Kill The 20-Hour Takeoff Before It Kills Your Margin

<p>Try Handoff free for 7 days, full platform, no sales call: <a href="https://app.handoff.ai/sign-up/?utm_source=beyond-the-bid&amp;utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_campaign=Beyond-The-Bid-2026&amp;utm_content=guest-spot" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">7-Day Trial</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Dmitry Alexin is not a software guy who wandered into construction. He spent ten years at the intersection of machine learning and building, starting on the early team at Atoms, the construction technology company founded by Uber's Travis Kalanick. He now runs Handoff with 70 people behind him and hundreds of millions in residential projects moving through the platform every month.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here's what he says out loud that most people in this industry won't: for a hundred years there were exactly two ways to bid a job, and both of them took something from you. Ballpark a square foot rate and you're fast, but some of those jobs eat your margin and you find out in month three. Go line by line, stick by stick, and you're right, but the homeowner already signed with the guy who answered in a day.</p><p><br /></p><p>Fast or accurate. You didn't get both.</p><p><br /></p><p>Most $3M builders have quietly accepted that as the cost of doing business. Dmitry spent roughly six years building the thing that breaks it, working with hundreds of estimators, thousands of contractors and some of the largest material suppliers in the world. What comes out the other side isn't a faster spreadsheet. It's your judgment moving back up to where it belongs: markup, client fit, and whether you want this job at all.</p><p><br /></p><p>He also gives away the exercise to run before you spend a dollar on any of it. Log every block of work for one week. Feed it to an AI. Ask where your time actually went. Then put $500 an hour on it and see how you feel.</p><p><br /></p><p>The story about the garage door around 14:00 is the one that'll stick with you.</p><p><br /></p><p>OTHER DMITRY ALEXIN RESOURCES 🔗</p><p>- Start your 7-day Handoff trial: <a href="https://app.handoff.ai/sign-up/?utm_source=beyond-the-bid&amp;utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_campaign=Beyond-The-Bid-2026&amp;utm_content=guest-spot" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">[HANDOFF TRIAL URL]</a></p><p>- Follow Dmitry for AI-in-construction tips: instagram.com/dmitry_from_handoff/</p><p>- Follow Handoff: instagram.com/handoffai/</p><p>- Get the Handoff newsletter: handoff.ai</p><p><br /></p><p>🎯 Get in Touch with B