SiteDesk by Beagle runs the back office admin for builders and tradesmen, automatically creating social media content, published on Beagle to get the next job booked.
Each side of a job wants something different.
The tradesman
Tradesmen want to get the next job, do it well, get paid, and go home. Not paperwork, not tech.
The homeowner
Homeowners want to see real work, book fast, and be looked after.
Builders don't have the resources to meet the demands of the modern customers.
The tradesman gets his evenings and weekends back. There is nothing new to learn.
The evenings and weekends that were set aside for admin and marketing are given back to the tradesman. No new app, nothing to learn. He sends us a text or voice WhatsApp and his admin is done and next job booked in.
SiteDesk
Takes the tradesman's whole back office and makes the posts that bring in the next job.
Beagle Direct
Shows each firm's real work and books the right tradesman at the right time.
The technology has only just become good enough.
Agentic AI has only just got good enough to reliably run the entire back office operations of a small business, at the same time affording that operation via a simple chat interface like WhatsApp. Just a year ago, neither was possible.
Good enough
AI can now run the whole back office of a small business, and do it reliably on real jobs.
Affordable and simple
It runs through WhatsApp, the app he already uses every day, so there is nothing new to open.
The product already works. One firm is using it on real jobs.
Our first pilot is G.L. Smith & Sons, a family building firm in East Hertfordshire, established 1987 and run by Dale since 1996. It went live on day one and has been running since early June. Dale, who runs it, liked it so much he is now a co-founder.
In the founder's words
He repeatedly asked me to promise he can keep using it even if the business does not succeed, because it changed his life - not his business, his life. He's now my business partner!
Six more pilots are lined up.
One is live. The rest are pending. None have started yet.
Two founders. Complementary experience.
Joel Smalley
Builds the product. Founder of Maxy, the platform SiteDesk runs on, and co-founder of SiteDesk. Around twenty years in quantitative finance, trading and pricing derivatives at JPMorgan, CIBC World Markets, Daiwa, BGC Partners and Tullett Prebon, then about a decade in Web3 and AI. Now builds agentic AI systems and consults on AI through Rubytech. MBA from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and a postgraduate diploma in quantitative finance from the University of London. Based in London.
Dale Smith
Brings the trade, and the construction and design knowledge. Co-founder of SiteDesk. Managing Director of G.L. Smith & Sons, a small family building firm in East Hertfordshire, established 1987 and run by him since 1996. He handles tendering, oversees projects, organises trusted sub-contractors and manages the project finances. He is also an architectural draughtsman at Seven Nine Design Services since 2014, drawing up CAD plans for planning and building-regulations approval on extensions, conversions, alterations, remodelling and small commercial work. Over twenty years of hands-on construction experience.
Where the customers are. 855,000 family builders and trades, the largest, least-digitised end of UK business.
our segment
How we get customers.
The founder works full-time on the product, support and sales, and sold the first customer himself. That customer liked it so much he put money in, and now brings us more. We keep selling by word of mouth until we know it sells, then blitzscale with a specialist B2B sales team.
The product brings in the next customer on its own. Other sites hand a homeowner a list to ring round; Beagle Direct just books the job, and shows a tidy set of each tradesman's real work. Every job a firm runs feeds SiteDesk the photos and notes that become its progress reports, its billing and its proof of work, and that proof brings in the next job.
Two kinds of product sit either side of us. Neither does the whole job.
Runs from a screen
They all need work the tradesman does not want to do and is not set up to do.
Books the job and does the admin
Beagle Direct puts together the list of suitable, available tradesmen with their real work to show, then books the job in SiteDesk once the customer says yes. SiteDesk does all the admin from a text or voice note. The paperwork is done and the money is in the bank before he gets home for dinner.
Hand over a list to search
The homeowner reviews all the content, then rings round to get the booking confirmed.
The longer a firm uses SiteDesk, the more it builds up inside it.
The work builds up
SiteDesk holds the diary, the rates and what the firm can do. That is what makes a job bookable, and it is what fills Beagle Direct. Every job the firm runs adds to its proof of work, and that proof brings in the next job.
It is hard to leave
Leaving means starting again from nothing. A firm that has run its quotes, its billing and its finished-work proof through SiteDesk does not want to build all that again somewhere else. So the longer they use it, the more they have built up, and the less they want to leave.
£150k buys six months to prove it sells. Then £350k pays for the scale-up.
The check at month six
Three things release the £350,000: 25+ customers with a clear path to 50, people leaving at only about ~10% a year, and 40%+ of new customers coming in on their own. If it has not shown it sells, the company is closed down cleanly, and the most an investor can lose is the £150,000 they put in.Stage two, around month six
£350,000 in, the team up to about 9, the sales team going full time, and Beagle Direct live. The booking fee is the money the network brings once it is running. We are not counting it yet, and it is no part of the six-month proof.
£150,000 for 15% of Beagle Direct Ltd. The terms are simple.
| Shareholder | Shares | % |
|---|---|---|
| Joel Smalley (founder) | 158 | 42.47% |
| Dale Smith (founder) | 158 | 42.47% |
| Seed investors | 56 | 15.05% |
| Total | 372 | 100% |
We expect to sell to a bigger company in five to eight years.
Bigger players are already buying in this space. The Access Group bought Tradify, the leading UK trades platform, in 2024. BigChange, a UK field-service platform, was valued at around £100m. JobLogic, another UK field-service platform, keeps buying up construction and field-service software, so it is a likely buyer too. A product like SiteDesk, in wide use and feeding a booking network the big players cannot bolt on later, is a credible buy at that kind of price. It does not have to stay in the UK. The same approach works in other countries, and going beyond the UK lifts the eventual sale price.