Sources & references
The evidence behind the briefing
Every material claim in this briefing traces to something real — a live network you can browse, published market data, and the founders' documented track record. These are the primary sources. Where a figure is a widely-cited public estimate rather than an exact private number, the briefing frames it as directional and says so.
01 The live network — our testing grounds
The single most important source here isn't a report — it's the running network itself. It is the primary evidence for the "built-in testing grounds" and every network-scale claim in the briefing.
◆ Primary evidence · browse it live
wholetech.com · live, browsable directory
The live directory of the 200+ operating websites the engine is run against — the real-world proving grounds behind "our built-in testing grounds," and the substantiation for the network-scale and "customer zero" claims. Open it and browse the actual portfolio, site by site.
02 Market & the Austin AI ecosystem
Backs the market opportunity and the "Why East 5th" read — Austin's AI momentum, venture funding, and the eastward shift of the tech scene.
Crunchbase News
Substantiates record Austin venture funding (~$7.19B into Austin startups in 2025) and the AI concentration driving it.
Lirica Austin
Substantiates the East Austin office scene named in the plan — Oracle's waterfront campus, Cloudflare, and the East Cesar Chavez / Mueller corridor.
The Startup Project
Substantiates Austin ("Silicon Hills") as one of the top AI ecosystems in the United States.
iternal.ai
Substantiates the density of AI companies and talent concentrating in Austin.
03 The founding team's track record
Backs the BHI / BDX arc: founded in Austin in 2000 as a 32-builder consortium, grown to 1,300+ homebuilders (~60% of US homes), later acquired by Zonda.
LinkedIn
Founder profile and career history — BHI founder; earlier operations pedigree at GM (EV1) and Applied Materials.
BuilderHomesite.com
Primary-source record of BHI's founding, its top-ranked homebuilder backing and its early management team.
BDX (Builders Digital Experience)
Substantiates Melissa Morman's founding-executive role and long tenure as Chief Experience Officer.
LinkedIn
Career history across B2B marketing, sales, customer experience and revenue leadership.
BDX
Substantiates the "recognized among Austin's Healthiest Employers" detail in the team story.
BDX / Zonda Home
Substantiates BDX's scale and its acquisition by Zonda — the outcome of the founders' first arc.
04 Market size
Backs the underserved-market framing — the scale of the US small-business base the product serves.
U.S. SBA · Office of Advocacy
Substantiates the market-size figure — on the order of 33–34 million US small businesses, nearly all of which need marketing.
◆ On the figures
Market and ecosystem figures above are directional — drawn from widely-cited public reporting, current as of the dates on each source, and used to convey scale and direction rather than an exact private number. The one figure that is fully first-party and directly verifiable is the network itself: the
live directory is the running proof, not an estimate.