Breeasy was a landscaping marketplace connecting property managers with local service providers. When I joined, the entire operation ran on HubSpot — order tracking, customer communication, workflow management, everything.
It worked. Until it didn't.
The problem with renting your operations
HubSpot is a great CRM. But we weren't using it as a CRM. We were using it as an operating system. Every work order, every service provider assignment, every status update, every customer communication — all jammed into a tool that was designed for sales pipelines and email marketing.
The result was a constant translation layer. Our actual business process didn't map to HubSpot's data model, so we were always working around it. Custom properties on custom properties. Automations that broke when someone changed a field. Reports that required exporting to spreadsheets to actually make sense.
And we were paying for the privilege. HubSpot isn't cheap when you're using it at scale, and every feature we needed that didn't exist was either an integration (more money) or a workaround (more time).
What I built instead
I rebuilt the entire operational platform on Bubble — a no-code tool that let me design exactly the system we needed. Not a generic CRM with our business logic bolted on. A purpose-built platform that mirrored how we actually worked.
The order management system tracked work orders from request through assignment, scheduling, completion, and invoicing — in exactly the sequence our business followed. Service providers had their own view showing only what they needed to see. Property managers could track progress without calling us.
Then I built a mobile app for the field teams. They could receive jobs, update progress, upload photos, and log their own work. It wasn't Jobber — it was Jobber-lite, built specifically for our workflow.
The whole thing cost a fraction of what we were paying HubSpot. And more importantly, we owned it. If we wanted to change the workflow, I changed it. If we needed a new report, I built it. No waiting for a vendor's feature roadmap.
What changed
Three things happened immediately.
First, the team stopped fighting the tools. When the platform matches how you actually work, people use it. They don't create shadow spreadsheets. They don't send Slack messages asking "where is this order?" because the answer is on the screen.
Second, we could see the business clearly for the first time. Custom dashboards showing exactly the metrics that mattered — jobs per provider, completion rates, time from request to fulfillment. Not generic "deals in pipeline" charts.
Third, the operational knowledge stayed in the platform instead of in people's heads. When a new team member started, the system itself taught them the process. The workflow was the documentation.
The ownership principle
This experience is why data ownership became central to how I think about building technology for businesses. When you rent your operations from a SaaS platform, you're one pricing change, one policy update, or one acquisition away from having to rebuild everything.
When you own your platform, you own your process. You own your data. You own the ability to change course without asking permission.
That's what I build now at ohdavid — custom platforms where the business owns everything. Not because custom is always better than off-the-shelf, but because for businesses that have outgrown their tools, the cost of fighting a generic platform is higher than the cost of building the right one.
