and Who Ends Up Owning It
Home services is one of the last giant, fragmented industries. AI collapses the operating costs that kept it fragmented. The next decade is a consolidation story, and the acquirers will be the operators who built the machine first.
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The Data Moat in the Trades
Trucks, crews, and ad budgets can all be copied. The one asset a contracting business can build that competitors can't buy is its data, and almost nobody in the trades is collecting it.
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When AI Buys the Job: How Customers Will Hire Contractors in 2030
Homeowners are already asking AI assistants who to hire. The lead form, the review site, and the ad auction are all about to be disintermediated, and the contractors who are legible to machines will win the demand.
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Building toward this future?
Sherpa builds these systems inside real contracting businesses today.
See what Sherpa is building