Verify In Field: The Millwork Podcast
Welcome to Verify In Field. Your host, Jacob Edmond, CEO of DuckWorks, will be interviewing experts in the architectural millwork industry to bring you insights and knowledge about updates, techniques, and challenges in millwork. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, this podcast is for you.
Tune in biweekly on Wednesday for a new episode, and visit duckworksmw.com to join our growing community of millwork professionals.
Verify In Field: The Millwork Podcast
Innovating together: Inside Innergy and Microvellum's Strategic Alliance
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In this episode of 'Verify in Field,' host Jacob Edmond welcomes back guest Jonah Coleman for a third installment to discuss the significant news of Innergy's acquisition of Microvellum. The episode delves into the strategic and cultural alignment between the two companies, emphasizing their shared focus on the woodworking industry and software solutions. Jonah highlights how the acquisition will enable both companies to address industry challenges more effectively, introduce new technological advancements, and improve customer experiences. Key topics include the integration of Microvellum's extensive product library into Innergy's design software, shared technological benefits such as improved nesting algorithms, and long-term plans for innovation. The discussion also touches on the crucial role of education in the industry and how both companies aim to enhance training and support for their users.
About Our Guest
Jonah Coleman is the Head of Product at Innergy, a leading cloud-native ERP and design software company built specifically for the woodworking and millwork industries. With a background as an engineer, Jonah brings a unique perspective to product development—grounded in hands-on shop experience and visionary thinking. His passion for solving complex industry problems is evident in his work and his mission: to create raving fans by delivering smarter, faster solutions for millwork teams.
Where to Learn More
Explore the partnership, read the open forums, or request a demo of Innergy or Microvellum:
- Jonah's first episode: https://duckworksmw.com/podcasts/jonah-coleman-part-1-of-2-millwork-engineering-department-structures/
- Jonah's second episode: https://duckworksmw.com/podcasts/jonah-coleman-part-2-of-2-innergys-new-design-software/
- Learn more about Innergy: innergy.com
- Learn more about Microvellum: microvellum.com
- Microvellum Forums: https://community.microvellum.com/portal/en/community/recent
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I, I said this way during, you know, due diligence is horrible, but I said this, during that period, we had a better match than we had any right to possibly imagine.
Jacob:Welcome back everybody to Verify in Field today. I've got a, uh, second time guest, actually probably this is your third episode. I think last time we had you on, we did a two-parter. So this is part three and an exciting update as, uh, we've got some, hot off the press news that we're gonna be be talking about today. Innergy's acquisition of Microvellum and what that means for our industry right from the source. So thanks Jonah for for joining us again today.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, absolutely, man. Every time you and I get together, it's always dangerous. We, uh, we, we can turn it into a two, three part episode, I think. Pretty easy.
Jacob:I know we, we always go off the tracks and this might be too long, but, I'm excited. Yeah. Today I think we've got, uh, a lot of questions, a lot of burning questions that I'm sure those listening, um, are excited and you really anticipating, uh. after the, this news, people started going back and seeing if there were any, um, nuggets they could gain or inside information from the last episode. And so I think it's almost a year and a half later and obviously the outside of the acquisition, you guys have continued working. Design's come a long way, and so I'm excited to talk about all the above. Maybe just for those who haven't listened to that, if you haven't listened to Jonah's last in interview, we'll we'll link that in the show notes. Go back and listen to, um, our previous
Jonah Coleman:interview
Jacob:with
Jonah Coleman:Jonah,
Jacob:as
Jonah Coleman:a
Jacob:two-parter talking about Innergy, his background, his story, as well as where design was at that point, as a, as as a new beta software. And uh, now, um, obviously it's coming up. It's grown up and a lot of things have have changed with Innergy. As you see on Jonah's shirt there, um, we'll talk a little bit about Innergy plus Microvellum. So if we just jump right in, Innergy just announced the acquisition of Microvellum. If those listening haven't heard From Innergy's standpoint, from your standpoint, what does this strategic acqui acquisition mean for, for Innergy and and for our industry.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, great question. Thanks. So for us, we found kind of a match made in heaven. We found a company that, and I'm gonna turn around hopefully it, hopefully it comes through the back of this shirt, says, by woodworkers, for woodworkers. Uh, we're a couple of the only companies I know of, at least large ones in this space for software that really honestly can say that. That many of us are from the industry. We had a perfect cultural match. I said this way during, you know, due diligence is horrible, but I said this, during that period, we had a better match than we had any right to possibly imagine. The two companies see eye to eye on so much, so. Even without specific plans, to be real honest with you, we are ready to jump right in, uh, because we know that there's something amazing gonna come out the other side.
Jacob:Yep. Yeah. I think that's something that, you know, I, I've talked about this with, with, uh, I posted a little bit as people were asking about this, but, um, I think that is an entirely unique thing, especially in software acquisitions, not just in our industry, but really any industry. Um, it's it's very rarely is there that much synergy, um, and alignment of the two companies, um, from the get go. And so I think that's, that's what's exciting to me and me should be exciting for so many, in the millwork industry about, about what's to come. And so why do you, why is this important for the the millwork and, and design industries? It's because you know, one, we don't don't see a lot of software acquisitions just specifically in our, in industry. You know, there's been a few, you know, I think Hexagon has bought Cabinet Vision and they've gone through a few acquisitions. Um, and there's, there are others, I think Mosaic and things like that, but it's rare that we see something this big, this, this impactful to our industry. So I think most people don't under, really know what to think, don't know, really know how to react or or what to expect. Right. Right.
Jonah Coleman:Sure. Yeah. Well, and you I think are probably gonna ask me a little more pointed questions about what to expect and, and what's gonna happen, I assume, but just at like a very top level. I've been really honored to work with Innergy. It's been, uh, you know, a collection of some of the smartest, most, uh, progressive, looking forward looking people that I've ever had the chance to work with. And when I traveled to Microvellum's headquarters in Medford, I see the same thing. And, and I think you and I met years back at Microvellum TechCon event. I'd been there a couple times, so it wasn't a surprise for me. Part of the fun of this journey. I mean, you know, we, we had, there's a lot of money, like a lot of money went into this. And so a lot of due diligence, a lot of looking behind the scenes. And so my, our, my CEO Mark Sanderson and myself, you know, we knew intimately. I've used Microvellum. He's owned Microvellum. And so we didn't have to learn as much as some of the other people on our team who didn't have that experience, even if they come from other parts of woodworking. They didn't know anything about inter uh, engineering. And so it's been really fun getting to show them how everything works and how everything gets together. So really what I'm looking forward to is we have so many big things to do and tackle for this industry. Our industry is quite the laggard technology wise, and it's such a big open green field that we're gonna have many years of just helping people learn the software we already have. Not to mention some cool stuff we're gonna do.
Jacob:Yeah. So getting into some specifics, talking specifically about from Innergy side, and looking at the long-term vision that, you know, you guys have and is continually evolving, I'm sure. What does acquiring microvellum enable Innergy do today? It allows you to accelerate and achieve some some things I would imagine is particulately with Innergy design? What does, what does some of that look like?
Jonah Coleman:Yeah. Also good question. So for us, we set out a long time ago to solve hard problems in the woodworking space. We believe very strongly that the way you build a group of raving fans is by solving hard industry problems. You know this as well as anybody. Engineering is a hard industry problem. It's one of the top, when we survey, it's number one, number two, somewhere in that range. I did a fun little, uh, exercise at the end of last year. You know, we have 350 customers. And we, and they've got roughly two and a half billion dollars worth of industry revenue underneath them. So I was able to look at all of the work that those customers have and what steps it's in. And then I used an AI to help me categorize, is this an engineering step or is this not an engineering step? Because 350 customers name their things 400 different ways. Of course. So, uh, at that point it was over 40% of the industry's work was stuck in an engineering step. So it's a really tough problem we set out to solve that problem with design, and Microvellum is just another way we're going to solve that problem. They have a very large, very loyal customer base who know a lot about that software. We're not gonna mess with it. Uh, I'm sure you're gonna ask me that que- In fact, I'm gonna make you ask me that question when we get there so that I can answer it. But. We're gonna be able to use some of that same technology we set out, for example, to do our own nesting and machine code. And man, you know, we knew it was a big undertaking, but we decided we need some help. And Microvellum came along at just the right time to help us with that.
Jacob:Because on that front, right? You guys, without this acquisition, you're, you're writing everything from scratch. Essentially, you're having to solve this problem kind of from square one, right? So I imagine this allows you to accelerate those some things. And then for those that don't know, I think Microvellum in the last week or so, actually released a new beta of their own, um, nesting algorithm and an update with that. That's a big significant change for them and, and I think hopefully a big improvement. Um, so, um, there's a lot of
Jonah Coleman:of Yeah tremendously faster and brings some new technologies in, uh, generative, uh, process. So it's, it's not quite as, uh, you don't get the exact same result every time, but you, it'll learn to get a better result as it goes. And a hundred percent. Those are things that we're also very good at. And if we take that nesting technology and we continue to support it in Microvellum, but we also share it with our design technology now we can invest more into it because everything we put into it gets two applications, if that makes sense.
Jacob:Yeah, so that that point right there is something that I don't know if people realize, like, you know, there is essentially a much bigger return on investment for anything you do that can benefit both. Innergy and Microvellum now. Um, obviously there is already before the acquisition, there was a, you know, an know, an overlap of customers. There's Microvellum customers who are already Innergy customers and vice versa. Um, and so there is mutual benefit to not piss off either of those customers, right? And to continue to support them very well. Um, but through that you guys already had a working relationship, you know, like you like you said, Innergy very much, under, had to understand microvellum to integrate between the two and Microvellum, as well. Um, but now everything you guys do, you, you, have to look at through a new lens that says, okay, we can, now invest in improving our nesting algorithm and it's gonna benefit two sets of customer bases, much larger impact, which makes it that much more worthwhile to put those efforts in, um, than it than it was on an individual basis, I would imagine.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, and I'll give you another example. So one of the things that Microvellum gonna help Innergy with, is Microvellum has a very extensive product library, right? This, I mean huge. Especially compared to all the other engineering platforms out there. You can go get ready to go versions of all kinds of hardware and various funky units, right? So with our design product, we would've had to build that from scratch. And we, we did, we started on that road. We're pretty far down that road. We have some cool stuff there too. We're gonna share that same technology, so you'll be able to use your Microvellum library inside design. Right? And so again, now how much bang for the buck do we get when we add new things to that library? A lot. And it shows up in both places. Yeah.
Jacob:Yeah, that's something that one, I don't know if everybody knows how much more more extensive Microvellum's libraries are. When you buy Microvellum, get a library. One, not all the other competitors do that at all. But two, even the ones that do, I don't think it's nearly nearly as extensive as Microvellum. And so, right off the bat, yeah, now you're already getting, if you can integrate and make make usable Microvellums library in Innergy and and, vice versa, all the efforts you produce now going forward, you can put that effort into creating new products that didn't didn't exist before to benefit both.
Jonah Coleman:That's right. And we can fund more work in that area.
Jacob:Yeah. So outside of that, you you've shared a good bit now, but before we talk into, from the Microvellum standpoint, are there any specific plans or milestones that you can share yet that people can expect? Uh, from the from the Innergy obviously you're gonna be trying to integrate and well will be be integrating and leveraging Microvellums nesting algorithm um, and things like like that to accelerate Innergy design. Um, there anything else on the horizon that, that, that you can share today yet?
Jonah Coleman:There's a lot of cool stuff. A lot of it we're not willing to, to talk about yet, just because we don't want to, you know, put out things that we're not absolutely sure on. I'm, I'm not gonna lie to you. Uh, we came to a point in this deal where it was like, we can either get the deal done and not know exactly what we're gonna do afterwards, uh, or we can let the deal die, and we decided to jump right in. We found a good marriage partner and we took the leap with them. So those two things were the only things that I think, uh, that we even know for sure at this point, but we have a lot of faith that these two groups of very smart people are gonna come up with important industry changing things to do.
Jacob:And that's something that, you know, for those that are listening, and I think most in this industry, if you're not been involved in an acquisition deal like this, I think from the outsiders in, a lot of times, and you probably get questions that come across this way as they think, like everything's decided, everything's is figured out and like, okay, you guys have this entire five year roadmap that you're just not exposing yet. Right. And it's like, oh, as, as people in the industry, we're just waiting for them to, to, give their big evil plan what's gonna happen or how it's gonna change their life. And it really is so much more just that it's a marriage and you're saying, Hey, do we wanna do business together? We're gonna join forces and then we're gonna figure it out. Right. Um, and I think, from an outsider's perspective, you're your listening to this and you're wondering, like. What Jonah just shared, I think is so much more true than I think what people people realize if you haven't gone through an acquisition. Like, hey, we're still figuring it out, but we have confidence that we we wanna work together. we're we're aligned on our goals and our vision, and we're going to make a solution that is the best for the, for our clients.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, and I'll just give you a little sneak behind peek behind the, the curtain, I guess. So just like when you're hiring a, a new employee. The most important thing you can do is make sure that they're gonna fit in with your team, that they think the way your team thinks, right? That's way more important than what they know how to do. Uh, I, I think you agree with that, right?
Jacob:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah. It's even more truer here. So we did, uh, cultural survey between our two companies, just asking how do people think about various things, voice of the customer, you know, working towards, making raving fans, do we work together as a team, you know, what's the most important thing? What are our cultural values? And then we scored'em and we, we looked at which things Microvellum scored higher on than Innergy and vice versa. And we really do think of this as, uh, you know, we're bringing together the best parts of two cultures. We had each had our own creed and you know, they have their set of values and they're different words, but at core they mean the same thing. And I was absolutely shocked by that. That is a hundred percent how we got our board to approve spending a great deal of money on this was like. Look at all the stuff we can do. There is no big plan. We're not gonna shut off Microvellum. That's the first thing everybody asks. And I assume one of your questions, Innergy's mission is to create raving fans. And we believe that to our core, and we've actually changed our behavior various times, because of that. We've stopped and stopped growing to make sure that we were building raving fans and not just a bigger customer base. And with Microvellum, if we were to mess with Microvellum, we would create a group of people who want us to die in a fire, not raving fans. So we will not be doing that. Microvellum's management team will continue to make their own choices about what their product does because I think you, you know me, man, I think I'm a pretty smart guy, but I, I don't know enough to come and start messing with something and not screw it up.
Jacob:Yeah. Yeah. So, you know on that, for existing Microvellum customers, Microvellum is not going away. Um, in fact, it's gonna continue to grow and develop. But uh, from that perspective, what changes will we see that that benefits Microvellum Innergy's resources and partnership. Obviously you talked a little bit about, you know, it makes it makes more sense, Innergy can invest both on the Microvellum side and the Innergy where it where it both mutually. But, you know, is there anything that, uh, speaking to those, those people, the guys on the Microvellum forms, the, people on, that are currently using, that don't use Innergy? What, what can they expect?
Jonah Coleman:Yeah. So again, that team is gonna continue to make their own choices about what they do. We're not forcing them to do anything. Uh, if I want them to do something, I literally have to convince them that it's a good idea. So starting with that as a preface. I will say, you know, part of the goal, honestly, is gonna be a, a, a better ecosystem between Microvellum and Innergy. So some of the things I can imagine, but again, I'm not promising because I literally can't, I, I have to talk them into this, would be things like, you know, I could imagine you open up a Microvellum file and you could a pop popup that says, hey, you're not tracking time to this. Do you wanna change your time? Yes, I do. That's, that's a nice little quality of life. I can imagine a world where when you click on a product in Microvellum, you can see if it's been produced yet on the shop floor, you can see the parts that have been cut or not at your, you know, beam saw router, whatever. You can see the part tracking. We have all that stuff built in, right? I can imagine a world where we offer some portion of our part tracking to Microvellum customers because, hey, it's something that they need. There's, there's so much overlap in the cool stuff we have in both of our software products that there's, there's like a never ending stream of things. You will see some, some more resources brought to bear on some parts of the product for sure. But we're not gonna come in and change anything.
Jacob:Yeah, so, you know, from from the resources, some of the things you mentioned there. Obviously for for those that do use Innergy and Microvellum, is likely potential to be some, some very low hanging fruit benefits they can expect of further integration between the two of things that,'cause right because right now there is integration, can export or import from Microvellum into Innergy, right?
Jonah Coleman:Correct.
Jacob:There is not, uh, an interface. Integration of, like you said, um, hey, I can see data between the two. And those are the, probably the the earliest things that they would expect to see is, hey, the things that that already exist in Innergy, can we sync the data between them, make available information? Part tracking, you mentioned that's, Innergy has a solution for for part comparable to other standalone software in the industry, on the market. Those are things that, you know, it sounds like you could see bringing into Microvellum, making available to Microvellum customers.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, there are things I can see adding value to Microvellum customers for sure. We're not going to make you, uh, you know, drop any integrations you have with any existing other ERPs or part tracking or MES or whatever. Microvellum will continue to be open and play nicely with everybody. Innergy will continue to be open and play nicely with all the other engineering solutions. Our core, we're looking to solve hard problems in the industry, not make new ones of interoperability.
Jacob:So another thing that is, you know, uh, uh, I think hot on people's minds, Innergy is entirely cloud native from from the get go, right. And always has been. Do you see, uh, modernization of that kind in the future Microvellum of either making a version of it or making it more cloud friendly, cloud native in the future and benefiting Innergy's and knowledge there in some sort of integration there?
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, so, um, and you know, the fact that, you know, my background, I was a, a user of various different engineering softwares, including Microvellum and I liked the cloud thing obviously, or else I wouldn't have pushed us to build design. I'm not in charge of what Microvellum does. They remain a separate company doing, you know, what they do. Um, having said that, you know, uh, their, their integration with a leading CAD platform is a big part of their appeal, so it would be hard to get away from that. Now, I can imagine a world where you can use your Microvellum data over in Innergy design and inside Microvellum you can open up and use some features from design. You know, so I don't, I don't know if you're gonna see any real, like obvious changes, but I can also see a world where we build out this nesting and machine code technology. The Innergy side is cloud to begin with. I mean, I, in design today, I can send out nesting and generate machine code and I can have five different projects, all nesting and machine code at the same time.'Cause it's not tying up my computer, it's just running out on the cloud service. Right. And as more are needed, they just scale up. Can we get that into Microvellum too? Well, we'll be using a lot of the same code.
Jacob:So, uh, there's some things that Microvellum has already been going through for modernization outside of the Innergy acquisition. Right. and I think from maybe people that aren't actively updating every release for Microvellum or actively paying attention, they're just using, they're getting work done right. A lot of those updates may seem like, what the heck is this? You're changing the way I work. For example, the license management, right? Um, and some of those things that. They're gonna also perceive a lot of these updates as, oh, that Innergy is tech acquiring them, they're gonna change how everything works. But there are some things that just have had to happen or have to happen because of software modernization. There's things that Autodesk dictates through their, their, the way they update their software. There's things that Windows dictates that requires modernization and updates. Can you talk a little bit about just that side of things that maybe for people that aren't software people, but they're just everyday users maybe don't understand. Like there's some a modernization Microvellum has had had to go through I know recently and still going through updating the code base because of deprecation from Autodesk specifically. Um, and then obviously we see Windows, there, they're, already starting have a sunset data support for Windows 10 and things like that, right? Those things are constantly happening and those aren't things that Microvellum decides or Innergy decides, right? You guys have to, to support that. can you talk a little bit about that side of things, just in terms that our user base and our listeners maybe can understand a little bit more about software development cycle you guys have deal with.
Jonah Coleman:Happy to, uh, I will preface it by saying, you know, I can't speak to Microvellum in all that much detail. Um, I probably do know some things that I, that I don't know if, if I can share or not. So I'll, I'll be looking, I'm you, you know, you've known me for long enough to know that I'm real transparent, so I'll just say there's some things that I, I don't know if they share or not, that we, you know, when you go through due diligence, which I've been through a couple of times, uh, it's a painful inspection of every or orifice and, and crevice on that you have. So, all right. Um, having said all that, we actually didn't get to look at any of their code and such during that process just because they were a competitor. And when you're, when you're, uh, doing this, they put up firewalls and stuff, so I probably don't, you probably know more than I do. All right. Preface out of the way. I'll speak generally to the topic. Because we have it too, right? It, it's not just, you mentioned Autodesk and Windows we're web-based, but we have it too. You know, the, the libraries, they, they get old, software is not like a tool, it's not like a machine. With a machine. You put it in, it'll keep doing what it's always done. Uh, but software's so integrated with everything going around it that as other stuff changes, you have to keep fixing it. We at various times spend 30, 40% of our efforts just on making sure that we're up to date and the application will continue to run. So I think it's very, I think Microvellum has been very public with the fact that they built up tech debt over the years. And tech debt is an analogy that we use in software. It's very similar to regular debt. So you can use regular debt to get stuff done in real life that you don't have the capital to do. And. It can be good or bad, right? If you use debt to get, you know, to buy a building that you're going to use for a company to make more money, well that debt will pay itself off over time, but you got it done a lot quicker than if you just had to pay for outta cash flow. That's what tech debt is. You decide to do something the wrong way, in a way that's gonna be hard to maintain in the future or hard to expand. You do it because it solves a problem right now. You got some customers who need feature X, you get'em feature X. Ideally, you continue growing your user base, which means you have more developers, which means you have the time to pay back that tech debt. Microvellum has said they're in a a, a mode of having to pay some of that tech debt down. Now you're right, they're inside another product. So when that other product makes changes, if Microvellum wants to support the version 2026 of that product, they have to make those changes also. And they don't, there's just no if, ands or buts about it. Like if they don't do it, then you can't have a version 2026. And that recently has included some, I think you probably saw there were some forum posts about, oh, I don't like how this, this control changed. That control changed. Well, Autodesk updated to a new version and those old controls don't work on it, so. If they can either do one of two things, they can put a whole bunch of work into trying to make that old control compatible with the future, which may not even be possible. Or they can use a new control from somebody and try to make it work close enough to the old control that people are familiar, but maybe they get a few new nice little features with it.
Jacob:Yep Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think not enough people, uh, understand that. Microvellum is a product that lives inside of somebody else's product. Ultimately, which the benefits we get is, hey, hey, everyone is with Auto, AutoCAD, Autodesk, DWG format, you get the full benefits of that. But the cons that come with that is we gotta play by their rules and we gotta play by what they still support and update and stuff. And so, um, I think a lot of the users that I see out there commenting it, it forget that context or ver, whereas a, like a the Mosaic or Cabinet Vision, they control the whole application. The pros of that is they control the whole application. The con of that is to make it what they make and it, they don't get the benefits of something that has such a large, uh, user base as, as a DWG format and stuff like that.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah. And you know what? That gets to the cloud versus desktop and they're, you know, if anybody ever tells you that they know the right software you should use without asking you a lot of questions, they're just trying to sell you something. There is no right software. What's the right car? There is no right car, right? It's the same here. So we now have a solution that's on-prem, desktop based, and a solution that's web based. There are pros and cons to them. There's no silver bullet. The web based has the pro that you don't have to deal with updates ever. You just use it every day and you have the newest version, right? Desktop has its own pros. We have to fight performance things to make it work fast enough on the web that you just don't even have to worry about on a desktop and honestly it's easier and faster to develop a desktop application. So there's pros and cons. We're good. We have both now and that's part of the power of this, this us getting together.
Jacob:So, uh, on a little bit further on that topic, you know, is, as, you know, and I know there's, always resistance to to change and fear surrounding change in, in our industry. Whether it be software, process, new machines, acquisitions, whatever it is, right. And, and in my opinion, I think woodworkers are sometimes some of the most, most stubborn to change, right. And as you alluded like Innergy changing every day. If you use it, you're getting the latest version of whatever updates you guys have pushed out. And so I'd imagine there's some benefit in that, in that your, your existing user base, is like they're getting little trickle every day as opposed to, hey, here's a whole new build We're releasing out three months later that has all these changes. So I'd imagine there's some benefit to that from the user standpoint is it's kind of like the, the frog in the pot as opposed to, um, most you know, kind of legacy standard software is like, Hey, here's a new build that you have to actively choose to install, and you're suddenly getting, I mean, we see it with Facebook or anything. Oh gosh, they changed the, the, UI and everybody for a week panics and complaints, then they move on. Right. So what do you feel though, that one, that that Innergy learned through your years of, of of putting out software and working with customers, how to manage change for your clients, and two, how do you think that that's going to transfer? Do you think there's anything you can, um, bring to Microvellum that, to improve that for, for the the user base?
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, it's a great question. So change management is the thing, and we are going through it ourselves right now. You know, no change is easy. We have, uh, we've been tackling that problem since the beginning, though. It was actually one of our founder's passions about what was gonna be different between Innergy and your normal software company. We, I don't know if you know this, but we're in the ERP space and over half of all ERP implementations fail in general. Okay? We have incredible retention. We have like a 96 9 something, uh, percent, Logo retention, which means 96% of all of our customers we've ever had are still with us. And most of the ones that aren't with us were either went out of business or were bought by another one of our customers. So, uh, you know, we tackled that problem. So when we implement with a customer, we start with a change model. We believe in the cotter change model and we're going through it ourselves. Can we help Microvellum with that in some way? I don't know. I mean, this, this purchase wasn't based on the idea that Microvellum needed any help, to be real honest with you. You know, we're, we're not, not coming at it that way at all. They, they do an amazing job. They also have very high, uh, measures on everything, retention, happiness, so. I do think that together there are things we can both learn from each other a hundred percent. Like we both had very painful lessons over the years that cost us a lot of money. And bringing those two things together, we can totally help each other.
Jacob:Yeah.
Jonah Coleman:But the change process is always hard. So the, the first, the most important part of the change model that we preach is you have to create a sense of urgency. You know, nobody ever changes until the pain of staying the same is more than the pain of changing. They'll just keep doing what they're doing if they're fat and happy. And so we're having to do this ourselves as a company. We're going to adopt EOS as a framework inside Innergy, and we're creating this sense of urgency around that. Yeah,
Jacob:Yep. That's, awesome. Yeah, we we recently imlpemented EOS last year as well, and it's been huge. And speaking a little bit to the Microvellum side because I've, I've, as you know, I've I've been, a um a Microvellum user for, I don't know, 12 some years. Um, I'm still a customer to this day. And for those who are are more recent users or customers of Microvellum, um, you may not know how much, how much they've improved on change management, on, on product stability, on support and those types of things. But that has been a lot of the work that Uh, David, I credit a lot with him. Um, you know, he's actually a second owner of the company and, um, he took what was already, you know, a, a, a great product, but really they focused on stabilization and focusing in on narrowing their focus on, hey, let's stabilize the product at the core functions of, of what people use it for. And even with their library, they used to release a new library almost every year. And it was like, you had to choose, okay, do I wanna make the jump this year? And over the last three or four years with the Foundation library, it's, Hey, we're gonna stop making new new libraries. We are gonna make one that we can continue to improve and, and update. And so I think a lot of times customers and users, they, they lose that big picture view of, oh my gosh, this this little minor inconvenience is what I'm focused on now and it's a pain for me today. But, Microvellum as a has come very far and there is a great deal of sustain, uh, stability in their build updates and their, and their support. Um, and how transparent they are with that, which I think also is a lot of why people don't realize that you guys, they have that voice. There's a lot of users on there that most of'em are, are, hey, we're helping each other. We're positive, and there's some really good Facebook groups as well. But, um, sometimes, you know, I think people focus on the, the the cons the complaints and the things like that. But as you said, they as a standalone product, I think they did, they do a great job at this. And I'm, I'm eager to see and excited to see how you guys, um, mutually benefit from that.
Jonah Coleman:Well, and it's, and it's funny, um, my job, I'm the head of product. As a product person, my job is to tell everybody no all the time, but in such a way that they're still happy with me at the end, right? Because there's no amount of resources we could bring to bear that could possibly satisfy all the things everybody wants, Right. And so it's fun when we got into the cultural stuff with our Microvellum, uh, friends, now. You know, we had the conversation about voice of the customer. How do we listen to the voice of the customer? And one of the things I heard from everybody there was the thing that excites them the most about this is having the resources to do more things that customers asked for. They've been in the period you mentioned, where they're trying to, to, you know, stabilize whatever word you used and that didn't allow'em to do as much of that stuff. And they're looking forward to a future where there's more of that. I am gonna share the story of this shirt though.
Jacob:Yeah.
Jonah Coleman:So as a team, before we got the deal done, we were headed out to Microvellum and I decided how cool would it be to show up in a shirt that had both of our logos on it, right? But it was too late to order any shirts, so I looked high and low. I talked to 15 different shirt places one day, and I finally found a place that's like two miles from my house that can do whatever shirt you want and whatever quantity in like an hour. Like the LensCrafters of, of custom shirts, which is really fun by itself. But that's my thing now. I, I'm getting like a custom shirt for everything. Every event I ever go to, I'm going with a custom shirt of some kind. It's, uh, it's kinda fun. But we showed up and I brought, I don't know, 40 of'em or so, and we distributed'em to all the people there. It was, it was really fun. We did, we ended up doing, you know, demos of our products to each other. And remember, we hadn't actually signed anything yet. So we had the whole Microvellum team there and we're walking'em through Innergy and you could see their eyes getting huge.'Cause they're like, this is so cool. And then we were showing Microvellum to our people. And our people are thinking, it's so cool. And it's the energy I, I can't emphasize enough. Like we don't know precisely where we're gonna go. We just know we're gonna go somewhere great.
Jacob:Awesome. That's exciting.
Jonah Coleman:Which is a weird pitch, by the way, when you're trying to get someone to write a really big check.
Jacob:Yeah. Gonna be great, but I can't tell you how or why, but it's gonna be great.
Jonah Coleman:Uhhuh, but we got there. We have, uh, luckily our board is, is they, they have the vision. So,
Jacob:So talking, shifting a little little bit now back to Innergy design. You know, we talked a year, year and a half ago, um, when you guys were, you know, launching to a small set of customers at at that point. And so since we last spoke on the podcast, which you probably don't remember exactly where things were, but it's grown a lot and it's improved a lot. You have done a ton of development. Can you talk about where Innergy design stands today?
Jonah Coleman:Sure. Yeah. It has grown a lot. We have a much larger team than basically anybody that I know of in this space working on this. So, so much stuff. I will tell you, we had our customer summit, uh, and you attended and we were racing the clock, hoping to close this deal with Microvellum. So that instead of announcing the launch of design, we would launch or we would announce the Microvellum because it does change our design, uh, roadmap a little bit because we wanna incorporate these other technologies. So for example, we launched it there and I got up in front of 500 people who were there with me and launched it. And then, you know, a week later I sent an email and said, Hey, here's the news, and we're unlaunching, which marketing told me never to say that, but I said it anyway. Uh, you know, we stopped, we we're not charging our users for it because we had to pull, we pulled our own nesting and machine code out while we start working with our new partner on it. And it does, it, it does affect things. So I'll tell you where we're at now is by the end of this year, the, the plan is that with design, it will have, uh, I'm gonna say capability parity with, you know, the major things. So you can do everything in design that you could do in any of the other software package. Right. Uh, may not have every last little feature'cause some people have been building stuff for 40 years. Uh, but you'll be able to do everything right now. You can do a lot of it, but we, we yanked our nesting and machine code and what good is an engineering software that doesn't have nesting and machine code. Right?
Jacob:Yeah.
Jonah Coleman:So that's the end of the year. Next year we'll work on, you know, hopefully building in this, you know, sharing the product library from Microvellum, that kind of thing. What I want you to be able to do, Uh, is literally maintain a Microvellum library inside Innergy. So that means, you know, spreadsheet features and features to do bulk editing and edit the database type stuff.
Jacob:So for people that are today,'cause I, I, I hear from this a lot. um, Is people that are asking, as I'm sure they do, you and anybody in this industry is like, what software should I buy? and I'm sure this comes up a lot now, just, well, should I buy Microvellum or or should I on on Should I. Should I. buy or should I, you know, like, what should I do? And there is no single right answer, obviously. Right? There's a lot you gotta know about customers. But, um, for example, at the summit there's an an existing um, customer that I I introduced to Microvellum. I said, Hey, this would be a great solution for you, regardless of what happens with the design. I'm confident, I think, for you, for their you that, um, I think it would be great. So for those people that are thinking like, Hey, I'm about about to buy Microvellum, but I don't what the future holds. What would you say to those people?
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, a hundred percent. Great question. And you can imagine that day one, I got probably 40 emails along these lines. Yeah. Uhhuh. So I came up with a, a pretty good answer pretty quick. We wholeheartedly recommend Microvellum. All right. Innergy, nobody's gonna be using our design product until towards the end of the year to do anything real. Okay. Uh, and. If in design, you're gonna be able to use all the investment that you've made into library customization, it's a pretty good path. Now, if, you know you wanna be on the cutting edge in, in a year or two, this is a hundred percent a path to get there. And so I tell everybody, I mean, you should, you should a hundred percent jump into Microvellum these days. When we get there for people who want to use both or transition from one to the other, we will have some sort of a deal to get some credit for what you've spent. That won't be a problem. Um, again, we're all about raving fans and, and we're not gonna make anybody buy anything over, but, but the, you know, 60 or whatever, a hundred K that you spend on Microvellum for a big shop is is not gonna be anything that you need to worry about losing or being a waste or something like that, because it's not. And uh, you mentioned the forums, Microvellums forums are free. So if you're interested in it, go sign up. There's a lot of really smart people talking about general industry things, but you can also learn the good, the bad, and the ugly about Microvellum. I was
Jacob:Yes.
Jonah Coleman:Forum user from way back when when I was and wasn't a Microvellum user.
Jacob:Yes. Yeah, if, if, you you don't know, on that note, Microvellum is one of the only, I think that their forum is completely open. You don't have to be a customer, you don't have to be a paid subscription user or subscriber or anything. You can just go create an an account and start commenting, posting, or reading. Um, as well as, uh, their knowledge base. There's a ton of resources on on there. If you are interested in finding out more Um, And you can talk to smart
Jonah Coleman:people like Jacob and annoying people like Jonah.
Jacob:Yes. And I think there are a lot of, of both, um, of all types of people that are new users, experienced users, Innergy users, non-Innergy users, um, and then yes, absolutely too, if people are are thinking about buying Microvellum, I think that that that's. If anything, if you were the fence before, um, I I would think you should be more confident today. Yeah.
Jonah Coleman:If unless we're, if we're not doing our, if we're doing our job right, you should actually be, it should be more exciting and should help you make your decision even better to move off of whatever else you're on, onto Microvellum because it's a very good product and it has a very strong future and its sister product also has a strong future and will have interoperable data.
Jacob:Yep. Awesome. So, um, shifting a little bit more big picture on the industry outside of just Innergy and Microvellum, right. Um, you know, and what are your, your kind of hopes and thoughts for the future? What do you see? kind of in the next five to 10 years, obviously, I think, you know, there's a lot of talk about uh, software development, a lot of talk about integration with AI. Um, and, but as you, as you've mentioned before, our industry are laggards, right? And generally, We're gonna kind of wait and see, hey, what's working in these other industries before we really make the jump? you know, do you see, what do you kind of see on the, on the future that people can expect, um, or that you hope to to see?
Jonah Coleman:Yeah, great question. So just engineering, we're talking, right? I do see, uh. We're never gonna be able to make enough engineers to keep up with the demand. Just as an industry, we're not good at it. Uh, you have podcasts on it. I've given talks on it. As an industry, we're horrible at making engineers. So there will always be enough work for us engineers in this industry. People should not be worried that whatever technology that comes along is going to replace them. Uh,'cause I just don't think it will. I do think you're gonna see technologies that are faster. The current engineering, I mean, you've heard my spiel. The current engineering state of engineering software is too slow and we need, we need it to be faster, so we're gonna do some stuff to, to fix that along. I'm sure other people will too. It's gonna get faster. I think you'll see it more outsourcing. I think you're gonna see people having more drafting and engineering outsourcing. And again, if you're an engineer, it's not gonna come at the expense of your job. This is going to be on top of what companies have in-house, right? The real problem with our industry is that it's so lumpy. Sales comes in giant lumps. You don't get the same amount of sales every week, and so somehow you have to smooth out that lumpiness of the incoming work into something steady for your factory floor. Right. It happens in engineering, and nobody could have enough engineers to staff for those peaks. You would, you'd run outta money too quick. So I think. Our industry, that's, that's historically been pretty reluctant to outsource, we're gonna get good at it. That's what I think is gonna happen. And that's gonna be technology. It's gonna be change management, which you, you got back to before and it's going to be a shift mostly in mindset.
Jacob:Awesome.
Jonah Coleman:Ai. I will, I will, I will cut you off. Sorry. AI, I'm very excited about. We, we've got, uh, what. 12, 13, 15% of our workforce working on AI features for our software. Um, right now we have AI embedded you can in our engineering software and design. You can, you can ask it questions right now. Very shortly you'll be able to ask it to make changes. So, uh, my favorite example is find me all the countertops that are 28 11 sixteens off the floor. If there's base cabinets below'em, make'em 28 and a half inches tall. Make the countertop inch and a half. How often do we do that? Road Bs? Lots.
Jacob:Yeah.
Jonah Coleman:A computer can do that.
Jacob:Yeah.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah.
Jacob:A little bit of a, a plug Jonah and I will be, if you are a are an AWI member, even if you're not. The Spring Leadership in the first week of May, um, Jonah and I will actually be doing a panal talking about just this, the future of our industry, where we've come from and, and kind of what we see the future in, in interacting with the audience and kind of in getting the audience's perspective on what they see the future, um, in the next five to 10 years of our industry.
Jonah Coleman:And, and just for everybody, Jacob ruined my, my big plan. I wanted to do a back to the future themed thing where like a DeLorean flops out and I pop out as Doc Brown and I grab Jacob and I'm like, I'm here to save you from making a mistake in the millwork industry.
Jacob:It or may not still happen. Come show up to see. Yeah. Um. Awesome. And so what, on the flip side of that though, um, a lot is gonna stay the same. What do you see? I mean, you mentioned there's still gonna need to be a huge need for engineers. That need is not going away, but the need for capacity is growing in, in our ability to, to produce engineers is still less than what we we have demand for, right.
Jonah Coleman:A hundred percent.
Jacob:Is there anything else that you see being, uh, consistent and staying the same in the future?
Jonah Coleman:Uh, so I'm gonna talk specifically about the two companies that I'm connected to here today for a minute. Focus on education. That was one of the things that really brought us to Microvellum. You probably know this, but that's Innergy's defining competitive, uh, difference. That's, that's, that's the thing. We think 50% of our value is in education, not just about software, but about the industry as a whole. And we're hoping that we can kind of, um, talk our Microvellum partners into more education and trying to help build these things. I loved Tech Con and there hasn't been one for a few years. It would be amazing if there was another Tech Con, right? But even bigger and, and Jacob, you attended our education. We do education big, right? We had 500 people there. Some pretty professional stuff. Um, God, I could imagine that world in the engineering space. And that would be amazing. But otherwise it's gonna be more of the same. It's impossible to get enough floor shop floor people. It's impossible to get an at least really skilled ones. It's impossible to get enough engineers. It's hard to get enough other office, but, but you can do it. So technology is the answer to a lot of those problems. And it's not gonna come at the expense of people's jobs. It's just gonna let us do more with the same amount of people we already have.
Jacob:Yes.
Jonah Coleman:That's what I see.
Jacob:Yeah, I think education is key and you guys do do it better than anybody in the industry. uh, I saw it firsthand and I, and I hear every day from, from raving that, that we both work with. Microvellum made a big, you know, leap in those, in that front over the last couple years as well, and they've been putting a lot of efforts into that. And I think that's what I'm most excited about, of the, the fusion of, of these two companies and the resources to be able to put behind that. Also every one of the problems that our industry has, you just said, I talked, spoke to, I think is really, um, improved by education. You know, whether it's getting more talent. And I think that's what generally our education sucks at is, is training and developing and educating people and so much kind of behind the, they all on work and it's, you don't think about it until, well, well, crap, I need to replace this person, or I need to to hire another person, but I don't know how I'm gonna train them. And so it's just throw them into it and they're gonna learn by doing. And education and, and kind of intentional creation of resources and thinking about how to do that makes that possible. And that's a big reason why so many of your customers, I think, think, stay and partnering with Innergy is you guys Enable that for them right out the get go. Hey, there's resources if, if, if, you know, if you're an Innergy customer, um, or Microvellum customer, they have resources that you can use to train, um, and onboard somebody that that is very entry level on how to do much their job. Um, and I think the more that we're able to, um, develop those resources, the the more beneficial it is for everybody. And two, um. I know so many of our our industry, uh, industry is used to, well, the way we do things is different from everybody else, so you can't train my people. And, and yes, historically that's true, but the more that we, uh, assimilate the tools that we use, the software. Software enables us to say, um, okay. If you work in this company in California, but you get hired to work for this company in Georgia and, and they both use use Innergy or they both use Microvellum, makes It that much easier to, to have, hey, they can leverage their experience and their knowledge to hit the ground running day one. And so that is the benefit to you as a business owner and to us as leaders in this industry of, of adopting and a growing software like Innergy or a Microvellum and standardizing things across our, even with machinery, we've seen it, hey if you know how to use a SCM machine a or whatever it is here, you can do the same thing there. And so I know that, uh, as woodworkers, we like to think everything we do is custom and, and, and handmade and unique to us. But there is a reason why every other industry standardize is some of these things with software, with technology, um, I I think is the biggest thing we do with that and, makes everyone's life much easier.
Jonah Coleman:And just for fun, I just came back from visiting a customer of ours, uh, Bednar. They're out in, uh, New York City and, you know, every one of our customers says, Hey, uh, they always start off with, we couldn't possibly have software because we're very custom. And these guys just built a 60 foot tall poly pocket. If you remember what those are from the eighties, for like, uh, I dunno, one of the Airbnb or something like that. I mean, it is like a full size and that's a piece of millwork. So that's my new Are you this custom thing?
Jacob:Yeah. That's amazing Well, Jonah, thank you again for coming on. As, as always, I'm excited to get this out and, and have people kind of hear, um, from you, uh, your thoughts on this acquisition and, and everything you've shared with us. For those that are listening, that are interested in finding out more, obviously we'll we'll link Innergy, we'll link Microvellum. Um, what is is there any other thing you'd like to share for them to, to find out more, talk to you, to Innergy, talk about what's going on.
Jonah Coleman:Yeah. Uh, you can always email me. The Microvellum forms are pretty amazing. There's a whole thread on there, and it's got the good, the bad, and the ugly about what does this mean. So if you're curious, join, I think you can probably just see it without even joining. but but check the thread out. It's got a personal letter from our CEO, from Microvellum CEO, explaining why they made this choice. Um, lots of people asking questions and being nervous and we getting some answers for'em. Reach out to any of us at Microvellum, Cabinet uh, uh, I
Jacob:Innergy,
Jonah Coleman:Messed up didn't I? I just started listing engineering softwares. Microvellum, Innergy. Energy. Yeah.
Jacob:Email cabinet Vision anyways.
Jonah Coleman:No. Yeah. Yes. Email them and ask about this merger. Yes.
Jacob:Yeah. Awesome. Well, again, always enjoy, uh, we get to chat and hang out Jonah. Um, and look to seeing you in a few weeks at uh, at at Spring Leadership.
Jonah Coleman:Fantastic. Thank you.
Jacob:Thanks.
