# Marcus Dillard, Owner at Dillard Custom Millwork (11 employees, Boise ID) — read of Woodshop AI, May 10 2026

> 18 years running a custom millwork and cabinet shop. Still estimating in Excel. My son is 9 and plays travel ball, so Saturday mornings are not available for software demos.

## How I got here

Typed "cabinet shop bidding software" into Google last Tuesday after I lost a kitchen job because my bid came in 11 days late. One of the results had "woodworking" and "AI" in the title and I figured it was worth three minutes. Clicked from the organic results, not an ad.

## What I clicked first

"Win more jobs without grinding on estimates" got me. That phrase is doing real work because grinding on estimates is exactly the right verb. I spend four to six hours on a mid-size kitchen bid. If something actually cuts that down, I'd pay for it tomorrow. The sub-bullets under Smart Bid Generation are also specific enough to sound real: "finish rates, material costs, and margin targets." Those are actual things I track. Not bad.

## Where I paused

The scoring panel stopped me cold. "63/100 Adoptability. $-18,400 Year-1 take-home (Fermi). 1 in 6 Meaningful-success odds."

I read that three times. Is this... for me? Am I buying software or buying an idea to start a software company? Because those are two very different things and by the middle of the page I genuinely had no idea which one I was doing.

Then I hit this: "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet. We shipped the strategy package; you ship the customer conversations."

So there is no product. I'm being pitched the concept of a product. And the "Adopt the build $99-$199" tier includes "working code starter" which means I'd have to build it myself, or hire someone, which is a completely different decision than buying SaaS.

## What I distrusted

Two things.

First, the hero copy is written for a woodshop owner like me, but the rest of the page is clearly for a developer or operator looking to launch a startup. The page is playing both audiences at once and landing with neither. "Who this is for: B2B operators looking for productized point-solutions, agency owners reselling to clients." That's not me. I build cabinets. I don't know what a productized point-solution is.

Second, the Fermi math is transparently negative and I appreciate the honesty but it creates a weird cognitive dissonance. The hero says "win more jobs" and the data panel immediately says the business model has a 16% chance of working and loses money in year one. If I'm a shop owner, that's irrelevant to me. If I'm an entrepreneur, it should be a red flag. Showing it so prominently on the page is either very honest or very confused about who they're selling to.

The feature bullets like "Ship jobs on time, every time" are also the kind of line that triggers my skeptic reflex. Every time? No software ships jobs on time every time.

## What would convince me

If I'm a shop owner and this were an actual live product: one screen-recorded walkthrough of a real cabinet shop estimator using it to generate a kitchen bid from scratch. Not a demo environment. A real shop with real lumber prices and their actual labor rate. I want to see how long it takes and what the output PDF looks like.

If I'm being sold the idea to build: a single testimonial from someone who bought the dossier or code starter and actually launched it, with a number attached ("got to $4K MRR in 90 days"). One real outcome beats all the Fermi math.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. Is there a working product I can log into today, or am I buying materials to build one myself?
2. What estimating software have your beta users come from, and what did they actually use before this?
3. The page shows "Supplier integrations" under inventory. Which suppliers? Because my lumber yard still faxes invoices.

## Verdict: dismissive

Not because the underlying idea is bad -- the pain is real and "grinding on estimates" is a line that earns attention. But the page is confused about who it's talking to, and by the time I hit the Wishdeal Factory scoring panel I realized I wasn't shopping for software, I was looking at a startup kit. A shop owner who Googled "bidding software" bounces here. An entrepreneur who wants to build for shop owners might stay, but they shouldn't be arriving via that search term.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-10. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*