Six months in, we’ve surpassed $2m ARR – and momentum is building

Here’s the 2026 story so far at Build Concierge.

Six months ago, I sent a message to the whole team, which read: “Great leaders rise in moments of discomfort, seeing not obstacles but calls to lead”.

Why discomfort, you ask. The economy was doing well. The headlines were full of positive trends – the Purchasing Managers Index was up, services were flourishing, manufacturers were making more widgets than ever.

But scratch beneath the surface and every business owner, myself included, was anxious about the future. There was so much uncertainty. The tax changes announced in autumn were set to bite in April. Redundancy announcements that started with a trickle were to become a deluge by the spring.

At the same time, we were making big investments: in our website, the team and our technology. I’m a seasoned business builder who has been through many cycles but you still ask yourself: have I got the timing right?

That’s why it’s so important to look back over the past six months at all we have achieved here at Build Concierge. Here’s how we fared against an increasingly tough economic backdrop.

The numbers

The platform not only works, it works at scale.

Over 310,000 AI workflows were completed across the first half of 2026

100% system uptime

Tens of thousands of admin hours removed from customers' back offices

$2.138M ARR annual recurring revenue, and we’re just six months in

Saaspocalypse? What Saaspocalypse? The numbers prove that there is still demand out there for software platform subscriptions that truly meet the evolving needs of customers.

At Build Concierge, monthly workflow volume more than quadrupled across the half year, from under 20,000 in January to nearly 88,000 in June.

Most software businesses take the best part of three years to reach their first million in recurring revenue. We passed $2m in six months.

Customer traction

We welcomed 66 customers in the last six months, drawn from right across the trade and field service economy. They are a diverse group but share certain attributes: complex operations, talented back-office teams that are increasingly bogged down in meaningless admin, and a passion for innovation.

Looking at the Build Concierge order book, the largest customer cohort is in drainage and wastewater. These are firms doing the emergency unblocking, CCTV surveys and planned maintenance around the clock.

HVAC, refrigeration and heating is a close second, then doors, gates, shutters and access control, and we have also found a niche with fire and security specialists fitting everything from intruder alarms to industrial roller shutters and automatic gates.

We are truly trade agnostic, bringing on mechanical and electrical building services contractors, roofing and remediation firms, facilities management and property maintenance providers, social housing service partners, commercial catering engineers, forecourt and critical power specialists, and waste and environmental services. I could go on.

They range from small but mighty family firms to substantial operations. Some 10 of them turn over more than £10m and the largest close to £40m, with teams rising from a handful of people to nearly 400 heads.

Different trades; same challenges. They all came to us looking for a solution to their customer engagement bottlenecks. They wanted a technology to tackle not just the admin, but to simplify and accelerate the underlying process – from job coordination to data analysis. We now do it all.

Product and platform

Build Concierge has evolved. Day one, we planned to build a workflow automation platform. Today, we have a context-aware, AI-driven customer engagement platform with deep integrations, strong automation capabilities and growing self-service functionality.

Our Concierge Receptionist is now live, answering messages and calls just like an extension of the back-office team. Customers are now capturing information through the Receptionist, and the AI is already triggering follow-up workflows automatically. It’s a game-changer for customers that want to operate 24/7 without additional staffing.

Last month, we rolled out our AI-powered document and file processing capability. This means that our workflows can now analyse PDFs, forms, reports, invoices, certificates and customer-submitted images. This data now prompts actions, including further workflow steps. This is saving countless hours for our customers, who are receiving job information in every medium under the sun. Goodbye manual review, hello automation at scale.

Another breakthrough was creating the ability to access historical communications across email, SMS, WhatsApp and phone interactions. This in effect creates a new generation of agent-like automations that understand conversation history and customer intent, going way beyond other products on the market.

Alongside all the integrations we’ve added - and the fact we’ve levelled up our platform to become enterprise grade - one thing I’m proudest of is the Workflow ROI Dashboard, which means that customers can now see and quantify the value generated by automation.

Market presence

The Friday Fives programme was launched in late May 2026 as a weekly customer communication designed to showcase practical, real-world examples of AI, automation, workflows and customer outcomes.

It’s now a big part of how we share our story with the world.

We have also been busy behind the scenes creating case studies with our valued early adopters. Companies like AGS one, who got in at the ground floor and have helped shape the platform. You can watch their video testimonial.

Some of the industry’s leading trade titles have covered our technology, showcasing what we have helped customers achieve.

This month, I launched my Founder’s Spotlight series, where I profile our amazing customers. These are untold stories from the frontline of trade. Every day, I am privileged to work alongside these incredible entrepreneurs, and it is an honour to tell their stories.

Fans of the Yorkshire Post newspaper may also have spotted a new columnist amongst this week’s pages.

We have been out and about at trade events and exhibitions this year, including the Installer Show, the Fire Safety Event, Executive Hire Show and more.

We also launched our Customer Concierge Events, where we invite our customers and prospects to come and put the software through its paces, learn about future developments, and chat to the team about ongoing challenges they would like us to solve.

We have hosted three of these events so far, both in person and virtual, and many customers have attended.

Team and culture

In December last year we were 22 people. Today we are 39. That is 77% growth in roughly six months, and we did it while many companies were freezing hiring and cutting back.

I am great believer in promoting from within and we have done that: three individuals have been promoted in the last six months. We have also bolstered the leadership team, appointing Serge Fagelman as Chief Revenue Officer and Paul Witter as Chief Financial Officer. Between them, they know everyone in this industry.

And a personal note. I created a CEO award to recognise individuals in the team that have gone above and beyond. This award goes out every half-year, and this week we announced our first winners for 2026. I could have celebrated any one of my incredible team, but two people stood out because of their relentless passion, determination and the sheer speed of their progression: Tazeen Tariq, Junior Developer, and Harry Smithurst, Technical Support Manager. Watching people back themselves and grow is the part of this job I care about most.

One last thing – something I recently talked about on this podcast – you can have the best product in the world but if people don’t trust you, you’ve got nothing. The team here at Build Concierge, many of whom have worked with me at previous companies, are the reason businesses trust us with the most important thing they’ve got – their relationship with their customers.

We have big plans for the rest of this year so, if your back-office team is still drowning in admin and you know AI is probably the answer but need some help applying it, come and talk to us. We don’t sell you a product, we take you by the hand and lead you through the process – and we aren’t happy until you see tangible, measurable results.