Fernando Delgado runs Stickman Sound, a production sound company in Las Vegas — recording for film and TV shoots, renting out audio gear, and booking freelance crew, often all three on the same day. That's three businesses sharing one calendar and one brain. Here's the software we built to run them all.
The client and the problem
Before Stickman HQ, the business ran the way most small production companies do: on hustle and scattered tools. Quotes lived in whatever document got copied from the last job. Gear tracking meant remembering which case went out on which truck. Booking crew meant texting people one at a time and keeping the replies straight in your head. Invoices happened whenever a quiet evening finally showed up.
None of it was broken, exactly — the work got done. But every job meant re-juggling the same five balls (estimate, gear, crew, schedule, money) with nothing holding them together except one person's memory. That works right up until the week you have three shoots at once.
What we built
Stickman HQ is one web app where everything hangs off the estimate, because in this business the estimate is the job. It holds the shoot days, the crew, the gear, and the money, and everything else flows from it:
- Estimates to invoices. Every quote moves through a simple pipeline (Draft, Sent, Accepted, Invoiced, Paid) with branded PDFs, payment schedules, and QuickBooks sync so the books stay honest without double entry.
- Crew outreach that texts for you. Pick the open positions and the app texts the call list in order, reads the YES/NO/MAYBE replies, follows up on the maybes, and moves down the list when someone passes. When a reply is off-script — "yeah I'm around that week" — an AI reads it as yes, no, or needs time and texts a short reply back on its own. When it genuinely can't tell, it hands the reply to a person.
- Gear with a memory. Every unit carries a QR label; RFID tags pair once and scan like anything else. Check gear out to a job, check it back in, run a stocktake, bundle kits, log repairs, all from a phone camera in the parking lot if that's where you are.
- Call sheets and portals. Crew and vendors get their own portal with call sheets, packing lists, their gig calendar, and a place to submit W-9s, insurance certificates, and invoices.
- A customer rental storefront. Clients browse the gear catalog and book rentals online. Before a new customer is approved, the app runs a quick web search for public reports tied to them and puts a short summary on the approval card for a person to weigh.
- Financials. Revenue, cash flow, A/R aging, crew payout reports for 1099 season, and a gear ROI view that shows which equipment actually earns its shelf space.
The AI angle: the Estimate Agent
The feature that gets the biggest reaction is the Estimate Agent. Inside any estimate, there's a box that understands plain English. Type "add 2 camera ops for 3 days at 62" and the line items appear, priced. Say "set all equipment markup to 20%" and it's done. Paste a line-item list from an email, or drop in a PDF, and it extracts the items into the estimate.
Quoting used to be the chore between a phone call and a booked job. Now it's a conversation. The same AI shows up elsewhere: type a product name into the gear catalog however you'd say it out loud, and it researches the proper name, model, weight, and replacement value for you.
What it's built to change
No invented statistics here. Here's what it's built to change: quotes can go out during the call instead of waiting for a free evening; crew booking runs down the list on its own; every piece of gear is one scan from its history; invoicing follows the job. The goal is a business that doesn't live in one person's head.
And the money picture — who owes what, how old the debt is, which gear pays for itself — sits on one screen instead of in a feeling.
How it was possible
A platform this size — estimates, texting, inventory, portals, a storefront, financials — is the kind of project that traditionally comes back with a quote that ends the conversation. It was possible here because of AI-accelerated development: most of the code — the repetitive part — gets built fast, so human attention goes into what's genuinely unique to how Stickman Sound works. Curious what that does to pricing? We've written up what custom software actually costs in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How long did Stickman HQ take to build?
The first working version, covering estimates, gear, and contacts, was in the owner's hands within weeks. The rest of the platform grew from there in short cycles, with each new piece shaped by real use. That's the AI-accelerated pattern: ship something useful fast, then keep building on it.
Could my business get something like this?
Almost certainly. Stickman HQ looks industry-specific, but underneath it solves the same problems most small businesses have: quoting, scheduling, inventory, invoicing, and customer communication scattered across too many tools. If your operation runs on spreadsheets, texts, and memory, a custom platform can pull it into one place.
What does something this size cost?
Every project gets a written quote before work starts, based on the workflows and integrations involved. Our standard rates are a $650/month platform fee plus $49/month per staff login, adjusted to each project; a platform this size may also carry a one-time build fee, quoted up front. Text messaging, like the crew texting here, is billed separately. You don't have to start there, though: you can begin with one painful workflow and expand once the first piece proves itself.
