We turned down 14 prospects last year because they weren't the right shop. The narrower we stay, the better the product gets. Here's exactly who we're built for.
Our customers look similar on paper. Not identical, but close enough that we've stopped being surprised by it.
About 80% of our 50 customers fall inside every row above. The 20% that don't fall inside most of them.
Estimating software gets bought by one person and used by a different person. We've learned to pay attention to both. Here's who uses each part of designwinds, and roughly how often.
Owns the bid calendar in Squall. Reviews every bid before it goes out. Runs Backdraft reports at the end of each quarter to decide what to chase and what to walk away from. Approves labor unit changes in Tailwind when the shop's productivity shifts.
Lives in Plenum and Draft. Runs takeoff on three to eight bids a week. Sizes systems, picks fans, checks ASHRAE 90.1 compliance. Builds the recap. The power user.
Picks up the fitting count, the diffuser schedule, the simpler zones. Learns the trade by watching what the seniors do in the same file. Doesn't need training manuals - watches the activity log.
Tracks bid invitations coming in from iSqFt and BuildingConnected. Manages RFIs during the bid period. Chases vendor quotes. Keeps the calendar honest.
We don't sell seats to field supers, PMs, or accounting. They're not our users. If you try to put them in, we'll ask what you're trying to accomplish and probably suggest a different tool.
Across our 50 customers, here's the mix of work they bid through designwinds. Percentages are from Q4 2025 aggregated bid volume, rounded.
Healthcare is the heaviest category for a reason. Air-side work on hospitals is complex, high-stakes, and high-margin if you get the fan sizing right. Four of our top ten customers by revenue do more than 60% healthcare work. Draft's pressure calcs and Vane's AHRI certificate auto-attach are heavily used on this work.
Data center work is the fastest-growing segment in our customer base. Up from 2% of volume in Q1 2024 to 8% in Q4 2025. If you're a sheet metal shop pivoting toward hyperscale or colocation work, you're not alone in our customer list.
Our customer base is concentrated in the industrial Midwest and the Southeast, with meaningful clusters in Texas and the Mid-Atlantic. Lighter presence on the coasts. Almost none in the Mountain West. That's partly a function of how we grew - Indianapolis out - and partly a function of where sheet metal shops in our revenue range actually operate.
Total: 46 shops across 14 states. The remaining 4 customers are single-state shops we don't break out individually for anonymity.
If you're in a state not listed here, we'll be honest with you on the first call about whether we have regional experience or whether you'd be our first shop in the market.
Our first call is 30 minutes. We ask six questions. If the answers line up, we schedule a walkthrough. If they don't, we tell you that on the call and point you toward something better. We'd rather lose you in 30 minutes than in six weeks.
Question six is the one most vendors skip. We ask it because half the deals that stall at the finish line stall because we were talking to the wrong person for six weeks. If the person approving this purchase is your CFO, we want to talk to your CFO in week one, not week seven.
If your shop looks like what we described above, the next step is a 30-minute call. If it doesn't, we'd still rather hear from you - sometimes the fit is obvious and sometimes it isn't, and we don't mind either answer.