Research on how how Irish heating, heat-pump, and retrofit installers find and choose work.
Not a pitch. Not a product yet. A founder talking to the first ten Irish installers about how they actually get enquiries, which ones are worth pursuing, and what would genuinely help. What I build later is shaped by what installers tell me now — not by what an outsider imagines the trade needs.
What this is
I'm spending the next few weeks talking with Irish heating, heat-pump and retrofit installers about the work side of the business — where enquiries come from, what makes one worth pursuing, and how decisions get made when capacity is tight.
I'm asking installers because the people who build software for the trades almost never bother to ask the trades themselves. I'd rather do it the other way around.
What we'd talk about
How you currently get customers. Which channels actually work, and which bring noise. What kind of enquiries you wish you got fewer of. How you decide which jobs to take when you're booked solid. Whether Bark, Checkatrade and the rest are pulling their weight. The conversation is planned for 20 minutes, and I’ll keep it shorter if you’re busy.
What you'd get for 20 minutes
Once I've finished the first ten conversations, I'll send you an anonymised summary — how peers across Ireland are getting work, which channels are actually paying back, which ones aren't, and what other installers are doing about capacity and inbound noise.
Most installers never get a clean view of how others run their inbound. Twenty minutes from you. Ten conversations' worth of pattern back to you.
Who's behind this
I'm Maksym Skliarenko. Before Lodestone I was CMO at Busfor, a European mobility platform later acquired by BlaBlaCar. My background is in building products for small operators in fragmented markets. I'm based in Bordeaux, originally from Ukraine, and now trying to understand the Irish trades market properly before building anything for it. (More on my background: linkedin.com/in/mskliarenko)
What I plan to build, eventually
A tool that helps installers manage their own direct enquiry channel and filter incoming work by what actually fits the business — geography, job type, customer seriousness, capacity. But I'm deliberately not building it yet. I want to understand what installers actually need first, in their own words, before writing a single feature.
Common questions
- Will the call be recorded?
- Only if you say it's OK, and only for my own notes. Nothing gets shared.
- Are you going to try to sell me something at the end?
- No. There's nothing to sell yet. If I do build something later, I'll come back to you separately and ask — no surprises.
- Will my name or my business appear anywhere?
- No. The anonymised summary won't identify you, and I won't quote you to other installers, suppliers, or anyone else.
- What if I want to see what you eventually build?
- Tell me, and I'll come back to you when there's something concrete to look at. No mailing list, no auto-emails.
If you're up for a conversation
Twenty minutes, no pitch, an anonymised peer benchmark in return.
Or skip the calendar — phone, WhatsApp, and email all work: +33 7 49 63 37 33 | maksym@uselodestone.com