"The first time a customer said 'yeah, I just blue beamed it' - that was a moment."

When your product becomes a verb, you know you've built something legendary.

In today's episode of Bricks, Bucks & Bytes, we had Don Jacob, Co-founder of Bluebeam, and we got to learn about the wild 24-year journey from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to building one of the most iconic products in construction tech... and the future of AI-powered collaboration that's coming next.

Tune in to find out about:

✅ Why Don left the premier space agency in the world to "sell dog food online" (and how that decision led to Bluebeam)

✅ The secret sauce behind Bluebeam's legendary status: "When the phone rang, we picked up" - accessibility over everything

✅ How bootstrap funding became their competitive advantage and forced the discipline that built the company DNA

✅ Why we're living through the 1999 internet moment all over again with AI - and how Bluebeam Max is positioning for it

Bonus: the story of how a random bar encounter in Boston made this whole interview happen (thanks Tanya from Nemetschek!)

Don's been at this for 24 years and the energy hasn't dimmed. If anything, he's more fired up about what's ahead than ever before.

Listen now on Spotify and Youtube 🎧 Link in the comments!

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Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:40 Introduction and Serendipitous Connections

03:50 The Legacy of Bluebeam and Its Founding

11:09 From NASA to Bluebeam: A Journey Through Innovation

17:27 Democratizing Design Data: The Birth of Bluebeam

26:13 The Evolution of Bluebeam: From PDF to Collaboration

33:06 Simplicity in Software: The Key to Bluebeam's Success

36:41 The Core DNA of Bluebeam

38:32 Evolution of Bluebeam's Product Offerings

41:28 Collaboration and the Introduction of Studio

43:20 Acquisition by Nemechek: A Strategic Move

45:58 Lessons Learned from Building Great Products

50:09 Leadership and Team Dynamics

55:15 The Unbound Event and Future Innovations

56:32 Integrating AI into Bluebeam's Offerings