PropTech Evolution and the Rise of AI from a Founder’s Perspective

Visionary entrepreneur Jimmy Speyer, founder of the innovative SaaS platform Glasshouse, joins us to discuss his inspiring journey from aiding others' successes to spearheading his own groundbreaking venture. We explore the relentless drive that propelled him to establish a business he could passionately call his own, navigating the choppy waters of a failed MVP and steering toward a solution that resonated with his team's strengths. Jimmy candidly shares insights into the parallels between raising a startup and nurturing children, underscoring the exhilarating yet arduous path of entrepreneurship.

Chapters

• 0:00 Real SaaS Podcast
• 11:56 Product Market Fit and Funding Lessons
• 15:48 Strategic Key Lessons for SaaS
• 21:13 Effective Executive Team Alignment and Growth
• 30:52 Strategic Growth and Profitability Balancing
• 39:35 Lessons Learned and Future Trends
• 44:10 Proprietary Models and Data Insights
• 52:39 Direct Consumer Targeting in Prop Tech
• 58:51 Belief System Alignment for Success

Transcript

00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
What if the real reason your startup isn't scaling is because you're solving the wrong problem? In this episode of the Real SaaS Podcast, Jesse Burrell sits down with Jimmy Speyer, the founder of Glasshouse, a SaaS platform helping home service pros win more business through outbound sales. From walking away from a failed MVP to turning raw insight into real traction, jimmy unpacks what it really takes to go from idea to product market fit and why building your business baby might be the craziest, most rewarding thing you ever do. 

00:33
Welcome to the Real SaaS Podcast real talk with the builders behind the most innovative SaaS companies in prop tech and beyond. We dig into product market fit, team building, funding, failures and the playbooks driving growth. No fluff, just raw insights on strategy execution and what's coming next. Now here are your hosts. 

00:54 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
What is going on and welcome to the Real SaaS Podcast. This is real talk with builders behind the most innovative SaaS companies in prop tech and beyond. We dig into product market fit, team building, funding, failures and the playbooks to drive growth. This podcast is no fluff, just raw insights on strategy, execution and what's coming next. I'm your host, Jesse Burrell. I am with Batch Service. I've done over $150 million in software sales over the last six years and I'm bringing on other huge, successful people inside the PropTech space and I have a great guest today, jimmy. What is going on, my guy? Thank you for being on. Thanks, jess. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. Everyone started the chat with you, so you know we're going to get into kind of behind the curtains, behind the scenes, how we tick. But before we get started, let us let us know a little bit about Glasshouse, your SaaS company, and and tell me, tell me what we got going on. 

01:58 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Yeah, so I'm Jimmy Speyer. I'm the CEO and the founder of Glasshouse. We are a SaaS business in prop tech and home services specifically. So really our mission is we're going to help home service businesses find more of the right clients. That was like the big problem to solve, and so we have been on this for like a year and a half and work with almost 200 customers now, helping them identify the right buyers for their services and get in touch with them. A lot of details go into that. We're an outbound sales platform for home services, helping them drive revenue, so my background is in revenue for SaaS, so I was like let's bring that to home services, let's make it easy for them too. 

02:39 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So I've actually you know the guests that I have in. I do deep dives kind of behind the scenes, and you have a very beefed up LinkedIn profile, so you know what brought you from. It seems like you've worked for some really good companies. You've done CS. You've done you know sales leadership. You've done quite a few things. What, I guess where alongside your journey did you get from you know working and building, you know inside a business to going and doing this on your own? Or is this your first SaaS company? Have you done this before? Tell me a little bit more there. I'm super curious. Yeah, so this is my first one to found. 

03:17 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
So I have been part of three other successful SaaS businesses. I always got there on day two, day three, whatever it is right. So I would get there a million plus in revenue and I helped scale three of those businesses to about $30 million of revenue and we would do that really, really quickly. I would be like one case I was the first, like one of the first AEs, and I ran up to the vice president, and then I was a VP of this and a VP of that and I really enjoyed like hyper growth or really high growth experiences, but it was always somebody else's business. 

03:47
So that was, you know, kudos on you. 150 million SaaS sales. I know how hard that is. I've sold about 60 million of reoccurring revenue, so not quite the hundred million club there, but scaled those businesses pretty fast. And what I found along the way was I just kind of always had this feeling, especially after I had kids was you really love your nieces and your nephews? Right, like if you have nieces and nephews you really love them but it's not the same as your kids, like you just can't love them the same way you do your own children. And so I just kind of always had this nagging urge to do it from day one and have it be my kids. 

04:26 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
same reason, like I had kids after I had some nieces and nephews, I guess yeah, if we're gonna stick on that analogy, but you get a lot more frustrated with your kids than your nieces and nephews, um, and your nieces and nephews eventually go home right like there's somebody else's problem at the end of the day like this one is your kids are your problem at the end of the day, so your business at the end of the day. 

04:47 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
There's no like just putting it away. It's always there, and so I really would always fall. I've always fallen in love with my companies. I feel like I fall in love with the idea and the growth and the building it, but it's like it was never really mine and I really felt like I needed to have it be mine, to really be, have the whole experience, the whole human experience of having the kids, the whole human experience of starting the business. 

05:12 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, uh. So welcome to the crazy club. Um, it's, it's fun to be a part of. But, man, I remember my first couple of years. Um, you know, starting on batch and it's I, I the best way I could explain it was you know, you're flying a plane. As you're building it and trying not to crash it. Um, there's a lot of things going on. It's really exciting. Um, you know, the end of the journey, um is where people always want to get to so fast. 

05:39
Like I wish I relished in those first couple years a little bit more, because, um, that's when the team is small, the team is a little bit grittier. It's fun, it's a brand new idea. Like you're trying to scale it. There's not as many political things going on. Probably those first couple of years it's just everyone has one vision small team go. 

06:00
And I wish I would have appreciated not saying I don't appreciate and love the team that we have, appreciate and love the team that we have now and love building out the executive team. All that stuff has been fantastic. But those, those first few years when you first started, those are special and it's a feeling that I miss and I look forward to to finding that next thing to you know, post batch, which batch isn't going anywhere for a very long time, but I do. I do miss that and I hope that you've really enjoyed you know, you know, having your first business child, and make sure to don't take it for granted, because the first couple of years I think are are so, so, so special as you grow this business. 

06:39 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
I agree, I agree and I appreciate that because when I, when I decided I wanted to do this, I reached out to former CEOs I worked with and other executives I knew and the consensus for most of the people who had done this before was don't do this Like they're like you shouldn't do this, like that was actually there was. 

06:56
Quite a few people told me not to do this. They didn't even know the idea. They're like I don't care what your idea is, just don't do it at all, it doesn't matter, and I feel like I'm not. So I've. I come from a Jewish household and so there's this. I don't know if it's really true or not, but they say, if you want to, if you go to a rabbi and say I want to become Jewish, they're supposed to say no to you three times. Or you have to ask three times Like no, no. You have bunch of times, but if everybody tells you not to and you still feel like you're compelled, like you have to, then you're probably ready to try. 

07:32 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
It's, it's, I agree it's honestly it's a calling and an obsession and a problem that, like you feel like you could solve better than anyone and you've worked and had this, you know, than anyone and you've worked and had this, you know, journey through your corporate life to lead you here and it's just an itch that you have to itch or else it's gonna one, just drive you crazy and two, the people like us can't say what. 

07:58
If you know you just can't do it, you got to go do it fail. Or if you succeed, like I feel like certain people just have to go do something and you're just, I feel like it's just you're compelled, like I was compelled, to start building software to help real estate investors get more deals, like that's a problem I wanted to solve and that I learned inside flipping and wholesaling 500 houses and I'm like there's such a better way, like I have to go do this and it was just. That was kind of my journey and yours sounds uh similar as well to where you. You came to a place and you're like there's this huge need right here and the everything is changing on on how software works and I I found something special that could help the home service space, and I know that you guys have had massive growth in these first two years, so you're apparently doing something very, very right. 

08:50 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Yeah, I agree A hundred percent it's. It was. It was a pull to want to do something. And that's when I do get an opportunity sometimes to talk to new entrepreneurs and people are just starting a business and work real early in these in the journey as well, but they're a little even further ahead of the mat and I hear them talk about, like, if you can hear it in their voice, are they really excited about what they're doing? Like, are they really excited about the idea? And I'll also back up. 

09:19
One other thing, though, personally, is I don't come from home services. My background is not in home services. I don't. I didn't grow up in a, you know, a trade or something like that. I came from B2B, SaaS, running revenue teams, scaling hyper growth revenue teams, and so I found home services because I was looking for a place to do something, and as I got into it, you can fall in love with the place you find yourself if you go after things that meet the type of thing you want to fall in love with, and by that I mean, like, home services wasn't my background, it's the place I looked at and said, ooh, that looks like a place I would want to be the types of buyers, types of businesses, smb. A big market, it's a huge Tam, it's in the real world, it touches real people and I was like, okay, that's a place I want to be, I'm going to go there and then I'm going to find problems and then I'm going to figure out which ones I really get excited about solving. 

10:07
Versus hey, I got this problem. 

10:09
I want to solve it Now. I'm going to go. I'm already here in the first place. 

10:12
I'm like no, no, no. 

10:14
You can go say hey, I want to go help the trades. You can say, really, I'm going to get in there and then I'm going to find the problem in there that I want to solve, versus I have this problem and I'm already in that place. So just kind of how I ended up here is not because it was my background, it's because it looked like a place that I would like to be and then when I got in there I realized there was specific background in my skills that drew me to a specific problem. 

10:41 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
That's interesting because, yeah, a lot of the times it's someone solving a problem for an existing business and and you said I have this skillset, I have this disruption or this idea of what I want to do. Where is the best place to go disrupt and where would I want to play in Right, Is that kind of what you're saying? 

10:58 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Yeah, and then what I realized really quickly was I don't know a ton about this space, so how do I learn it as fast as I can, right? So I bought a home service business, actually along the way, so I am a customer of my of myself. 

11:10 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Now, now, now you are the customer. 

11:13 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
How do I become a subject matter expert? I have to live this with them. Plus, who the hell is going to listen to some tech bro who's going to tell a bunch of home service businesses, businesses, how to do whatever? Like you don't know what you're talking about, like, well, maybe I don't, but I'm here, I'm willing to learn. So and now I'm also in it with my customers too, if like, if I feel a problem, they feel a problem if they feel a pain I'm having the same the same thing so you're yeah, you found a backwards way to to do the exact same thing. 

11:40 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I suppose that a lot of other founders do you. Just, you started it differently and then you acquired a business and then now you're able to really, you know, feel those, those pain points of um gaps and and solutions that haven't been solved in in that space. So that's interesting. Um, let's hop into a couple questions. Uh, when and how fast were you able to get your you know, product market fit? You know, did you build out MVP? How did you, I guess, bring Glasshouse from? Would it start? How long or how many employees did it take you to kind of get that product market fit? And then, I guess my follow-up question to that was you know, saas is expensive. Did you raise any money or was this completely bootstrapped? 

12:26 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Those go together. So it took a year to get to what I would call any real product market fit. So the learning along the way, the lesson was the first idea might not be right, but it might lead you to a better idea. So the first idea we had was not to do this. It wasn't to help people sell more directly to home owners. It was a different product. It was like understand them more and like filter out the bad homeowners. Actually, like the whole idea was like hey, we're not going to help you avoid the Karens of the world. 

12:58
And we actually built that product and it took six months and I did raise money for that. I've raised a million dollars based predicated on that idea. And we built it in six months and nobody wanted it. In fact, the other thing I learned was like the the pain for or the cost to a potential customer of you to tell you they like your idea when they don't is zero. So if you're going to go out and start building something just predicated on people saying that's a cool idea but nobody's willing to have given you even $1 yet you haven't even. You haven't proved nothing. You've proved absolutely nothing. 

13:36
So built this product six months, raise this money sitting on it, I'm like, uh, nobody wants this. So I had almost all of it. We built an MVP product for about 90 grand right. So for like of that money, we had most of it, and at that point it was either send the money back or keep going. And all that money was from my network it was just angels, and so, having raised from angels, their investment was always the same. Like every single conversation was the biggest compliment and the most terrifying conversation I've ever had in my life, which is, yeah, I don't really know about this idea, but I'm willing to invest in you. 

14:14 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
People typically invest in the horses. 

14:16 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Yeah, that's what they said. They're like hey, you helped generate a billion dollars worth of enterprise value for these other three companies. A lot of them had made a ton of money in those companies. That's why they were on the phone with me and I'd worked with them. And they're like cool, I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but I'm sure you'll figure something else if it's not. So just yeah, here's some money Interesting. 

14:34
And so when I had that money and I had this product that nobody wanted. And I said do you want me to just give you back the money? Sorry, it's going to be a 10% loss, but it's better than all of it. And they said the same thing. They're like no, just keep going, you're fine, like I'm sure you'll. What's your next idea? I was like well, we learned along the way that we're not addressing the problem from the right side. We're helping you say no. We need to help them say yes to more people. Cool, hey, now we're in our wheelhouse. 

14:59 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Now our background. 

15:00 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Our skillset, like I talked about, matters a lot. And how do we do outbound sales? Now we have a lot of sales engines for these people and so, yes, we raise money. We try to give it back. They wouldn't let us and it took a year because we spent six months being wrong. Then we got the right idea. 

15:22 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
And within six months we started signing customers Awesome, yeah, I've heard that a lot. Starting to interview more and more people is um, do you have an initial idea? Um, it's wrong. You pivot. I mean, go back to Instagram how they started something completely different and then ended up, you know, being what they are, but it's it's the intention of trying to go solve a problem in space. Um, you may be wrong. Uh, what you're talking with is you know, people will tell you it's a good idea and not spend a dollar. 

15:48
There's so many features that we've had. So many of our customers say that they wanted, and then you put any type of price tag on it. Or we just look at the adoption through. You know we'll put a huge go to market that people know this great new feature that we have doesn't even get used. Like the usage of it is so incredibly low. But people shouted from the rooftops that we needed to do this thing, or this is a reason why they left, and then it wasn't. 

16:12
You're just like sometimes you're just baffled. I'm like I just spent, you know, four sprints of development time to push through this thing that people were saying would be revolutionary, to helping them stay on batch leads, and no one's adopting it like and there's a big go-to-market around it. I'm just sometimes, and then it's like the littlest thing that we do that make it's people are customers, are nuts, um, and sometimes you just never know um, you know it goes back to like Alex ramose is talking about, you know, the stuff going viral versus not not like the assumptions that he would make and he's like, at the end of the day, it's just you know you want to be intentional with what you're doing and strategic, but it's volume always wins and I don't think you could also do volume and you know building out your product roadmap. So that's probably not the best example, but it's just the thing that I got that from. It's so surprising, with some of the things you think are going to be huge to your customer base aren't, and some of the little things that's almost like a throwaway that you don't think is a big deal really means a lot to a ton of people and excites them. So very, very interesting stuff. 

17:17
And then, when it comes to, I guess, the side of raising money we didn't raise money, so we are completely bootstrapped and there's benefits and drawbacks to that. 

17:28
Um, I think the benefits are, I like not being told what to do ever, which is nice, um, I also. What I don't like is some of those relationships from um when people do raise money. And this is the question I'm kind of asking in a backwards way is were you strategic with the people that you raised to where you were able to get you know long-term relationships or you know the exit three, four, five years down the road, knowing that, hey, I want you know certain people um to invest in the company or be on my advisory board or both um to where you know um, because some people just go raise from friends and family and there's, you know, there's no strategic thing besides just having cash. So I guess, were you strategic when you went and did this? What I've heard so far is most people have kind of handpicked people that they've wanted to to invest in them for down the road relationships or doors that would open. 

18:32 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
A little bit, so I was, was what I the people I went to I had some relationship with already. So you know we didn't raise a ton of money, it was a pre-seed round, it was just over seven figures um, and we took tiny, tiny checks from like my sister and like someone's uncle, like it was like there was some really tiny checks, but the majority of it, like 90 plus percent of it, was from larger checks. That were people who I had relationships with that I had built over several years, usually through success at those other stops along the way, and they had been the direct beneficiaries as investors in those businesses. And so I built a relationship with them and said, well, if I ever want to go start a business, it would be good to have people who one already do this kind of thing right. Like, how do you, like they have proven they are the type of people who invest early in businesses because they did it in the businesses I was a part of, even though I didn't found them, and then they had benefited greatly and I had been part of that success, having built the revenue engines, and so they were. 

19:26
Basically I had I had street cred with that. It's not a huge, it's like you're not famous. You can't just say like I'm gonna roll down sand hill or whatever. And San Francisco and get sequoia. 

19:36
I don't know those people but those people I did know had a big enough war chest individually where they could come in and say, yes, I can, I can give you a hundred or 200,000, whatever the numbers were and that moves a needle, like those people move the needle and they're also signal to other people hey, these are smart investors, they've done really well in other places and they will usually be able to connect you maybe to one degree further into their network. And that happened too, right? So if you're writing, if you're the type of person who writes checks, you probably know some other people who do too. So that was part of like the strategy or just the luck of where I found myself was having relationships from those other runs with those types of people. 

20:19 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
And then one of the questions that I like to ask is you know and I'm interviewing very people in very different spots of their SaaS journey, so this is like fun. So I rephrase this question a few ways is I like to ask you know how? Have you built out your executive team? But let's say, if you haven't really built out executive team I know that you know you have 200 customers you don't have. I don't know exactly. I'll ask where your revenue is at. But if you have built out your executive team or part of it, what's your strategy behind that? Or if you have not, what is your strategy going into that? 

20:52
Because I've learned way too many lessons the hard way on sales and marketing. As we hit different clips of revenue targets, I've actually had to recycle through some of those executives, because someone to get you from zero to 2 million is a very different person. That's going to get you from two to 10 and from 10 to 30. And the biggest lesson I learned along that is getting titles. Probably that shouldn't be given early in a company's business and the next thing is creating the expectation to be like, hey, you're here to get us from here to here, but then we're going to need to have to bring you a mentor of someone who's experienced to get from here to here and I would love for you to stay and learn from this brilliant person and so they still have an opportunity. But if you just bring in someone on top of them, they're automatically going to leave. If you don't, if you don't frame it properly or understand. I just didn't know what I didn't know when I was building the company the first time. 

21:46
So, I didn't know I needed to do that. But, moving forward, if I were to do this again or if we needed to get to 100 million with our current executive staff, they may not be the people to get us there because they haven't experienced it yet. So that's kind of like my little two cents on building out the executive team or kind of lessons learned. Where are you at in that journey and what's your plan as you build your team out long term? 

22:13 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
So I haven't built out an executive team here yet. We don't need to yet, but I have me. And then I have a COO who's an early partner in the business, has been here since day one, and a CTO, also an early partner, has been here since day one. These are like the founding team basically. But what I would say is I've been in that seat where you go from hey, we don't really have an executive team. Can you grow into it? 

22:40
I went from account executive to a VP of sales at the same company. So I grew from 10 employees in the company to 500 employees in the company and had a sales team with, I think there's, 126 people, as big as it got right. So I experienced that growth through that and I didn't want to get topped. I was always on this mission like no one's ever going to come in above me. I'll just keep growing, growing, growing forever. And to be able to go from one to like 30 million in revenue is pretty rare. Actually, most people are like that zero to one or one to five or five. 

23:10 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, I was going to say you're, you're, I would say, more of the exception, and there's a reason why you founded your SAS company now than than the rule, cause a lot of the time people can't do what you've done through these companies. So these companies to have you able to grow with the organization and still make those strategic decisions to grow, that's a huge kudos to you, cause, like I have talked to a lot of people, I don't see that very often with people, so it shows the level of talent that you have like to be completely honest with you. I don't see that very often or hear from that very often. 

23:42 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
I appreciate that. I think where I'm, if unique whatever is, I can go from frontline execution to leadership and kind of more strategy stuff fairly fluidly and so early you need doers and then later you need reviewers and so like someone who can kind of flex a little bit. 

24:02
Maybe they're not the best doer ever, maybe they're the most strategic person ever, but they'll take you pretty far. Like from one to 50 million is pretty far. What I'm looking for when I think about that is, yeah, don't over-title people. It's hard to take them back. You just hurt people's feelings. 

24:16
Set good expectations, understand if they're a lifer or if they're a toward duty type of person. The and one of the things is I went through those three companies is I was always on this mission to be the top of the top. I thought CRO would be the final end point for me. I ended up being CEO and I was like I'm going to get to that. Like I was on a mission. I'd set that goal for years. I'm going to become a CRO and be the highest evolution of revenue leadership. And so the problem was like going for, why didn't you just stay at one and go all the way to the end, like well, we were growing really, really fast. Eventually they're going to want to top you. 

24:51
But really the problem was mission alignment. Like my mission to become a CRO didn't really align with that company's mission because they didn't care about my desire to become a CRO. They cared about hitting whatever metrics they had. Now, when you're early and I was an account executive trying to become a VP first, those missions align pretty well because my ability to help them grow and then my ability to become a VP we're kind of like doing it at the same time. But once we veered off in different like goals. Then I had to go find another place where my mission and their mission were aligned again and so figuring out those people for those at executive levels at each stage it's to me is is there alignment with what I'm trying to get to and with their mission? 

25:33
I have helped get about half a dozen people 10, I think, actually like almost 10, so almost a dozen to VP or director. A lot of VPs who have worked in organizations that I've led and I could tell really quickly is they're on a mission here. I can help them get to that next stage. I can help them get to VP because that's what they want to do and they're talented enough to do it. If I can help push them in that direction, that's a good hire. If that person's goal is to get something that they're never going to, I can't help them do or they're going to age out of this thing because they want to be the CEO someday. I'm like, okay, well, you're never going to be the CEO here because that's my job, so I can help you get where you want to go if I know what it is and it aligns to what I'm trying to do. 

26:20 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, I think that's truly great advice, because I feel like too often people don't ask um, what someone's you know goal is long term, and you know I I weirdly watched something from dan martell just the other day, you know that's that's something that he harps on pretty good is like making sure that you understand where is this person trying to get to and are they trying to be with me long term or short term? Um, what do their goals align with mine? And he's like you know people should be doing that more before they even hire some of these high level people. It's like, are they going to be there for one year? Are you going to have the opportunity for for them to get to where they want two and three years? And if they're not, it's kind of a decision that you both have to make. Is this kind of like the short-term thing, or are you going to ride or die with me till till we exit, type of thing? 

27:06
And um, I think you, you really nailed it on the head of you know, being aligned with, with your team, and asking those questions and making sure that you know not everyone wants to to be me or you either. Someone could be an incredible AE or manager director and that's, that's their end game or that's where they want to get to and be great at. There's nothing wrong with that, because you need those people too. So it's just very interesting. I like kind of how you framed it. I think that's good advice to give for people that are starting out their business. 

27:35 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Yeah, the alignment is like super, super important. What I've seen, so three runs that were all various types of successful. 

27:43
One is now $100 million probably going to go public or get PE bought out at some point pretty soon. One of them is we got hyper-growth up and raised $50 million. But the best of them all actually for me like from experience wise was the one where we had perfect alignment. The executive team, everybody was on the same page, same mission. They said come join this company and we are going to have an exit in two years. It's like, okay, our goal is to do a two year all out sprint for an exit and we about 10X the value of the business in those two years. And we're talking hundreds of millions of exit value now because every single person knew that we were all trying to do the same thing. 

28:28
Those that boat was rowing in one direction and it was way more fun, by the way, than the other runs where one person's running off and every single person knew that we were all trying to do the same thing. Those that boat was rowing in one direction and it was way more fun, by the way, than the other runs where one person's running off and like we're going to create a $20 billion company, and then somebody else is like I'd be cool if we just had a lifestyle business forever. I'm like those are different things, they cannot exist together and it was like miserable to be. Like trying to make decisions with the, with trying to serve both of those outcomes, which was impossible, but everyone's like no, two years, sell it. Everybody gets a big check, like that. And if the lifestyle business is the goal, like cool, but everybody has to be like we're doing the lifestyle business. 

29:04 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, if you're doing a lifestyle business, you just have to pay your employees a crap ton of money and give them probably profitability bonuses for your high-end people and they're going to go push, because if they're profit sharing to some degree on profits, you structure different businesses in different ways. You're trying to sell. Here's some equity Lifestyle business. If you want good executives or good leadership, they need to be profit sharing. If they're able to grow a bunch of revenue, keep costs down and make you a bunch of of money, you better be willing to be stroking huge bonus checks um to people like that, because that's the difference they're not getting that big exit. Their big exit is every quarter, every half year every year like that's, that's theirs. 

29:44
Um, if you want highly talented people, um, those are basically your two options. To be honest with you, I've learned that if I were to go create a lifestyle business, I'd make sure that their profit sharing one. Then they're going to really give a shit on hiring new employees, on the expenses, on the vendors that we're using, like they're going to be many owners to some degree. Um, and if they start thinking that way for you, if you more want to be like a board or you, you know, I mean, let's say, me and even my two partners wanted to make it more of a lifestyle business. That's exactly how we go about doing. It is having them own the P&L with us having them care about the profits and like, hey, if revenue is growing, going up, but you're hiring so many employees, we're not making more money on the bottom line, then that's not a lifestyle business, that's a growth business to exit. So I think you said it perfectly. But okay, next topic we have a lot of stuff, we have a lot of good banter going on and with you raising money, I guess let me kind of get through the whole question. But do you plan on raising more? And I guess my question is are you profitable or at a burn right now? So obviously I'm a bootstrap company. So question is are you profitable or are you burning right now? So obviously I'm a bootstrap company. 

30:52
So profitability versus growth has always been this line that we have to. We've really had to juggle because we didn't raise any money. Everything is, you know, me, Anny and Ivo's money. So we always have we kind of have an evident number we want to get to. Anything above that will be, it could be, and then we'll go burn that money up. We have a certain evident number that we want to get to. Everything else is put into growth. It could be employees, it could be a new vendor, it could be new whatever. 

31:19
But it took us a while to get there to where it's just like we're printing money but like we wanted to grow, cause eventually we do want to have some type of exit or partnership or strategic thing. So for us it's been interesting figuring out okay, what do we need to take home? What do we expect to take home? If we do a little bit better, maybe we could take a few dividends if we're really crushing it on the profitability side. But most of that money is going back into trying to fuel growth through marketing sales guys or just adding on vendors to become more efficient. That's kind of where we're at today. How do you, where do you sit? And, I guess, what are some of your ultimate goals long-term? 

31:57 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Yeah, so we are on a burn because we're trying to grow as fast as we can, but we're also not a huge fundraising from East Coast VCs, right Like we raised barely a million dollars to get this thing all going up and running, so you're not spending, you're not burning a ton of money, right? 

32:14
So what our thought around that is, the market is very or investors much more interested right now in this concept of efficient growth. And what does that actually mean, though? It can be debatable. Some people would say, well, are you profitable the whole time? That's one way to look at it. The other way you can see a profit. 

32:34
Efficient growth, though, is what can you get to in growth, at what type of invested capital? Right, so that's how we are generally looking at it is hey, if we're able to generate, you know, $10 million of reoccurring revenue with a million million of investment, that's a 10 times return on the invested capital in just reoccurring revenue. And if you do it really, really quickly as a growth business, what's the enterprise value of that business? You're probably like 100x-ing the invested capital and the value of the entity, and therefore what's the percentage owned there? So we basically need to show very efficient added revenue, even compared to what we burned to get there. 

33:14
That's how we generally are measuring it, or how we're thinking about it. Not a net profit, but if you're doing that, then you kind of always have the ability to get to a profit if you just decided to slow down. Everyone's like well, we could be profitable if we just slow down growing. Slowed down, everyone's like well if we could be profitable if we just slowed down growing. Yes, if you have very efficient growth, because that means you're not constantly having to pour a ton of money in to keep growing, which means you probably have a big problem. 

33:38 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, we we always kind of had to find that balance because we fell ass backwards into SaaS Like I. I didn't. When I started it, I didn't know what an AM or an AE meant. I literally had no idea. I knew nothing about it. I was a real estate investor making a bunch of money over there and found a problem to solve. I had to listen and read to a lot quickly. We were just lucky that we had a perfect product, market fit at the perfect time and money solved all of our problems and we we probably and we were able to hire a good CTO and head of product. Um, that was like crucial for us. But we made huge mistakes on the sales, cs and marketing side is we were hiring people that weren't going to get us. They were more of like the hustler type of marketer, to where they were not sophisticated in staffs and funnels to the degree that we are today um so those were some learning lessons. 

34:42
But at the same time, if you have a great product at the right time, you don't even need any of that stuff during that time because it just goes viral in your industry and everyone's talking about the word of mouth and the affiliates. I went and got the biggest affiliates in the real estate investing space that were one friends with me that grew to become some of the biggest influencers in the space and they loved and used our product. So we just went from zero to a thousand super quickly. And that was during the COVID time, when real estate was booming. Everyone was sitting at home. So I think we had a great idea. We also had really lucky on our timing, but we were smart enough to pour so much money into developing the product, because at that time we still had our real estate investing business. 

35:30
So we're still making a bunch of money over here, making so much money over there on the new sass product, that we just kept putting it, pouring it into growing our product line to to what it is today. And then we kind of, as I said, had to learn along the way because I did not have any of the type of experience that you had. You know what I mean. I was just like, uh, I don't know like we spend most money on r&d. 

35:52 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
So, like most of the like, when you think about, oh, you could be profitable tomorrow, I'm like, well, yeah, if we weren't spending 60 70 percent of every dollar that we spend is on products and development, because, to your point, I think like that's your value to the world is what you build. Like be awesome at a sale, being an awesome sales team and awesome marketing team to help people find and discover a product that they don't want is a really big waste of money, and so if you are investing in solving the problems or a software company, software is how you solve those problems, and so that's where all the money goes. It's also the moat of your business, because someone can rip off your pricing they can try, and you know rip off your branding, they can rip off your messaging, but if you have a better product than them, then it's going to be really hard for them to beat you at the end of the day, and so that gives a lot of durability to your business, whereas sales and marketing can accentuate that benefit. 

36:49
Or that strategic advantage. 

36:50
But I've built really, really, really effective sales teams. Like I would brag to ourselves and be like listen we could give our product to our competitor and we would still beat them because we are that much better than them. 

37:03
And I believe like a hundred percent and I used to say like product stuff is important, but now that I'm sitting in this chair, I'm like to say like product stuff is important, but now that I'm sitting in this chair, I'm like the value of being able to do that is on top of having a good solution to a problem. It will not solve the problem for the customer and that's ultimately a durable business. It's a efficient growth model is yeah, hire more sales people because people want what we have. 

37:30 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and remind me this just like came to a thought. Remind me after we get done with our podcaster. I'm super friendly with the CEO of A1 Garage Doors. There could be some synergies there. Yeah, obviously, one of the probably know who he is. 

37:45 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Tommy Mello has one of the biggest garage door companies in America now I've texted with him once before because my advisor, Strickland Tudor, knows him pretty well, but we haven't actually connected. 

37:56 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, you need to go a different route. He's so busy now Like I'm a friend of his and I like reached out to him. He thought it was business, he had an assistant schedule a time for me to have a call with him. I was like bro, I just wanted to chat and see how you're doing. 

38:10 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
He's super busy. He spends most of his time now doing speaking events around the country, and so I do believe, getting him to just basically check the box, that he's like yeah, I'm not going to say no to this thing, but here's my people, they'll go say yes to it. 

38:23 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I think it's Rick Sharp. I shouldn't even be talking about this. We'll talk about it off. Um, I know the people, but, um, I always love to connect people um you know to where, because this could be a huge enterprise account for you potentially, if, um, if you could sell them on it. And you said you're good at sales, so you know, let's see how good you really are there you go. 

38:41 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Next question like climbing mountains, here's a big one but it could be a huge account. 

38:47 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Um, I think you alluded to this, but, um, maybe give me a different example. Share a moment when something felt like a failure in your business and it ended up being um, really pushing your business in a different direction. It sounds like your first six months was kind of that. Um, do you have any other examples, since you started um glasshouse, of something that you just felt like was a massive failure but you're like, and then it turned to push you in a direction of like oh yeah, this is good stuff here. 

39:18 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Yes, it is that starting is the best example. 

39:22
Let's just talk about that. That's still a real example.

39:23
There's nothing more than that here. There's other things that are small, like, oh, we brought in a fractional marketer and he was talked about the vibes all the time. We're like like that's fine, whatever. But those are small things. 

39:35
The big thing was, you know, taking a million dollars from people I knew to invest in the business for an idea that ended up being not the Reddit, and like, having put my name on that, it was like a super big, painful thing. It was like I mean like borderline depressive, like it was so, so, so miserable to like, oh my gosh, what have I done? And I'm wasting these people's money and my life and all this stuff, and you have every negative thought in your head you're ever going to have. And so how did that end up being? The good thing is, but like at least it got me going into the right direction. Like I would not be here if I had not gone through that. It's impossible. I would not have just stumbled into this problem that we can solve and like would not have figured out where we really wanted to go if I hadn't done that other thing first. I don't know this space. So this doesn't exist in the world today if it didn't start in the wrong place. 

40:28
And there's something I've been thinking about when we've been talking that like I want to give some advice to the world. It's like because I've heard this from people like, don't build it, get people to pay you first, I'm like, oh, whatever, I'm smart, I'll figure it out, I'll just build it. But the real honest truth is it's really actually decent advice if you're willing to at least like, take some risks but do the work and validate this stuff Right. So like what we did was when I realized that the product wasn't the right solution to the real problem. It was like I think this is the real problem Now at that moment it was. 

41:00
Do you want to give the money back or do other stuff, or do you want? To keep going and people were like keep going. 

41:04
So I looked across the room with the CTO and COO who's an investor in the company too, by the way and he was like I said do y'all want to keep going or do you want to stop? And they were like let's keep going. I said I think I found the real problem, but I can't prove it and we don't have enough time to validate it 100%. We have to start going in this direction right now, but we can do it a better way. We don't just build the whole product and say here you go. 

41:30
So I did like the startup hackiest thing we could do is like we just did a Figma mockup, I could tell you. And the problem with that, though, is everyone says just do a Figma mockup. It's like people don't want to buy a Figma mockup, they want to buy a real product, right, Like everyone knows its're looking at, and so we did that, but I did still have a way to solve the problem a little bit, because what we do is we help people get in touch with homeowners directly and message them, and like we help you drive revenue directly to your home service business without waiting for the phone call. 

42:03
Basically right right, and so I said well here's a beautiful example of what that would look like. Here's a a map, and it's so gorgeous and here's all this stuff and I'd show it to somebody like, can I buy that? I'm like, yes, kind of you have to pay me anything like 90 bucks. I don't even care, you have to pay me something. But until this exists, just go fill out this form, tell me the neighborhoods you're looking to get in touch with and we will help you with their information and we'll build a message for them and then we'll, like you can text them and email them, like, but we'll have to do it like. Basically, we will just physically do this thing if you go fill out a google form, but you have to pay me for that something, and so we have about 10 people to sign up and do that. While we built the version of the thing, we didn't like wait around. 

42:51
We started building it, but while we're doing that, we're getting the feedback, we're proving this is a real thing, so that we can feel like we are in fact going in the right direction. And so back to your question like biggest learning, it was like the first time we did this. We just took the that sounds cool as enough evidence. That's absolutely not enough evidence, and that was the big learning. That was like. 

43:15
Oh yeah, go back and do this better. I would have done it a different way, but the learning at least the painful part of getting here was at least now we're in the right place. 

43:23 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
And then, yeah, let's hop into one of my favorite topics that I also like to bring up every every podcast episode is what do you think, um, if you're going to say AI, be like kind of a little bit more specific. But what do you think, um, if you're going to say aib, like kind of a little bit more specific, but what do you think are going to be, you know, one to three, really disruptive? You know technology trends that we're going to be seeing in the prop tech space, um, you know, over the next one, two, three, four years, um, and what are you doing in your business to position to take advantage of these opportunities with, you know, the AI revolution? 

43:58 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
So I think about AI a decent amount. There's a lot of conversation about it and it certainly has a place in tech. It is tech and we are in tech, so it's not like you're not going to say it has a place in your business. But I think actually the way that this is going to play out is not that AI is going to replace everyone's like jobs or like that's not really how humans work. 

44:22
I wonder, like someone says, you can have way less employees. I'm like I like having employees

44:27
I want we. I measured somebody. We talked about this in the day. How are we going to measure success? My team members are like ARR in this way. I said Jimmy, how? Do you measure success? I was like how many college educations are we helping pay for? How many vacations get taken, how many dinners get put on plates and like if we can do that, then all the outcomes are going to be good. 

44:45
I just know that, and so I'm not trying to hire more people because they can come work here. It's awesome and I like people and I want to be around them. I like talking to people, not to computers. So I think that when you look at that technology trend, it's how are these trends allowing us to deliver products that are better, faster and cheaper, so that we can charge less for them and still have the same margin? Right? So most SaaS businesses don't make money. 

45:15
If they're growth stories, they're all about earning money to grow this pot of money so that someday in the future hand wavy, they'll make money Muslim value. So how is this stuff actually going to help us operate our businesses better versus how do we put it into our software so that our customers? Are the beneficiary of the AI or the. I mean it's invariably coming into our software. 

45:39
I don't think the user is all obsessed with the AI. 

45:42
I think if I could go to my customers right now and say we're going to make the software 50% better and 50% cheaper, or we can give you an AI that does this little thing over here that maybe saves you a couple of minutes every day, they would take 50% faster and 50% cheaper every single time, which means I need that technology, that AI, to help me build software 50% cheaper so I can charge less and make it work 50% better, so that they feel the outcome of that experience and for less money. 

46:09
They're going to be super happy about that, yeah feel the outcome of that experience, and for less money. They're gonna be super happy about that. 

46:16 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, so where I think and it doesn't necessarily need to be AI but what's just gonna be disruptive to PropTech space? I really believe in where the batch data side of our business or the B2B side of our business, that help fuel other software companies in PropTech we're really leaning into LOM models and machine learning to where, like, let's say, for example, for your business, we've already created this product for batch leads, but it's to give our customers. So this goes back to your efficiency and making stuff simpler for people is we have a model going on right now that we've had for about a year of what's the most likely to sell homes in areas that our investors or wholesalers are looking to purchase homes in. So we literally have a button that they could click and say and then we're about 90% accurate. I don't know if it's a fixer-upper, I don't know if it should go on the MLS, so it could be for an agent, it could be for an investor, but what I can tell you is this home is likely to sell in the next 90 days. You should go talk to this person, and that has been a huge new feature. That has made it much easier, especially for the people that are just getting started. They love knowing that, hey, there's data behind this. I'm going to reach out to these people because this is something that works. 

47:38
Now, the better you get and more sophisticated you get, you're going to be able to use your own data inside, being an investor and saying, hey, the code violations and tax default, along with a vacant home, these are going to be the most likely to sell people. Of all the transactions and people that I've talked to, let's outreach them. And then maybe I'm still using this batch ring but, like for, let's say, for home service. You know, in my head is how can I, you know, help you or help someone like you or something that you could create? But, like, how can I create something for the home service people being like, here's the most likely person that's going to need a garage door or, um, you know something, so on and so forth? I, you know, pick any ac, any home service, because we have all these data sets and all these permits and all these things. 

48:21
But, like I think, um, back to my point is, I think, like that's where people are really going to win is creating our own proprietary models, built on a bunch of different data sets, to solve problems for niche industries and then, at the same time, very friendly APIs for people to ingest this into, let's say, their CRM or their whatever type of sales tool that their teams are using, let's say like a glass house or something like that. That's where I really think that we are focused on one to help our customers, but like for us to help someone like a glass house or like A1 or Investor Lift a bunch of different people that we work with to some degree is like how can we help on a dataset, on a data side, help solve problems for for our customers that are their customers? 

49:26 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
And that's kind of like what we're looking into for, like our future of the evolution of, you'll see, is the integrability of data, not just of systems. Automations is kind of behind here a little bit compared to other industries and a lot of these businesses they sit on a lot of information about their existing customer base and they think it's a lot and it's not actually Like. I talked to a very big Hvac, uh pe, back roll up recently. They said we have 80 000 customer records in our crm or fsm, whatever you want to call it. They were like that's a lot, like it's really not that much actually they're like what do you mean? 

50:03
that's 80 000 like. Well, there's like 160 million houses. 

50:05
So you really don't have that much actually, and so even these bigger players think they have a lot of data. 

50:11
But but being able to network that together, connect that, create interoperability between systems that have generally all just been little tiny silos, like ServiceTitan has 5% of the 10% of the market, that's still nothing Right and it's just a couple of sub verticals Connecting big data sets. That's where ML like we use machine learning in our system to look across all this data we're ML like we use machine learning in our system to look across all this data. And then how do you create or drive some value from it where you know we're not selling software to data scientists? There are zero data scientists running around in my customers, like not a single one. I promise you that. So how do we basically lend them that capability? By saying, hey, we're going to aggregate all this information, we're going to create insights on top of it that are just baked into what you're doing, because we're able to connect things that are usually probably beyond what most property-based businesses, like home service businesses, are really going to do on their own. 

51:07 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and I just really believe that, especially for us on batch data, you know, like big data is becoming a commodity, just the data sets alone to some degree, or just the phone numbers and just all the things, and on our end it's how can we create stuff that's proprietary, that we're building? 

51:32
you know, great new products that are derivatives of big data. It's exactly what you're saying to some degree is like how do we create insights to make people's job that much easier? Or really just saying understanding someone someone's let's use you as an example of home service. Like you're trying to understand, you know what type of person they're going after and then it's your job to figure out, to give them the best insights, to get there as fast as possible. Like that's what's going to create a ton of value for your customers and, um, now we're able to use, you know LLM modeling and you know machine learning and all these different new tools and all these AI um advanced as AI advances, these different new tools and all these AI advances. You know it's going to be really cool with how people create different ways to look at things and the ease of use. 

52:22
I just think the customers that you're going to be serving in the way that you think you're going to give them just incredible ways to be successful with their businesses and that means they'll stay with you for a long time and continue to spend more money. Yep, I hope so. That's the plan. Is there any other kind of ideas that you have just around prop tech that you think will really disrupt it? It doesn't have to be AI side of things. Is there anything that you think could just be disruptive to, you know, the property technology space over the next couple years? 

52:59 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
I probably don't have enough insight across the whole property tech uh we focus really on the sales side. 

53:05
what I am seeing, and why we're here, is that the property tech, home services tech, like home tech is like from a sales perspective it's very inbound demand generation focus. 

53:20
So there's quite a bit of technology based or predicated on Google ads and things like that and there's a big, big, big ecosystem of marketing agencies that kind of like live between a company and Google and I think what you'll generally start to see is platforms that the end user can use to directly interface with those systems and kind of circumvent some of that like service layer a little bit, which is a very big tax on those businesses. 

53:48
I think you're going to see that happening over the next couple of years. I also think that what we're doing in terms of helping people do more direct to consumer targeting and not have to be so reliant on these ad platforms which have basically created a monopolistic tax on property. They're basically taxing everybody to connect you and your plumber. Where if your plumber could connect directly with you and your plumber? Where if your plumber could connect directly with you? I've seen a lot of community-based things that are out there right now, like companies who are trying to build localized connectors, like kind of basically a modern angie list, and so I think you're going to see more kind of connective tissue between the consumer and the business, with less intermediaries um playing in between. 

54:32 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
that's my thesis that is an answer that I was looking for. I was trying to get outside of just focusing on the AI revolution and I can agree. More is it's getting more and more expensive. So I play in the realtor and investor space and Google and Facebook they're squeezing every dollar to where it's going to be so hard to be profitable in the future. With getting these inbound leads is how can you connect you know someone that wants to, you know, buy a rundown property with the homeowner and you know the community-based things that you're talking about and having great insights and tools to go outbound and that's something that Batch Leads has is we give people great insights to go direct to the homeowner and try and purchase, you know their home, or lift their home or whatever. And you know I think that's definitely the play is because it's just going to get more and more and more saturated and expensive using the Googles, the Facebooks, the Reddits. You know all those. 

55:31 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Let me blow your mind on a piece of data, jesse this. So I talk to home service businesses all day, every day, and so learning the space and now I'm a home service business is like five, ten years ago. If you're a pest control company or any home service, you could put a dollar into one of these lead aggregation tools. So let's just say Google, you put a dollar in and it would spit $7 back. So at that point your business is how fast can I put dollars? 

55:58 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
in. 

55:58 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
I mean, I'm just like cool Every dollar I can put in a split seven back. How like let's borrow dollars. Let's get all the dollars we can. And then your only problem is can I hire people fast enough to service? That was your biggest problem. And what happens when that math is? 

56:13 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
put a dollar in, get $3 back, or $2 back, and then you have all these operational costs on top of it. And what's your margin on this business? Like 20%. 

56:23 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
Well then it's not. I'm losing money to service these leads. Yeah, and that's where I think the problem has. We have so many people have entered these markets in direct home services and things like that, and there's so many more players, and Google has found a way to extract every ring, every penny out. That's capitalism, that's what it does, and so how are we going to address that as an industry? Is we have to be able to find ways to get directly to the consumer without paying the tax man for the privilege? 

56:58 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I couldn't agree more. And before we wrap this up, the last question I do like to ask is kind of two questions. But first, how would someone get a hold of Jimmy? Where do you live? You live in LinkedIn. Hold of Jimmy. Where do you live? You live in LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. Where do you live? Where does your company live? If someone's interested in looking into your amazing product or just wants to kind of pick your brain because you're obviously very brilliant and you've done and had an incredible software career as well, how would someone get a hold of? 

57:31 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
you Easiest way to get a hold of me would be to come to my business and reach out, because I see all of that um, early enough. I'm, I'm watching every single thing that comes through. But, um, glasshousebiz I'm jimmy at glasshousebiz. My only social is LinkedIn. I don't do any other social media. Um, I just don't find it uh interesting to me. But I do pay attention to my LinkedIn and people message me. I respond. So those are the easiest ways to find me, generally speaking, or reach out. And where do you live? I live in Nashville. So if you're in Nashville, let me know. 

58:05 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Awesome. And lastly and this could be someone on any part of their SaaS journey as a founder but what's advice that you would give to a SaaS founder? They could be just getting started, they could be growing, they could be super seasoned, but what advice, you know, would you give to someone listening to this podcast? 

58:23 - Jimmy Speyer (Guest)
You have to find the people to go on this journey with really fast that want the same thing you do and believe in the same things you do. There can be absolutely zero compromise on what your philosophy for life, work, integration or balance or whatever you think about it. I believe in life, work, integration. Some people are into like a balance of keeping them separate whatever. It doesn't even matter who's right, but they have to believe the same thing you do. If there is one tiny little gap between what you believe and the people that you initially put around you to do this, then it will not work, because this will be 10 times harder than you can possibly imagine. It'll be a thousand times more rewarding at the end than you thought it would be, but if you will never get there, if, when it does get hard, your belief system and the people with yours belief system does not match 100%, that is some incredible advice. 

59:20 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Well, everybody, thank you again for joining another episode of the Real SaaS Podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Burrell. Until next time, let's get it. 

59:30 - Hope (Announcement)
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