{"id":96918,"title":"Bidflow - AI Copilot for Electrical Estimating","tagline":"We use AI to help electricians compete for 4x more contracts","body":"Hi!\n\nWe’re [Jesse](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jc10/) and [Gautham](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gautham-ramachandran-74b5712a4/), and we’re building [Bidflow](https://usebidflow.com/) to help electricians bid on more jobs. Bidflow is an AI copilot that helps electrician companies sift through tedious documents and automate the repetitive work that goes into quoting a job.\n\nAsk: Do you know any electrical contractors? If so, introduce us at [founders@tryghostship.dev](mailto:founders@tryghostship.dev) or [book a demo with us](https://calendly.com/jessechoe10/demo-with-bidflow).\n\n# The Problem\n\nElectrical estimating - the process of figuring out how much an electrical construction project will cost is super tedious and can take anywhere from a few hours to months. Imagine reading through 500-page PDFs, counting hundreds of small symbols per page on 50 pages of complicated circuits, and manually entering thousands of numbers on slow, legacy software.\n\nElectrical estimators do this process everyday but manually, and most of the time, they lose the job by a small margin. Estimating is the only way electrical contractors make revenue, and they do it manually because one mistake can cost thousands of dollars and they need to be careful!\n\n# Our Solution\n\nBecause estimating is such a careful process, electrical contractors still do everything manually, especially because AI is hard to trust. That’s why we built Bidflow - an AI copilot for electrical estimating that serves as an assistant not a replacement.\n\nBidflow is designed with context to think like an electrician and most importantly, show the estimator “proof of work”, turning the estimators job more into reviewing the AI’s mistakes. We’re able to process all of your project documents and save you time in reading through hundreds of pages of fine print.\n\nBidflow also has the same features as the legacy softwares these estimators use, but it combines everything together, making it an all-in-one platform that also saves estimators time switching between the softwares.\n\n\u003chttps://youtu.be/GzvbzYwVzZM\u003e\n\n### Our Team\n\nWe decided to target electrical contractors because we both have family in the industry who’ve complained about how slow work has been. We then decided to go door-to-door in the Bay Area and got our first design partner.\n\nJesse (CEO, right) - **Top 1%** competitive coder in the US; **Jane Street** extern. Gautham (CTO, left) - Bootstrapped to **$120K** at **16**.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=96918\u0026key=user_uploads/1512811/3c223688-5b55-49b7-b1bf-e08439b4b1e4)\n\n### Why Now?\n\nConstruction is picking up in the United States, and the demand for electrical work is going up due to the data center boom. New data centers are being built left and right, meaning there’s a lot of electrical construction projects in the market. A huge boost in estimating efficiency would give the faster electrical contractors a huge advantage in winning jobs, and with AI agents getting better now more than ever, now is the time to bring AI into the electrical estimating workforce.","slug":"PDC-bidflow-ai-copilot-for-electrical-estimating","created_at":"2026-01-19T04:48:20.442Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T01:54:43.318Z","total_vote_count":15,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/PDC-bidflow-ai-copilot-for-electrical-estimating","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":30620,"name":"Bidflow","slug":"bidflow","url":"https://usebidflow.com","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/fb5bdff2af780675e7950b4a0fb5dcad2dfdc802.png","batch":"Winter 2026","industry":"Real Estate and Construction","tags":["SaaS","Computer Vision","Construction","Infrastructure"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30620"}}