SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EstateSpace Grows 200% to $2.2m ARR Bootstrapped Helping You Track Your Physical Assets
06 Aug 2021
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
So we did a million in 2020, and we did 1.4 in January of this year, and we continue to scale that number up this year.
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Now look, I never want money to be the reason you can't listen to episodes. On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests no questions asked. Hey guys, my guest today is Jonathan Fischbeck.
He's the founder and CEO of Estate Space, a technology platform that simplifies lifestyle management service and operations to maintain real property assets to help reduce risk and protect wealth succession. He was previously the founder and CEO at a design build firm whose focus was advising, designing, constructing, and operationalizing sizable estate properties for families and family offices.
Jonathan, you ready to take us to the top?
Absolutely. Thank you, Nathan.
Who's thinking about this? Like an 80-year-old with 10 million in real estate assets and three nephews, and they don't know how to divide it amongst the nephews?
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Chapter 2: What is EstateSpace and how did it start?
And then 3.0 is coming out middle of October of 2021. And that's what we're really excited for because we'll have end-to-end capabilities. Again, we've got workflows. We have a marketplace for service providers to help our clients on things that we don't do, as well as business intelligence. So those are kind of the three things when you think about a state space.
And now we'll have web, both mobile, Android, Apple. So we'll be able to be anywhere that our clients need us to be.
Let's talk about that in a second. But first, take me back to that beautiful sort of year one 2019 to get that release out. Do you remember revenue that year total revenue?
Yeah, that total revenue that year was probably about $150,000.
What was going through your head the year end closeout? Was it were you exciting? Or you're bummed or what?
No, I think we were psyched, right? So that was kind of like our proof of concept launch. So we kind of saw that as like our beta launch. We got 13 clients and they were spread across ultra high net worth families, family offices, and then supporting service providers. So property management company, we also had an estate management company.
And so we got all of the flavors that we were looking for, and then we were able to get a ton of feedback. And then we were in that led to our 2.0 release, which was so we were on September of 19. Second one came in June of 2020. And now this October is 3.0. That's probably what I'm most excited about.
Again, you know, we try to listen really well and then apply that feedback in a way that benefits all of our customers.
So 150 grand in 2019, what did you scale up to in 2020?
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Chapter 3: Who are the primary clients of EstateSpace?
So I guess you just broke essentially $2 million run rate. So what do you think you'll finish the year at?
So I'm hoping to throw about another 750 to 1.1 on top of it. That's what I'm projecting.
Where's the growth coming from? Is it more seats across the same 50 customers or adding brand new families altogether?
Yeah, no, it's adding. Now that we have our web application coming out, we're able to start onboarding businesses. So a lot of our families are going to be anywhere from about 5 to 10 users, Nathan. But businesses can be anywhere from like 50 to a couple thousand. Because estate space is built for everyone in your ecosystem.
So if you think about a business, you might have employees, you have vendors, you have suppliers, you have clients. All of those people are members of your estate space.
Yeah. Nathan, sorry. I want to make sure my audience doesn't miss this. You're really playing in the physical asset management space. For example, if you are a CEO and you buy 30 and max for 30 team members, I could manage those max on your platform. Is that accurate?
It is.
Yeah. So it's not just like you own a mansion and you need to do tax planning. Again, this is an asset class that's growing very quick. There are a lot of SaaS companies in this space growing quickly.
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Chapter 4: What common mistakes do new asset owners make?
You're in this space. Yes. Interesting. Okay. How are you finding customers?
So it's kind of threefold. So we're campaigning for very specific people. So we're finding people through LinkedIn. We have an extensive network. So part of the beauty about estate space is myself, my partner, we were able to roll up about 18 years of human capital into this company. So our whole network was really applicable.
um and then uh we have a you know we have a team that's that's out doing outreach we have you know a digital inbound funnel as well so we're advertising we're marketing but we're targeting the people that we feel that we can really have the biggest impact on and so that's you know that's that's the high net worth individuals executive uh family offices and then the supporting service providers and when i say that we're focusing on um
more of a luxury market as our go-to market. So like a luxury contract management company or a consultant that's helping with something to do with more in the estate management or property management side. Those are kind of the main targets that we're going after from a B2B perspective.
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Chapter 5: How does EstateSpace help clients manage their physical assets?
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That's not a ton. Yeah. How many new customers did you have last month? One from those advertisements. Yep. Okay. Interesting. So is that sort of the right tack? You're willing to spend about three grand to get a new customer?
No. So right now, because we're sunsetting 2.0 and releasing 3.0, we're starting to pivot our marketing and our messaging. Our website will be turning over next month. So we have, I'd say, a handful of referrals that are coming on for the 2.0 release, which was mobile-centric, mobile first, with a very simple web-supporting application.
And so not to confuse our upcoming buyers and a lot of the people that are in our pipeline. we're going to be pivoting all of that. So I'm kind of okay with that. But typically, on average, about $3,000 to $5,000 is going to get us like 3 to 5 million eyeballs.
And then from there, we're looking at about 500 leads that probably end up somewhere around 150 of sales qualified leads that typically, from there, we start working down about anywhere from like 30, 20 to 50% by the time that you get down to it. So that 5,000 should really lead to about 10 customers in a month.
I see. Now, have you bootstrapped all this or did you guys raise?
Family owned and operated, built in the United States.
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Chapter 6: What is the pricing model for using EstateSpace?
I love that. So do you own 100%?
So myself, then my family, and then I'd say we have eight stakeholders, but myself and my family, we own 88% of the company in year five.
That's very cool. Any plans to raise, or do you want to stay bootstrapped?
We were going to have plans to raise, but we ended up really getting the right clients and the right people in the company, and then we're scaling now. I've taken that off the table, given how exhausting it was to raise some of the money just internally right now. No plans of a formal Series A at this point. What do you mean by that, raising money internally?
just mean working with myself and my direct family to, you know, figure out what capital we wanted to allocate to this to this venture. Right. So that that ended up, you know, it's just all very time consuming. I was I was looking to raise with family and friends. I'd say I think we raised somewhere around a million dollars.
And then we've you know, we've also had, you know, a great we had a client that came on that's also.
What year was that?
Sorry, when you raised a million. Well, that was 2019.
Okay, so you did sort of raise, but it was all family and friends.
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Chapter 7: When was EstateSpace launched and what inspired its creation?
So we were at six about six months ago, and now we're at 13 going to 15. That mainly consists... First, we tripled our development team. And then from there, we... How many developers? We have eight total developers. And now we're starting to add sales salespeople. And then from there, we'll backfill customer success. And that'll be a great problem to have.
How many quarter carrying sales reps do you have? Three. And what's the quota?
They're just coming on right now. That team's growing Monday of next week. Their quote is to come out of the gate is going to be to get acclimated. Then as 3.0 hits, we'll expect to see anywhere from 5 to 10 sales per person per month.
Got it. What does that mean in terms of new ARR in the first 12 months you want them to drive?
So, I mean, if you're just going kind of on average deal flow size, I mean, each one of them should be bringing in anywhere from, you know, 10 to 25,000 at best, I would say to start.
Yep. Yep. Yep. So call it like a $300,000 first year quota on the high side, $25,000 a month, right? And new MRR. Yep. Yeah. Interesting. That's always, that's always the hardest part is when you're making those first three hires, like what quota do you give them, but also give them time to ramp up. You don't overwhelm them on day one and then they get demotivated.
Yeah, so it's kind of one of those things where we're just super transparent, Nathan, right? So we just tell them kind of where they are. They know they're coming in on the ground level, you know, gave them the opportunity to sell what we have now. But, you know, it's kind of maybe counterproductive to their long term goals. So, you know, they're coming all in on 3.0 release.
And that's really great, right? Because ultimately, they're going to be they're going to know the company, they're going to know the client, they're going to know the product, and they're going to be able to make sure that everyone's a great fit. Now, One of the great things about where we're going with 3.0, everything's user-driven. We've integrated Stripe right into the platform.
We're in the process of getting SOC compliance and really taking our company to the next level. And all of that for our clients means easy buying. So you're able to just click to sign up, pay, click to sign in and go. And then from there, it's software as a service. And we're supporting all your technology needs, but we've built an affiliate partner program
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