A Pile of Papers and No System: Why I Built Havnwright
A Note on Expertise
I'm not writing as an "expert" or claiming to have all the answers. I'm a builder sharing my journey on what worked, what didn't, and what I learned along the way. The tech landscape changes constantly, and with AI tools now available, the traditional notion of "expertise" is evolving. Take what resonates, verify what matters to you, and forge your own path. This is simply my experience, offered in the hope it helps fellow builders.
The first time I managed a renovation project, I was about twenty-five. My father put me in charge of a family project, a villa renovation that was closer to a ranch in scale. The outside area was bigger than the building itself, with extensive green areas and landscaping on top of the renovation work. My job was to be the go-to person for the contractors. They had the expertise. I was there to organise, provide what they needed, and keep things moving.
The project took four months. By the end of it, I had a stack of receipts, quotes, invoices, and letters that I could not make sense of. There was no system. No way to track what had been spent, what was pending, what each document related to. I had relied entirely on each person telling me what they needed, what it cost, and what I should do next. I was going on a whim the entire time, never really knowing if the decisions I was making were right.
At some point you look at that pile of paperwork and you realise you have no way of going back through it. You do not remember when half of it came in, what it was for, or what was supposed to happen next. And I thought: if this is my experience, imagine every person who manages a project like this. The architect, the site supervisor, the homeowner who just wants their kitchen done. They all need a system to keep track of everything, and most of them do not have one.
The same problem, a different country
A few years later, I started a second project, this time in Dubai. Different country, different regulations, same problems. I needed a No Objection Certificate to start work, and I did not know how to get one. I searched for it, and the information was scattered across dozens of websites. Some wanted you to sign up before they would show you anything. Others bundled the information with services they wanted to sell you. There was no single place that laid it out clearly.
I am not saying that is wrong. That is how business works. But as someone who just needed a straight answer, it was frustrating. And this pattern kept repeating: every piece of information you need during a renovation exists somewhere, but it is spread across so many places that finding it becomes a project in itself.
The problem is bigger than paperwork
The deeper I looked, the more I saw the same gap everywhere. It is not just about receipts and tracking. It is about the entire experience of renovation being fragmented.
As a homeowner, you never have access to the information you are supposed to have. The contractor tells you it costs this much, and you have no way of knowing whether that is fair. You are committed before you understand what you are committed to. If you want to get more involved in understanding the decisions being made about your own property, the information is simply not there in one place.
On the other side, contractors do not have professional tools designed for how they actually work. They are on job sites, managing teams, dealing with materials and scheduling, and their tools are phone calls, spreadsheets, and maybe a notes app.
Even in my own field, tech, I deal with this fragmentation constantly. For this project alone, I have more than fifty browser tabs open at any given time, each one a different service with its own login, its own setup, its own way of doing things. There is no single system that brings everything together. And renovation is no different.
What Havnwright is trying to do
When I decided to build something about this, I started with a simple idea: what if there was one place where a homeowner could find everything they need for a renovation?
Not a marketplace where you get matched with a contractor and hope for the best. Not a directory with reviews you cannot trust. An actual system that walks you through the process. From the moment you start thinking about a renovation to the moment it is done.
I built a six-step framework in the homeowner dashboard. It starts with where you are dreaming about what you want, and it takes you through planning, budgeting, understanding regulations, all the way to completion. At each step, you get the information that is relevant to where you are in the process.
For example, a homeowner can explore what their kitchen renovation might look like, get a sense of what it might cost, and find out what regulations apply in their area. I am not trying to be an expert in every field. Everything on the platform comes from research, and I always point people to where they can get more detailed or authoritative information. The goal is not to replace experts. The goal is to save people from having to check ten links on the first page of Google to find two sentences they actually need.
Making information accessible
One thing I noticed early on is that long articles do not work for most people during a renovation. You are stressed, you are busy, and you do not have time to read fifteen hundred words about planning permission when all you need is a yes or no answer.
So I built something different. Each article on Havnwright has a story mode, similar to how Instagram stories work. The key information from a full article gets condensed into about twelve pages that you can flip through quickly. You get what you need in under a minute, and if you want the full detail, the complete article is right there.
This came directly from my own experience as a reader. I get bored after two paragraphs of most articles and go looking for the answer somewhere else. I did not want that to happen on my platform.
Why this matters
Renovation is not something you experiment with. It is expensive, it is disruptive, and the decisions you make early on shape everything that comes after. You cannot just try one approach and switch to another if it does not work out. You need to get it right, or at least make informed decisions, from the start.
That is what Havnwright is building toward. A system that makes the renovation process easier to understand, easier to manage, and less dependent on hoping you found the right person or the right information at the right time.
Right now, we are focused on the UK market. The platform is live with dedicated dashboards for homeowners, contractors, and administrators. The contractor app is on both iOS and Android. It is a start, and there is a long way to go. But every feature comes from a real problem I experienced or observed, and that is the only way I know how to build.
This is part of a series about building products as a solo founder. The previous post covers my personal journey into building. Next, I will write about what it is actually like to build with AI, what works and what does not.
About the Author
Alireza Elahi is a solo founder building products that solve real problems. Currently working on Havnwright, Publishora, and the Founder Knowledge Graph.