Why I'm Building an Uber for Construction (and Why It Started with a Cottage)

If you read my last post, you know I’m in the middle of renovating a thatched-roof cottage above Lake Balaton. We had photos, floor plans, mood boards, budget range, timeline, and a brief clear enough that nobody had to guess what we meant.

Then I hit the wall. The kind where you spend weeks trying to find the right architect, the right builder, the right anyone, and realise the process is broken at the first step.

Weeks of dead-end messages

It started innocently. I posted in a few Facebook groups. I asked friends. I asked friends of friends. I messaged architects whose portfolios I liked on Instagram. I filled out contact forms on websites that hadn’t been updated since 2014.

Most messages went unanswered. The ones that did respond often hadn’t read what I sent. One architect quoted me for a full new build. Another asked if I needed help with “office interiors.” Someone offered to install a pool, which would be impressive given that the property sits on a hillside vineyard.

The part that really stung: we did find architects. Twice. Both through personal recommendations from people I trust. The kind of referral that’s supposed to be the gold standard.

We worked with the first one. The quality was terrible. Went back to the drawing board, found a second through another recommendation. Same story. Poor output, misaligned expectations, weeks of our time wasted each time.

I’m not a difficult client. I came with a detailed brief, professional-quality photos, floor plans, mood boards, a clear budget range, a timeline. If anything I made it too easy. And even when the recommendation system “worked”, the result was still disappointing. Twice.

Why word-of-mouth fails everyone

What I slowly realised is that the problem isn’t me being picky. The whole market is broken, and worse than I’d assumed, because even the standard advice (ask someone you trust for a recommendation) doesn’t actually fix it.

Booking a ride: open an app, see who’s nearby, check the rating, tap a button. Finding a restaurant: search, read reviews, look at photos, book a table. Hiring someone to renovate your kitchen: ask your neighbour, scroll through a Facebook group, hope for the best. And even when you get a name from someone you trust, you have no way to verify whether that person is right for your project.

The information gap is brutal. As a homeowner you have no idea what a fair price is, what a realistic timeline looks like, or whether the person you’re hiring has ever done anything like your project. As a professional you’re drowning in tire-kickers and poorly scoped requests, spending hours on site visits that go nowhere, competing on price because there’s no way to compete on quality.

Nobody is having a good time.

What the contractors told me

I started talking to contractors. Plumbers, electricians, architects, project managers. Anyone who’d give me 20 minutes. The same story came back over and over:

“I get 50 messages a week. Maybe 5 are real projects. The rest want a free quote and ghost me.”

“I spend more time writing proposals than doing actual work.”

“By the time I’ve done a site visit, taken measurements, and written up a quote, the client has gone with someone cheaper who’ll cut corners.”

The good professionals, the ones you actually want working on your home, are buried under noise. They don’t need more leads, they need better leads. Projects that are well-documented, fairly budgeted, ready to go.

I had exactly that for my Balaton cottage. Fully documented, well-budgeted, ready-to-go. I still couldn’t connect with the right person efficiently.

Building Baubiber

I’m a developer. When I see a broken process, my instinct is to build a tool. So I did.

It’s called Baubiber, a mashup of “Bau” (German for construction) and “Biber” (beaver). It’s a side project, not a company with a pitch deck and a funding round. I built it because this problem made me angry enough to open a repo.

The idea is simple enough to be annoying: match renovation projects to professionals based on skills, location, availability, and past work, instead of making homeowners beg the internet for names.

The flow:

You take photos of what needs fixing or renovating, and the app runs them through AI to work out the type of job, estimate the scope, and generate a structured brief. No more vague descriptions, and no forgetting to mention that the ceiling is four metres high.

Baubiber then matches your project to professionals who actually do that kind of work, in your area, currently free. Not 200 search results. A short list.

The professionals see rich, well-documented projects: photos, AI analysis, scope, budget range. They decide in seconds whether it’s worth their time. When they’re interested, they submit a proper offer. You compare offers side by side. You pick the one that fits. Done.

The AI does the filtering upfront

There are platforms out there. MyHammer, Houzz, various local directories. I’ve used them. The issue is that most of them are lead-generation tools that blast your request to everyone and let the market sort it out. That’s how you end up with the pool guy quoting on your interior renovation.

Baubiber is different because the AI layer filters upfront. By the time a professional sees your project, it’s already been analysed, categorised, and matched. By the time you see an offer, the professional has already reviewed detailed documentation of your project.

Volume was never the point. One good match beats fifty mediocre ones.

The other thing I care about is transparency. You can see what similar projects cost in your area and what a professional’s past work actually looks like, so both sides have enough to make a confident call without the usual three weeks of back-and-forth.

Early days

It’s early. The app is live, people are using it, and the sharpest feedback has come from professionals who are tired of paying for bad leads. A few contractors told me they could decide in under a minute whether a Baubiber project was worth quoting. That is the bar.

I’m not chasing a unicorn here. I just have a problem I want solved, and it turns out a lot of other people have the same one. Every time I mention it at a dinner party, someone says “oh god, I’ve been looking for a good electrician for months.” Every single time.

The cottage becomes project one

The irony isn’t lost on me. I started building Baubiber because I couldn’t find an architect for my Balaton cottage. The cottage renovation, project Hegylakó as we call it, is now one of the first real projects on the platform. If this works the way I think it can, the next person standing on a hilltop with photos, measurements, and a folder of references won’t have to go through what I went through.

They’ll take photos, let the system write the brief, and get a shortlist before the search turns into a second job.

For now it’s a side project, a lot of late nights, and a growing hunch that the first step of renovation can be less stupid than asking a Facebook group for names.

Building or renovating something? Let’s compare war stories. X / LinkedIn