Donald Speedie, CCM, LEED-AP, DBIA
One mission, several bets
That's the mission. I'm an entrepreneur running several bets at it at once — building homes, building software, publishing data — and watching which ones resonate the most. They look like different companies. They're one idea with three doors.
Nimble Development2025 – presentAn AI-first infill builder in the Sacramento region — vertically integrated, my GC partner running the field, AI running the back office.
Our Mission: Help Restore Housing Balance by Building Attainable Homes.
nimble-development.com →
HABU — GetRealDeal.ai2024 – presentA free screening check that reads the public record and tells homeowners, in plain English, what their lot may now support — and what it could be worth to a developer.
The mission at data scale: awareness is the cheapest housing policy there is.
getrealdeal.ai →
Fluid Contract Manager2012 – presentCloud construction management built for mobile-first teams. Founded on nights and weekends, thirteen years before the AI wave made small-team software viable.
The mission for every other builder: digital tools that fit real crews.
fluidcm.com →
Nearly three decades and roughly $850M of building programs before the bets above: resorts, schools, cleanrooms, towers. Each one taught something the ventures now use.
$22M design-build cleanroom renovations inside a high-tech laser factory that never stopped producing — phased occupancy, sixteen stakeholders, COVID mid-project. Then led preconstruction on the $300M Grand Hyatt Seaside Resort. Rebuilding a facility while it runs is exactly what converting a company to AI demands.
$111M and $34M Lennox bond programs; Hawthorne High's $110M modernization; corporate project controls. Worked as a CM with Turner Construction, McCarthy Builders, and Swinerton Builders. Public Works and DSA taught me how permitting actually behaves — years later, that became the Permit Friendliness Index.
The $42M Gratts Early Education Center: 265 days of delays, 23% in change orders — occupied on time anyway. DSA experience, start to finish.
The Village at Squaw ($42M + $50M phases, occupancy by Christmas through Sierra winters), Juniper Crest and The Village at Mammoth, CA, then The Montage in Reno — at the time the largest adaptive-reuse conversion in the country: a 22-story casino gutted and rebuilt as a 374-unit tower. Seeing what a building could be instead of what it is — HABU asks that question of every lot in California.
Building Engineering Technology at BCIT — structures coursework plus every scheduling and PM system of the era. Estimator, then estimator-and-PM on the $14M Freybe Gourmet Foods processing plant with a two-week facility turn-over. Every building is numbers before it is steel.
The newsletter — field notes from running a homebuilding company on AI. 14,000+ followers on LinkedIn.
The book: the whole AI-first operating system, and the two years of mistakes behind it.
The anchor essay — using AI to do new things, not just optimize old ones.
The analytical case, with the affordability data that started it.
A free, open-methodology score of whether a market's housing supply matches what residents can pay.
Young Life — ONE Sacramento County
Finance Committee Chair, 2025 – present
Volunteer financial stewardship for a youth ministry serving kids across Sacramento County.
Construction Management Association of America
Board member & Education Committee Chair — SoCal and NorCal chapters, 2014 – 2023
Nine years organizing education for the next generation of construction managers.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
Big Brother, 2005 – 2007
Matched one-on-one as a mentor — showing up, week after week, for a kid who needed someone in his corner.
Open housing data
Ongoing
The Nimble Attainability Index and Permit Friendliness Index are published free, methodology and all — whether or not anyone ever pays us a dollar.
If any of this maps to what you're building — a company, a lot, a back office that deserves better systems — I'd like to hear about it.
Get in touch