I watched a land acquisition director, someone with decades of experience in this industry, look at their own market on our screen and go completely quiet.
Then: "How did we not know about all of this?"
That moment happened over and over at IBS 2026. It's what I keep coming back to.
What Happened at the Show
Over three days at the International Builders' Show, 70,000 attendees, more than 1,700 exhibitors, our team ran more than 800 demos with land acquisition professionals who stopped, watched, and realized they'd been operating under a ceiling they didn't even know was there.
One of them signed with us on the same day they met us. The first time they'd ever seen the platform and they were ready.
Another was one of the judges evaluating us for the Best of IBS Award Finalist recognition. By the time the judging was over, they weren't thinking about the award. They were asking how soon they could get started with Prophetic to transform land acquisition for their homebuilding business.
The Constraint Isn't What Most People Think
Every builder we spoke with had the same story, told in different ways. Opportunities everywhere. Teams stretched thin. Deals slipping away because the analysis couldn't keep pace.
The bottleneck has moved. It's no longer about finding land or securing capital. It's about evaluating land opportunities fast enough to act before someone else does.
One builder said it plainly: "I have 200 parcels I need to evaluate. My team can do 10 this month. That's the problem."
Three themes came up in nearly every conversation we had at IBS:
The evaluation bottleneck. Teams with hundreds of parcels and only enough bandwidth to get through a fraction each month. The gap between deal flow and analysis capacity keeps growing.
Losing on speed, not price. Builders aren't losing deals because of what they're offering. They're losing because someone else got there first. The competitive advantage has shifted entirely to decision speed.
Minutes instead of weeks. When feasibility answers come back in minutes instead of weeks, the entire decision framework changes. Teams can evaluate more, commit faster, and win more.
This isn't a new problem. It's a newly solvable one.
What Happened When They Saw It
Here's what I didn't fully anticipate: the emotional reaction in the room.
People got giddy. Genuinely giddy. Experienced land acquisition directors, people who've been doing this for decades, leaning into the screen, eyes wide.
Many didn't believe what they were seeing was possible.
The moment that happened most consistently: when we pulled up their market and showed them how much land that fits their acquisition strategy is actually available right now. Land they didn't know existed. Land they hadn't evaluated. Land they'd in some cases been manually searching for over a decade.
Most of them assumed they knew their market. Most of them were wrong. Not because they weren't good at their jobs, but because the constraint was invisible. When you can only evaluate 10 parcels a month, you build a mental model of what's out there and stop searching beyond it. You don't even realize the ceiling you're operating under.
Prophetic removes that ceiling.
The Metric That Matters in 2026
The builders investing in speed are winning. Not speed in construction. Speed in decision-making.
The metric that separates the teams pulling ahead from everyone else is simple: days from opportunity identified to offer submitted. For the fastest builders, that number has collapsed. For everyone else, it's holding steady, while deal competition increases.
That's why we run feasibility analysis 42x faster than manual processes, saving teams 90% of the time they used to spend on evaluation. And it's why a platform that was new to 800+ people at the start of the week closed a deal before the show floor closed.
One customer shared a moment that captures it perfectly: "Site AI caught an irrigation canal that would've cost us 20% of our lots and turned the project into a loss. We needed to know that upfront."
Speed isn't just about winning more deals. It's about not losing on the ones that look right but aren't.
The Team Behind the Booth
I want to say something about the Prophetic team. The people who made IBS happen.
Back-to-back demos for 8 hours straight, for 3 days. Same energy on demo 200 as demo 1. Conversations that went deep because our team understands this problem firsthand, not from the outside looking in.
We didn't go to IBS to hand out swag. We went to show builders a fundamentally better way to evaluate land. And we did that 800 times.
Being Recognized — What It Actually Means
Prophetic was selected as one of the "50 Must-See Products and Services at IBS 2026" by industry veterans Tim Costello and Christophe Hardenne, out of more than 1,700 exhibitors. We were also named a Best of IBS Award Finalist for Best Business Solution Software by the National Association of Home Builders.
I'm proud of those recognitions. But what they really represent is external validation of what the market is already telling us: AI-native land acquisition intelligence isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's becoming the competitive standard. The builders who figure that out first are the ones pulling ahead right now.
See It In Your Market
If we met at IBS — thank you. You made us sharper.
If we didn't connect during the show, this is what you missed: 800 land acquisition professionals seeing their own market through a completely different lens and realizing the opportunity they've been leaving on the table.
The most powerful demo I can give you isn't a slide deck. It's pulling up your market, your criteria, and showing you what's actually available that you don't know about yet and how we can help you win it.
That's what made people giddy at IBS. That's what I want to show you.
Schedule a demo and see it in your market →
Oliver Alexander is the CEO and Co-founder of Prophetic, the AI-native land acquisition intelligence platform for homebuilders and real estate developers. Intelligence that Compounds.
