The $1.5B Vertical SaaS Opportunity Most Founders Miss with Mike Powers | EP 16

In this episode of Verticals, Luke Sophinos and Nic Poulos sit down with Mike Powers, CEO and Co-founder of BuildVision, to unpack one of the hardest problems in vertical software: how to build and monetise products inside complex, multi-stakeholder ecosystems. Commercial construction isn’t a single-buyer market. Value is split across owners, general contractors, OEMs, reps, and financiers, and traditional SaaS pricing models break quickly in that reality. BuildVision is taking a different approach: giving away table-stakes software, then monetising on outcomes, where real work is replaced, risk is reduced, and transactions actually flow. Mike brings rare, operator-level perspective. Before founding BuildVision, he worked inside Turner Construction’s strategic procurement arm (scaling over $1B in annual equipment spend), helped build BuildingConnected (acquired by Autodesk), and now serves many of the top general contractors in the US. We dive deep into what actually works when you’re building vertical AI and software in enterprise environments: why “multiplayer” products matter, how outcome-based monetisation avoids the agency trap, and why the real moat is often data orchestration, not UI. This episode is a deep, operator-level discussion on the next evolution of vertical SaaS and AI: how decision layers replace traditional systems of record, why free tooling can be a strategic advantage, and how founders can align pricing directly to customer value at scale. Whether you’re a founder, operator, or investor building or backing vertical SaaS or AI in complex, regulated industries, this episode will fundamentally change how you think about monetisation, product strategy, and go-to-market. New episodes drop every Wednesday.