SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Pipelyne Is Pre Launch SaaS with $50k ARR, Boiler Installer Company Spinout
13 Mar 2022
Chapter 1: What is Pipelyne and how does it help home service companies?
So 25 companies paying 150 bucks a month on average, you guys are doing about 4,000 bucks a month right now in revenue, right? Yep. The easiest way to do that is to go to getlatka.com and use our filtering tool. It's like a big Excel sheet for all of these podcast interviews. Check it out right now at getlatka.com. Hey folks, my guest today is Adrian Casey.
He's a qualified civil engineer from University College of College Cork. Following his degree, he worked as an IT consultant for Accenture and PwC in Dublin and Toronto. In 28, he co-founded Ireland's first online HVAC and solar PV installation business. And in less than three years,
Chapter 2: How did Adrian Casey transition from engineering to SaaS?
grew that business to be one of the largest installers in Ireland, thanks to its focus on the digital customer journey. Having seen how popular this was, he launched a SaaS product called Pipeline with OY.com. The company helps home service companies double their inbound leads with no additional marketing spend.
It's the first in a range of products he hopes to develop this year to bring home service companies online. Adrian, you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. All right. I always love someone building something to scratch their own itch. It sounds like you've done that, huh? That's exactly it.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Adrian face when launching Swift Energy?
Yep. So yeah. Are you still running the physical business, the actual HVAC and solar panel installer? So we still have that business. So what we actually have is we have a holding company and we have Swift Energy, which is our HVAC and solar PV business, which my co-founder is heading up. And I'm heading up Pipeline, which is our SaaS business. Interesting. Okay.
So Swift Energy, when did that officially launch? What year? Yeah, so that was back in January 2018. My co-founder and I saw a gap in the market and that the installation of energy services in Ireland was very much offline. So we set about digitizing the set about setting up a HVAC and solar PV business. an online, sorry, HVAC and solar PV business.
Since then, we've grown that business to be one of the largest in Ireland. It's nearly 100 people now between full-time staff and actual contractors. But when we started initially, we looked at existing software in the market all the way from lead generation forms through to actual e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, et cetera.
And what we realized is that they were very much focused on product-based businesses and didn't meet the intricate needs of service-based businesses. So we ended up building our own technology. That makes a lot of sense.
Chapter 4: What is the business model and pricing strategy for Pipeline?
And what's that website? Is it swiftenergy.com? .ie and Swift with a Y as well. swiftenergy.ie. Okay, very cool. And give me a sense. I mean, 100 full-time people, you launched in 2018. How much revenue did that business do in 2021? Just that business? Yeah. So we started in 2018. As I said, we did about 2 million in our first year, up to 5 in the second year.
And then we were on track to do 10 and then COVID hit. So we should be back up at around the 10 million mark this year. Okay. Well, very cool. So I guess the reason I asked that question, it must be hard to walk away from a business doing 10 million revenue to take a bet on a new idea. That's the SaaS business. How did you have that conviction?
Yeah, I suppose mainly because we've seen the value of what the technology has delivered for us, and we do genuinely see a big gap in the market in that service businesses around the world are very much offline.
Chapter 5: How does Pipeline increase leads for service-based businesses?
The Swift Energy business is very much set up to scale, and we have a great management team in there as well to be able to grow that business. We brought in an operations director as well who's heading it up on the ground. So that has given us the freedom to be able to go and pursue the SaaS piece as well. Okay, so what year did you write the first line of code for the SaaS business?
So we started that around the middle of last year, so probably around July, August last year. And it was very much taking what we have built already and turning it from a standalone solution into a multi-tenant SaaS product. So how did you officially spin that out? Is Swift on the cap table of Pipeline? Yeah.
So as I said, we have a holding company and all the investors are at the holding company level. We transferred the IP from Swift Energy into Pipeline last year as well. So the IP is in Pipeline and then we're licensing the technology back to Swift Energy. I see. I see. I see. So Swift Energy is your biggest customer? Exactly. Yep. Okay. Very cool.
Chapter 6: What are the future plans for Pipeline's product offerings?
What does the cap table at the SaaS company look like? Do you own majority like a traditional founder would? No. So there's two of us in the business as co-founders in Swift Energy initially. So I said, we're all at the holding level and everyone is at the same percentage. So any investor that came in after that as well is at the holding level.
So you and your co-founder split Swift Energy 50-50 and Swift Energy now owns also 50, well, 100% of Pipeline? So Swift Holdings owns 100% of Swift Energy and 100% of Pipeline. And myself, my co-founder split Swift Holdings 50-50. I see. I see. Okay. And you mentioned investors a couple of times. Have you raised capital? If so, how much? Yeah. So we raised capital for Swift Energy.
We raised about $3 million for Swift Energy over the few years from 2018 to 2020. And before Christmas, we raised $1.5 million for Pipeline. Okay, so you raised 1.5 million at the end of last year.
Chapter 7: How does Adrian manage growth and scaling for Pipeline?
That was, I guess, your seed round. Most companies are selling 10% to 20% in sort of your pre-seed round. Were you guys sort of in that range? Exactly, yeah, pretty much in the middle. Okay, very cool. So if you're selling 15% of the business, that's sort of like an 18, 19 million pre-money valuation, 20 million posts, something like that? Yeah. Yeah, feel fair to you? Yeah, I think so.
But everything that's gone on with COVID and everything at the time, so pretty happy with it. And how do you balance sucking team members out of the main Swift Energy business into the SaaS business? Don't you sort of eat your own kids a little bit? Yeah, so we had an IT team in Swift Energy, and they've come over now into the pipeline business.
So there's about eight of us in pipeline, pretty much all kind of product. But we are now starting to grow the sales and marketing side as well. So they are two separate businesses like that. I see. Okay, so eight on the team right now. And obviously, Swift Energy is your biggest customer. Talk to me about what pipeline is delivering.
Chapter 8: What lessons has Adrian learned from his entrepreneurial journey?
So is it literally marketing automation for services, businesses? And if so, how do you charge? So Pipeline is in the first product we're launching at the moment. So it replaces a contact form on a home service business's website with an engaging form that asks the customer for their information in a conversational way.
And then we utilize that data to provide the customer with an instant estimated cost for the service that they're looking for. So to give you an example, if you're a HVAC business that installs gas furnaces, instead of driving all your Google traffic to your static contact form, instead you direct it to Pipeline.
where you can ask the customer a series of questions like the property type, the fuel type, the square footage, and you can then provide an instant estimated cost for the service. And because the customer is being rewarded for submitting their information, i.e. they get to see an estimate, we're seeing an average of 220% increase in leads for people using our form. Interesting.
And obviously, you'll be able to pass on more data as well because you're asking smart questions, which get tagged to that contact. 100%. So you can route accordingly on the back of that. What are gas companies or gas boiler installer companies paying on average per month to use Pipeline? Yes, we have a number of different price points, $99, $199, and $299, depending on features.
On average, we're at probably about $150 at the moment across all the the users that we have. So are you only upselling? So if someone pays $99 a month versus $299 a month, at $299 a month, are they getting more products or do you upsell based off number of seats or number of leads or any other upsells besides just product upsells?
Pretty much product upsells and the number of submissions as well at the moment. In terms of upselling down the line, our goal this year is to launch our e-commerce store, the one that we have in Swift Energy. And We're looking to move that over into the SaaS product as well. And that is our goal here is to start with the estimator piece and then upsell the actual e-commerce store.
And that's our big vision. Interesting. And obviously your own company was the first customer. How many paying customers do you have today? Yeah. So we have about 50 users altogether and 50 or half of them are paying. Okay. Got it. And when you say users, are those companies, 25 companies? Okay. Do you have a per seat model? Does the company pay for five seats, for example? No, not at the moment.
Okay. Okay. Got it. So 25 companies paying 150 bucks a month on average. You guys are doing about 4,000 bucks a month right now in revenue, right? Yep. This is great. And I guess what percent of that is coming from Swift Energy? Just one customer. Okay. 200 bucks a month. Yeah, no, we are charging extra for the e-commerce store. So that's costing a lot more.
But for the actual piece that we have now, it's $150. Do you guys care about valuation right now, specifically your valuation? Do you think you might raise soon or sell a portion of the company? There is no other tool on the internet that you can use to get a better and higher valuation than FounderPath's new valuation tool.
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