Helzer says Subbase charged its first paying customer a few hundred monthly.
Eric Helzer · 33 Year Old Quickly Closes 100 Customers For His Construction SaaS, Gets $10m+ Valuation · Nov 12, 2024 · at 9:12
Eric Helzer, founder of Subbase, discusses early monetization mistakes and how he priced his very first paying customer (a plumbing contractor).
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“On, on day one, we charged about a couple hundred dollars a month and it was a monthly contract.”
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Helzer admits Subbase gave its software away for a year before monetizing.
“We did not charge early enough. It spent, we spent a year giving the software away for free. Testing and really iterating until we started actually charge.”
Helzer notes construction software requires extensive implementation and customer success resources.
“Implementing new software into construction is not an easy thing to do, so we have a heavy focus on implementation and customer success because that is really a true pain point for people. Even if the software is easy to use, you still touch a lot of different…”
Helzer says Subbase raised under $1M in its initial pre-seed round.
“That was under a million.
and that was a, I would call it a pre pre seed.
Yes.”
Helzer says Subbase's ideal construction customers pay $20,000 to $30,000 annually.
“I would say the average customer size that we do very well with is paying anywhere between 20 and 30,000 a year. That's where we see the most benefit, and that's where the big pain points of the material procurement process are actually taking place at that si…”