Tim Brenner, founder of Brenner Software, is our guest in this edition of our Founder Spotlight Series.
With a background in aerospace and mechanical engineering, Tim leveraged his experience building ground support equipment to create Steelworks—a highly niche software designed to automate time-consuming processes for metal fabrication job shops.
I sat down with him for the podcast to discuss the transition from a weekend Excel macro to a full-fledged web application, his old-school approach to founder-led sales, and why he prefers deterministic algorithms over slapping an AI badge on his product.
His answers are lightly edited for length and clarity.
The Conversation
What's one thing about being a founder that nobody told you about or warned you about?
I never really asked anyone and was never really surrounded by entrepreneurs; everyone I worked with had a normal corporate nine-to-five job.
The expectation coming in was just to work hard and see what happens.
The biggest surprise is how numb I've become to losses and rejections. You get beat down so much that you get used to the "nos," though I still get a massive adrenaline rush when we bring in a new customer.
How did you get into this world of building software and entrepreneurship?
My background is in aerospace and mechanical engineering. I worked at a company in Ogden, Utah, building ground support equipment for military aircraft, doing all the design in CAD software like SolidWorks.
I hated doing things manually—redoing the same slightly different task ten times drove me nuts.
About 10 years ago, I taught myself VBA and wrote some macros in Excel to automate the most time-consuming parts of our job. Over three years, I built a couple thousand lines of code that functioned like a small MRP (manufacturing resource planning) system.
When I eventually left for Northrop Grumman, other companies reached out because they were interested in the software. I acquired the IP back, built an MVP web application, and started working weekends to turn it into a real business.
Why focus specifically on the metal fabrication industry?
Honestly, it's really just what I was exposed to and familiar with. As an engineer, one of the coolest things was spending a couple of weeks designing things in 3D CAD, looking out my office window, and watching the shop floor physically cut, drill, weld, and assemble my parts.
Seeing an idea turn into physical reality is one of my favorite things, and it is why I love visiting our customers' shop floors today.
How would you describe your software, Steelworks, to a prospect?
At a high level, we automate some of the most time-consuming, difficult things in engineering for fabrication shops that design and fabricate their own CAD models.
If you are making a product with 5,000 metal parts, you have to order all that material before the project even starts. Our software takes these very complicated models and gives you a quick, 100% accurate shopping list—a bill of materials—in about 30 seconds.
When I was an engineer, I used to spend six to eight hours doing that manually, and it was always off. We make things faster and remove errors.
What is your approach to outbound sales, and how do you break through the noise?
I typically try to approach prospects not as a sales guy, but as a peer and subject matter expert in their industry who uses the same CAD software.
I am not the biggest fan of LinkedIn right now because the barrier to entry is so low, and a lot of the content is inauthentic, AI-generated garbage.
If you want to differentiate yourself, doing what everyone else is doing with AI emails and spam doesn't work.
For our first 10 customers, I literally just knocked on shop doors with my laptop and some literature.
It doesn't scale geographically, but doing things that don't scale—like picking up the phone and having real conversations—yields a much higher success rate for us as an early-stage startup.
What makes Steelworks different from other solutions in the market?
We mostly work with "job shops," meaning every single job they do is completely different and very complicated.
Unlike factories that make a million of the same widget, our customers might spend three or four days manually fat-fingering part numbers into their ERP system for a single custom build.
What makes us different is that we integrate heavily into the CAD software itself. We format and prepare everything before you are even done with the model, allowing you to click a button and upload it to your MRP system in a few seconds instead of a few days.
Do you see AI as a blessing or a curse for software and society?
It is a double-edged sword. It helps accelerate our front-end web development, but it is garbage at writing the highly technical code we use to integrate into CAD software.
My bigger concern is that AI is deteriorating our critical thinking and research skills. The accessibility of information is greater than ever, but we are becoming reliant on LLMs instead of our own brains.
In manufacturing, we prefer deterministic algorithms over AI. A 99.9% AI accuracy rate is not good enough when a few wrong parts out of 10,000 can delay an assembly and cost tens of thousands of dollars.
We won't just slap an AI badge on our product for marketing; we rely on extremely high-accuracy, industry-specific algorithms.
What is one final tip you would leave for aspiring entrepreneurs?
Get some industry experience. Learn the specific problems that people are experiencing that no one else would be able to identify, and solve those problems.
You will have a lot less competition, and in niche industries, saving a shop floor just 10 minutes can easily save them $500.
Closing thoughts
Tim’s insights emphasize the power of solving highly specific, personal pain points rather than chasing broad market trends. Key takeaways include:
Solve Niche Problems: Deep industry experience reveals lucrative pain points that outsiders miss.
Do Things That Don't Scale: Early traction often requires old-school tactics like knocking on doors and picking up the phone to stand out from automated spam.
Prioritize Accuracy Over Hype: In high-stakes environments like metal fabrication, deterministic and 100% accurate algorithms provide more business value than unpredictable AI.
Guard Your Critical Thinking: While AI is a powerful tool for accessibility and speed, founders must ensure it doesn't replace their creativity and problem-solving skills.
Connect With Our Guest?
Tim on LinkedIn
Visit brennersw.com or reach out directly at tbrenner@brennersw.com
