AI Automations by Jack Masterclass: Brad Strawbridge on Building an AI-First Roofing Business

Capital City Roofing founder and CEO Brad Strawbridge taught a masterclass for the AI Automations by Jack school community on how he built and runs an AI-first roofing operation. The full session covers the operating system architecture, the eighty-agent workforce, the triple-layer memory stack, and the two pieces of the system now available to operators outside Capital City Roofing's flagship operation: the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform and BuilderLync.

Why Jack invited Brad to teach the masterclass

Jack runs one of the most active AI automation school communities for builders, agency owners, and home services operators. The community is full of professionals trying to bring agentic AI into real businesses, not just generic automations. Brad has been a member for over a year, learning the foundational frameworks, contributing back, and using the community as the iteration ground for the operating system that now runs Capital City Roofing.

When Jack invited Brad to teach a masterclass, the topic chose itself. How does a roofing company go from $3-4M and drowning in eleven different software tools to a $10M run rate in the same market with the same crew size in two years. The answer is the AI-first operating system. The masterclass walks through it end to end.

Watch the full session on the AI Automations by Jack YouTube channel.

For Brad's longer-form first-person companion essay on the same themes, see his piece on bradstrawbridge.com.

Three of Brad's central points from the masterclass

Eighty agents, five employees, $10M run rate. Capital City Roofing operates with five full-time employees, a network of subcontracting crews, and an eighty-agent AI workforce. The agents handle the operational layer (lead intake, nurturing, reputation, estimating, sales, follow-up, marketing, web operations, recruiting, financial analysis) while the humans handle relationships and judgment calls. The architecture took two years of iteration to build. The economics speak for themselves.

Knowledge base before agents. The model is not the differentiator. Context is. Capital City Roofing's agents do not hallucinate because they pull from a structured knowledge base built around the company's actual operations: pricing, SOPs, brand voice, certifications, service areas, customer service standards. Every agent prompt resolves against that knowledge base. The knowledge base is the moat. The model is interchangeable.

Skill.md files for human beings. Brad covered the failure mode that almost broke the system: trying to teach his employees to use the AI stack the way he does. They could not. The fix was structural. Write SOPs (skill.md files for humans) that mirror the agent prompts, get the team running on the same playbook as the agents, and the system holds together as the company grows. This is also the reason the licensing platform works. A licensee in another market is not learning to be Brad. They are running on the same operating system, the same SOPs, the same agents.

The Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform is the focus

Brad framed the masterclass around two products an operator outside Capital City Roofing's flagship can actually access: the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform and BuilderLync. Each one extends a piece of the system Brad showed in the masterclass.

The licensing platform is structurally different from a traditional roofing franchise. The buy-in is fifteen thousand dollars instead of fifty thousand or more. The royalty is five percent capped instead of an open-ended ten percent. The contract is one-year auto-renewing instead of a multi-year lockup. The economics are designed so the platform wins when the operator wins.

But the bigger story is what licensees inherit. They inherit the entire operating system Brad showed in the masterclass: the SOPs, the brand, the certifications (GAF Master Elite, GAF Commercial Certified, CertainTeed ShingleMaster Premier, GenFlex Commercial Certified, Roofing Alliance Guarantor Member), Capital City University training, the marketing playbook, the financial systems, the agentic AI workforce, and the technology stack that ties it all together. A licensee on the platform launches on day one with the operating system that took Capital City Roofing two years to build.

Capital City Roofing has already grown to four locations on this model. The conversation starts at licensing@capitalcityroofing.net.

For deeper coverage of the structural design choices behind the licensing platform vs. franchising, see Why We Built Capital City Licensing Instead of Becoming a Franchise.

For the evergreen guide on what licensees specifically inherit when they join the platform, see What Roofing Operators Inherit on the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform.

BuilderLync is the technology layer

The other half of what Brad taught is BuilderLync, the AI-driven CRM and operating platform Brad and his three partners (Sean Richard, Blake Grissom, James Kuntz, with Edward Oueilhe as COO) built specifically for contractors. BuilderLync is what every Capital City Roofing licensee runs on. It is also available standalone for any contractor who wants the technology layer without joining the licensing platform.

The masterclass walked through the live BuilderLync interface in detail. Highlights:

• A unified contact system covering customers, employees, manufacturers, distributors, and vendors. No more parallel spreadsheets.
• Complete jobs and pipeline management with kanban views and division-specific pipelines for residential, commercial, multifamily, and insurance.
• Integrated payments via Stripe and bookkeeping via QuickBooks.
• Sierra AI as the native voice and text agent embedded across the customer journey.
• Job photo capture (the same idea as Company Cam) built into the CRM, with required photo workflows that block forward progress until photos are captured.
• Instant estimator with live satellite measurement and material catalog integration. Brad demonstrated producing a $175,000 commercial TPO estimate in seconds from a Telegram message.
• DIY satellite-based roof measurement with facet mapping and per-component material calculations.
• Eagle View integration for full institutional measurement reports.
• Material order integrations with ABC, QXO, and SRS.
• Automation builder, recruiting tools, marketing operations, file management, and AI-driven analytics.

Pricing matches the philosophy. Five hundred dollars per month for the base tier with unlimited seats. One thousand dollars per month for the full agentic AI tier with unlimited seats. No per-user charges. No token throttling. V1 public launch is June 1, 2026 at builderlync.com.

For deeper coverage of the technology stack design, see Why the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform Runs on BuilderLync and What BuilderLync's V1 Launch Means for Roofing Contractors.

The proof behind the system

Capital City Roofing serves residential, multifamily, and commercial clients across Greater Atlanta and Nashville. The proof is on the record:

• GAF Master Elite Contractor
• GAF Commercial Certified
• CertainTeed ShingleMaster Premier
• GenFlex Commercial Certified
• Roofing Alliance Guarantor Member
• Google Guaranteed
• NRCA Member
• Roofing Technology Think Tank (RT3) Member
• 250+ Google Reviews at 4.9 to 5.0 stars

Full certification details at /certifications. The credentials are part of what licensees inherit on the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform.

Where to go from here

For roofing operators interested in the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform, the conversation starts at licensing@capitalcityroofing.net. Brad reads every one of those personally.

For contractors who want only the technology layer, BuilderLync V1 trial sign-ups open June 1, 2026.

For homeowners and property managers in Greater Atlanta and Nashville: schedule your free 27-Point Inspection or contact our team directly.

Excellence in Roofing, Powered by Innovation and Integrity.

Learn more: Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform | BuilderLync | Why Capital City Roofing | Brad Strawbridge