Nobody Knows the Number
In restoration, you don't get paid when the work is done. You get paid when the fight ends. Why we built Wave, from a family that lived it.
There's a moment I've lived a thousand times. A homeowner is standing in two inches of water, and they ask the only question that matters: how much is this going to cost?
And the answer our industry usually gives is: we'll work it out with your insurance.
That's not an answer. That's a stall. But it's often the only honest answer we have.
A final estimate will always evolve as demolition and drying reveal what was hidden. The problem is that today, even the first priced scope can take a trained specialist four to eight hours in software that takes weeks to learn. By the time the number exists, work has started and important decisions have already been made.
So the homeowner authorizes work without knowing the likely cost or what remains unknown. Sometimes insurance does not cover it, and a family gets surprised with a five- or ten-thousand-dollar bill they never saw coming. They suffer for our inefficiency.
I know this because it's my family's business.
My parents came from Mexico, built a company from nothing, and used the proceeds to buy a restoration franchise in Southern California almost twenty years ago. My brother and I run it today. We've grown every year since 2020. Across our family businesses, we're projected to do eight figures this year. Better team. Better systems. Better everything.
And the cash hasn't gotten better.
Here's what nobody tells you about this industry: past a couple million in insurance volume, you don't just run a restoration company. You run a bank.
You finance ten, twenty, sometimes forty projects at a time, out of your own pocket, at zero interest, for insurance carriers worth billions. In our experience, payment commonly takes three to eight weeks. Disputed or complex files can take ten to twenty.
We just got paid for a fire we billed in 2024. We followed up nearly every day.
And this is normal.
While you wait, you fly blind. Your P&L can show one story while your bank account tells another. Insurance receivables remain subject to adjustment after the work has been performed. In our own operation, carriers have often paid sixty or seventy percent of what we billed first, leaving us to chase the remainder. Your receivables report begins to look less like money and more like a wish list.
I learned how deep this goes while evaluating an acquisition. The owner was depositing two hundred thousand dollars a month. Underwriting loved this. But many of those deposits were checks from jobs completed anywhere from a few weeks to a year earlier. There was no clean way to separate money earned by the current operation from old receivables finally turning into cash.
This industry is full of smoke. You can grow, improve the operation, and do excellent work without knowing how efficiently today's work will turn into tomorrow's cash.
I don't think the people at insurance companies are villains. The broader U.S. property and casualty industry has spent roughly a dollar in losses and underwriting expenses for every dollar of earned premium in several recent years. Carriers face real constraints too.
That's exactly the point.
The homeowner signs without clarity. The contractor takes the risk and finances the work. The carrier, trying to control loss costs, relies on a review process that creates more delay and expense for everyone.
Each party is behaving rationally. Together, they produce a result nobody wants.
By its owner's own account, one estimating system is used in nine out of ten property claims. When that much of a market standardizes around one system, its workflow shapes how the entire industry works.
The problem is not simply that the software exists. The problem is that the estimate often arrives after the work begins and the important decisions have already been made.
Then it is written privately, sent across a wall, reviewed, disputed, and revised. Every round trip adds time. Every delay adds more float. Every month of float makes the next disagreement harder.
When the first usable number arrives late, every party becomes the villain in someone else's story.
So here's what we believe, and what we built Wave to do:
The first number should exist on day one.
Day one does not mean the final invoice can never change. Hidden conditions exist. Coverage questions remain. A drying plan evolves with the readings.
It means a documented, priced, reviewable estimate exists while decisions can still change.
The homeowner should understand the likely cost and what remains unknown. The contractor should know the scope and price before taking on the risk. The carrier should receive something it can review while the facts are still fresh, not weeks after the work began.
That is what Wave does today.
A technician can talk through a residential or commercial water loss on site. Wave turns that field scope into a complete, editable estimate with regional pricing and supporting notes, typically in about fifteen minutes. The senior estimator reviews the work instead of starting from zero.
An earlier estimate will not eliminate every disagreement. Wave does not decide coverage, reveal hidden damage, or force every carrier to agree.
But it removes one of the most avoidable sources of delay: beginning the work days before a usable estimate exists.
When the number arrives earlier, homeowners can make better-informed decisions. Contractors can price the risk sooner. Carriers can review a documented scope before weeks of assumptions harden into conflict.
The work has a chance to speak for itself. Being good at it has a chance to be enough.
I spent years thinking we just had to run our company better. We did. It helped, but it did not close the gap between doing the work and knowing what that work would become.
The problem was not only inside our company. It was built into the way the industry works.
We built Wave to close the first gap: from field observation to a reviewable estimate. Our ambition is larger. A day-one estimate should become a day-one agreement, and a day-one agreement should lead to faster resolution.
But it starts with putting the first number in the room early enough to matter.
And we're not going to stop at software.
If you've ever chased a check for work you finished months ago, you already know why.
Bring one recent water or mold claim. Build it in Wave and compare it line by line.
Wave is live. Build your first three estimates free. No credit card required.
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