Dec 14, 2018 · 18m · top-founders
1238 With $50k in MRR, They Help Building Developers Scale
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, Nathan Latka interviews Sebastian Karlsson, co-founder of Homemaker.io, about how the Swedish vertical SaaS company achieved $56,000 in MRR with 100% year-over-year growth. Karlsson explains their modular software architecture for real estate developers, their 116% net revenue retention, and their use of revenue-based financing to scale without equity dilution.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 45.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 6.3 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 1.2 Nathan pushing back 2.8
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 3:53 Sebastian corrects customer target profile
Sebastian gently but firmly rejects Nathan's assumption that brokers are the paying customers, reiterating that building developers pay the bills.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 2:46 Nathan challenges real estate CRM validityNathan directly challenges the value proposition of a real estate CRM, arguing homebuyer leads remain dormant for 5 to 10 years.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 2:55 Sebastian outlines developer monetization streamsSebastian explains to Nathan how real estate developers can unlock ongoing revenue streams post-purchase via furniture, renovation, food delivery access, and Amazon drop points.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 9:00 Nathan breaks down standard RBF loan mechanicsNathan demonstrates high subject-matter expertise by predicting the exact repayment caps (1.3x to 1.8x) and gross percentage ranges (3% to 9%) of revenue-based debt vehicles.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homemaker Product Overview and Real Estate Developer Focus | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Nathan challenges the utility of a real estate CRM given long multi-year purchase cycles and misidentifies brokers as the core customer. Sebastian calmly educates Nathan on developer upselling opportunities (furniture, renovation, food) and clarifies that project developers, not brokers, pay for the product. | |
| SaaS Model Breakdown, Pricing ACVs, and Retention Metrics | 7 | 3 | 1 | 4 | Nathan pushes into Sebastian's metrics, questioning whether the company is truly SaaS before drilling into ACVs and clarifying net revenue retention figures when Sebastian misstates 116% as 160%. Sebastian remains collaborative and provides transparent figures on ACVs and TAM. | |
| Customer Count, Monthly Revenue, and Round Two Capital | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Nathan does live mental math connecting 45 developers at $15k ACV to $56k MRR and $700k ARR, which Sebastian confirms. Nathan then inquires into revenue-based financing qualifying minimums before an ad break. | |
| Revenue-Based Financing Structure and Contractual Price Escalators | 8 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Nathan displays deep knowledge of revenue-based financing structures, listing repayment caps, monthly revenue percentages, covenants, and refinancings. Sebastian explains how their annual contractual price index escalators cover loan interest costs. | |
| Company Founding, Team Distribution, and R&D Deployment | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Nathan inquires into headcount, bootstrap history, loan deployment into R&D, and compares a $5k CAC against monthly payback periods. Sebastian explains multi-tier sales cycles and how 12-month advance payments facilitate scaling. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid-Fire Founder Questions | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | A standard, friendly Famous Five rapid-fire segment covering book recommendations, Fort Knox's auditor channel strategy, and founder lifestyle questions without conflict. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Property developers miss post-sale monetization opportunities with apartment buyers, says Karlsson
“Because they don't really focus on, on the one who's buying the apartment as a customer, but they still have a lot of customers that they could actually get to sell more and more services to.”
Homemaker's warranty and maintenance tool generates its highest module revenue
“It's actually a homemaker service, which is the most boring one. It's just for taking care of the errands and the guarantee errands when something is broke.”
Homemaker's average annual contract value is approximately $15,000 per customer
“Yeah, I think we're around 15,000 dollars per year per customer. Approximately.”
Homemaker funded its research and development using a revenue-based loan
“Yeah, and we are, we have just taken in some capital in form of round two. It's a revenue-based loan, which is quite new here in Sweden, and we just took that money and putting it into R&D for us to take a bigger share of wallet from our customers, because the…”
Homemaker currently serves 45 paying customers, primarily property developers
“We are, we have 45 customers today. And most, most of them is project developers, but we also have some construction companies who is buying our product.”
Standard revenue-based financing caps repayment at 1.3x to 1.8x, notes Latka
“Usually it's like 1.3 to 1.8 over like three to five ish years. And then you're paying back as a percentage of gross receipt each month, usually between caught three percent and like nine percent.”
Homemaker's average customer contract length is approximately 24 months
“We have quite long contracts. Now, I think we have an average contract length of around 24 months.”
Karlsson recommends revenue-based financing over expensive early-stage equity dilution
“I will recommend round two all the time, and especially in the early stage, because capital or money is really, really expensive then, so this is a really good way of us to take the first steps together with them”
Homemaker raised approximately $120,000 in financing to fund research and development
“We took in now I just need to do this in dollar approximately 120,000 dollars we just took in, and that's just for cover there. We need more R&D.”
Homemaker achieved 100% year-over-year revenue growth by late 2018
“We were approximately half the size of that, so we have a year-over-year growth of around 100%, and that's what we need to keep going forward, and as a natural next step, we need to, of course, leave the Nordics and go into UK and Germany.”
Homemaker's enterprise sales cycle ranges from 45 to 120 days
“We have around our sales cycle is around 45 up to 120 days, actually, depending on which of their modules.”
Homemaker's current customer acquisition cost is approximately $5,000
“I think we have a Cost of customer acquisition around 5000 dollars.”
Homemaker targets halving its customer acquisition cost to $2,500 in 2019
“We will try to lower that to approximately 2500 dollars. That's the target for our cost of customer acquisition next year.”
Homemaker collects twelve months of advance payment from all its customers
“And of course we're getting 12 month payment in advance all the time.”