How Homie Got to 20 Paying Customers in 3 Months with Outcome-Based Pricing and Network-Led Growth (Interview with Co-Founder and CEO Markku Vuorinen)

Introduction and Homie's Origin Story

Nathan Latka

0:00Hey folks, my guest today is Markku Viornin. He's the Helsinki based founder who previously led growth at a SaaS scale up where he discovered that deals involving personal connections closed at dramatically higher rates than cold outbound. So he co-founded Homie through Antlers Helsinki residency in 2024. It's a network led growth platform. All right, Markku, you ready to take us to the top?

Markku Vuorinen

0:22Yes, thanks for the invite. Have you already survived from the emotional damage from the poker tournament?

Nathan Latka

0:28Yes, we Markku. I don't know if you took all my money, but somebody took all my money at the SaaSiest poker tournament.

Markku Vuorinen

0:35Okay, perfect. Waiting for the next game.

Nathan Latka

0:39It was good, it was fun. Yeah, so hey, us what you're selling here. What's the software do?

What Homie Does: Network-Led Growth Explained

Markku Vuorinen

0:44Yeah, so as you just said, the whole idea here is that, like, called outbound. Like, it's easier than ever to do. You know, you have sales automation tools, have AIPDRs, SDRs. But at the same time, if you look for the results, like, you're not the only one using those tools. So it's like, there's so much volume. And if you put your shoe, like, put the, like, buyer shoes, they are... flooded with messages on LinkedIn emails, getting phone calls. So the whole idea is how we can rebuild that trust. And what I figured out in my previous GX in different companies was that every time there was a personal connection, for example, happy customer recommending us, we hired a new employee who had ICP, either customers on the personal network, the sales hit rate skyrocketed. And I started to think like, like, hey, this is really nice, but it's quite random how that can be scaled. So that's kind of the origin of Homie. What we do, we collect a lot of different relationship data from the internet. And then we are trying to package them in as one like prediction, how well two people know each other. What is the warmest path to your like target customer?

Public Data vs. Connected Inbox

Nathan Latka

2:05So you're only using public data. In other words, I'm not connecting my Gmail account to you and you're scraping like my Gmail to find connections, right?

Markku Vuorinen

2:11Not right now, but it's in the roadmap. So mainly public data, but also utilizing Gmail. Now we have a calendar invite, so now we have the fact that we know each other. At least we have a podcast together episode. yeah, a bunch of different data. Other is public, other is like you need to give permission.

Go-to-Market Approach and Early Learning Phase

Nathan Latka

2:35How are you going to market here? I noticed when I click find my new customer, it goes to a calendar invite. So this is to me, what this says is either your local, your low ARPU too. So it's under a hundred bucks a month to use it, but you want to learn from me. So you want to call or it's so expensive where you need to put touch on the sale. Which one is it?

Markku Vuorinen

2:52I would say like neither of those. I think we've been now live commercially live for a months and we are kind of like 25 % commercialized this yet. So we are kind of still learning what works the best. We want to still build few features functions to go like full force. now like when we have a... Like when somebody is interested in that, we want to have a call. We want to see what they are doing when they're signing up. So yeah, it's all about learning for now.

Nathan Latka

3:28Yeah, there you go. Learning. So that was my first thing. As I said, you're probably doing this to learn. to be clear though, are you post revenue at this point? Do you have at least one customer?

Early Revenue: Doubling and the 100K ARR Target

Markku Vuorinen

3:31Okay, okay, yeah Yeah, yeah, like we have now like with few months, like we have doubled the revenue and now in the third month we are looking like 100k ARR, but still like not yet commercializing this fully.

Nathan Latka

3:53Okay, that's great. So you launched pricing three months ago and now here in May of 2026, you're already above 100K of ARR.

Markku Vuorinen

4:00Yeah, we are looking at the of this month to hit the 100k.

Customer Count and Beta History

Nathan Latka

4:04That's great. And how many customers would that represent? Is that two customers, a hundred customers?

Markku Vuorinen

4:10around 20 customers.

Nathan Latka

4:12Wow. How did it take me back to when you wrote the first line of code? When was that? year?

Markku Vuorinen

4:17That was during the Antler residency, the end of 24. So we've been in beta for like a year where we had a few design partners and we kind of wanted to see if the whole concept works. Like are those warm intros actually, you know, coming as a close one?

Nathan Latka

4:24Okay. There's a lot of folks at zero right now trying to launch with design partners and they're struggling with how to convince a design partner to convert to a paying customer. How did you do it?

Outcome-Based Pricing and Converting Design Partners

Markku Vuorinen

4:46I think for us the main thing was about the pricing. like still, I think like fixed price user-based pricing is kind of like the most common. But what we figured out was like, what if we turn it to outcome-based? So how we are pricing is that we are pricing like if we are getting meetings for you through those one intros. So in a way it's like a win-win situation, like positive ROI. We refund it, we don't hit the goals. So that's quite like, we are lowering the barrier to try it.

Nathan Latka

5:21So if I sign up with you today and I say, want you to help me recruit CEOs that I could potentially invest in at Founder Path, they have to have at least five million of revenue and we have to have some overlap with them. I have to personally have some overlap with them. And you bring me those customers and you, is it you tee up a phone call, you tee up an email introduction and I pay you what, 100 bucks per intro? Is that sort of how it works?

What Relationship Data Homie Collects

Markku Vuorinen

5:44So our focus is just to what we are doing. So I know you have a lot of LinkedIn connections, but you probably know, let's say 150 of them really well. So what we are doing, we are focusing on those folks and we are looking if they know somebody who is word of your investment. And then we are collecting a lot of data from their connections and trying to understand if, well, they are LinkedIn connections, but... Do they actually know each other? Are they ex-colleagues? Have they reacted to each other on social media? Have they studied in uni? These kind of things. And then we offer you kind of the data and you make the action. ⁓ It needs to be you who is asking the intro. It still needs authenticity. Kind of like we don't want to be compared to called outbound. or like sales automation where there's a lot of mass like we are focusing on the quality for our customers. So the message needs to be coming from you.

Why Homie Won't Send the Intro for You

Nathan Latka

6:49Why is that the strategy though? mean, some of them are my most successful contractors I work with. I pay them for a specific unit of labor. So some of them, the unit of labor, let's just use an example, right? If you help me sign up a 10 million ARR CEO to call on my podcast and I record the podcast, I pay you X amount of money and they just go to work. I never talk to them. They know the thing, they know the price per job to be done. I don't have to do any work. They send it from their email and it works. Why not price that way?

Markku Vuorinen

7:16I mean, like it's your network, not ours. Like we are not sending messages to your friends who know somebody who you should talk with. It's all about them opening the door for you. So it needs to be coming from you, if that makes sense.

Nathan Latka

7:31It doesn't make sense. I'm not following actually.

Markku Vuorinen

7:33So as our customer, you would be coming to the platform and you would be collecting a lot of different data or we will collect a lot of different data ⁓ from you and from your close ones, from your close network. And then we are trying to look who from those people know somebody that you want to meet or record or invest. And then we suggest like... how should you reach out? the person that you know is kind of the connector there. And you send a message to that person that, hey, could you introduce me to this person? Because you seem to be like old uni friends back in the days.

Nathan Latka

8:17I get that, but why don't you do the work? So for example, I'm going on a European tour here shortly. I'm recruiting CEOs in Vienna, Berlin, Stockholm, Hamburg, and Amsterdam. Right. I'm working with partners to help me like find those folks. So if I used Homie, why couldn't you use my network publicly find who I'm close to in Berlin? And then you send an email that says, Hey, we're helping Nathan who I know, you know, find more CEOs to work with in Berlin. Do you know anybody? And the email thread is you plus me copied. plus that other connection that you have identified as a connector in Berlin.

Markku Vuorinen

8:48It's an interesting approach. I don't say that we won't build it in the future, but what I'm finding challenging is that will that become a mass as well? Because it will come in from me, who is random. But if it's coming from you, yeah, I don't say never, but I have some doubts.

Nathan Latka

9:03but I'm copied. I just think the world is moving to a world where you have to do the work for your customers, right? You sent me an Excel file saying you should reach out to these 35 people. Well then I still have to go do all the work, right? I just think the big companies are gonna be the ones that actually do the work for customers. I'm just pushing you on that. I'm just curious how you think about that, that's all.

Markku Vuorinen

9:28Yeah, I mean, like, it would be great if like we can do the whole workflow. like, you would just sign up and wait for results. But for now, like, like what we want to still kind of hold is like, like humans are interacting with each other and it's all about the trust. And I feel like if we or our agent is the one who is kind of sending those messages, like we are kind of missing the whole narrative here.

Nathan Latka

9:54Well, yeah, I disagree with that. I'll just say, because that email, the cold email can say something like, hey, Nathan is paying for me. I'm an agent that helps him connect to his network in person to build trust in Berlin. He's busy. So he's using me to help him save time. He'd really like to meet with you in Berlin, right? That's the opposite of, hey,

Markku Vuorinen

9:56But maybe they could...

Nathan Latka

10:13you know, it's a cold email from Nathan, he doesn't care about me, I'm trying to spend in-person time with you. So I don't know where this world is going, right? It's fun to talk to someone at you at the early stage where you can literally build anything and see how you're thinking about building.

Markku Vuorinen

10:23Yeah, no, no, but that's an interesting take. I still feel that it needs to be coming from you. like, because like, yeah, maybe last thing, then we can move on. I don't want that intro request to be transactional. It needs to be like personalized. So for example, you, probably don't send the message to your friend that like, Hey, you know, this person, could you do the intro? You probably want to start with that like, it was nice to poker together at SaaSiest. By the way, this person I saw that's like, is your ex colleague from from Meta. Do you know him well enough that you can make an intro? He is a like weak blurb. I think that works better. You don't, you know, burn the breaches, you know, just sending random requests to your friends.

Nathan Latka

11:17Yeah, so that email copy is great. Why can't you just do that for me? I connect my inbox and you send that email. The whole point is like, if you send me stuff to do work, then I feel like I'm not getting as much value from Homie as I could and I'm willing to pay less versus if you just do it for me, it's way helpful. We're beating this in the ground so we should move on. But I get your point. You're still trying to figure this out. What are you helping people do right now? Are you helping them meet people in person? Are you helping them just get a demo done? What is the thing that you're doing for your current 20 paying customers?

Markku Vuorinen

11:22Yeah. So all of them are like sales at companies. So what they want, they want a meeting. So whether it's discovery, demo, yeah, just getting face to face.

Funding: Antler Day-Zero and €1.5M Pre-Seed

Nathan Latka

11:47Yeah. That makes sense. Okay, talk to me more about how you funded the business. Are you bootstrapped or have you raised?

Markku Vuorinen

11:59So we called Antler, they give you like a day zero fund that's super low. We managed to build better with that money and then we raised the pre-seed earlier this year. That was like one and a half million euros.

Nathan Latka

12:14Okay. Okay. So 2020, 2026, you raised about 2 million USD on, on like a seed round, basically.

Markku Vuorinen

12:24I would call it pre-seed, yeah.

What the Pre-Seed Deck Looked Like

Nathan Latka

12:25Pre-seed, pre-seed, okay. What was the market like when you went out and raised that round? What did your deck look like? Were you just basically able to raise that money off the 100K of ARR and 20 customers you have, or what were the proof points investors asked for?

Markku Vuorinen

12:38We didn't have a lot of traction back then, so I think it was more about the concept. I don't think we still have a product category, what we are building. So it was about the team, the concept. Of course, you need to have the traction nowadays when you're funding, showing that there were couple of paying customers. But that wasn't, I would say, the moneymaker there.

Nathan Latka

13:03And what your founding team, is it just yours or a couple of you guys?

Founding Team and Equity Split

Markku Vuorinen

13:07Yeah, I'm the least technical guy, so CEO. Then Kalle is the CBO. He's one of the first employees from Smartly, if you know Finnish at the company. Now quite global. And then actually Kalle's uni friend. He started to do pro bono as a CTO. And at some point we were like, shit, we really need to get him full time. So yeah, he's the third co-founder.

Nathan Latka

13:30That's great. How did you guys, I mean, it's always hard, right? When you have multiple co-founders at the start to figure out, who owns what equity? How did you guys have that conversation? Or did you do the lazy thing and just split it a third equally?

Markku Vuorinen

13:41⁓ Not equally. So me and Kalle, we met in Amstor. I was actually looking for technical co-founder. It's super hard. And then, you know, I'm also like, I've been like ages in B2B SaaS doing commercial. Kalle has been more in the product. So it was quite nice fit. And then a bit later, Alex joined. So he has a little bit like smaller stake there. So... But yeah, me and Kalle, it was quite equal. I think I have like 1 % more. But yeah. Yeah.

Growth Goals and Eating Their Own Dog Food

Nathan Latka

14:12Fair enough, fair enough. Okay, and how are you, you as you scale, said you're about to break 100K of ARR. We're recording this in May of 2026. As the rest of the year sort of goes on, how are you growing and do you think you can break a million of ARR by the end of the year?

Markku Vuorinen

14:27Yeah, that's the goal. And right now, we are doing zero outbound. ⁓ So the whole goal is to eat our own dog food to hit that one million.

Nathan Latka

14:36Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. People say, hey, if you started in 2024, it's now 2026. It's taking a while to grow. Shouldn't you be growing faster eating your own dog food?

Markku Vuorinen

14:44Yeah, well, as I said, like now in 26, we have actually commercialized this. yeah, it has taken quite a lot to build.

Nathan Latka

14:52What made it so difficult to, to, launch? Yeah. What made it so complex to build? You're basically coding for 18 months before your first dollar of revenue, right?

Markku Vuorinen

15:00Yeah, the whole model that we have for this warmness, like predicting how well two people know each other, it has been, it's quite complicated. ⁓ But at the same time, I feel like that's our most.

Nathan Latka

15:15Yep. I'm just thinking, love how you put the manifesto on the website because it helps people understand sort of what you believe in and this pricing, like, you like, are you changing this vibe? mean, are testing this sort of violently right now, or are you pretty locked into this pricing?

Markku Vuorinen

15:28I would say we are still in an experimenting phase. For example, we just launched MCP. They're building APIs. So there's a lot to cover and understand what actually hits. So yeah, I think it's like, yeah, I love to experiment. So probably even with that one million AR, we are still figuring things out and trying new things.

Growth Channels: Zero Outbound, Organic LinkedIn

Nathan Latka

15:52And, and how else besides, you know, slouching cold outbound that you just mentioned in using your own dog food. there anything else in terms of growth strategies you're using today, whether that's SEO or paid ads or anything like that events.

Markku Vuorinen

16:04Well, as I said, we haven't yet fully commercialized this. So mainly just eating our own dog food. Well, we are posting something organically on LinkedIn, but that's all. ⁓ If somebody is booking a meeting, of course we are taking it. But as I said, I still want to build, even though we've been already building one year. ⁓ yeah, it might be a Finnish way of thinking, taking time to build. ⁓ I can see your frustration there.

Nathan Latka

16:37No, no, mean, look, everyone wants to grow faster. ⁓ That's, you know, that's think that's that's universal. So you're in Helsinki, how big is the team today?

Team Size and Lean Operating Model

Markku Vuorinen

16:45We have around eight people, mainly developers.

Nathan Latka

16:47Okay. What do mean around eight people? There's a ninth you like don't remember or what?

Markku Vuorinen

16:51⁓ Some of them are more like contractors, ⁓ not everybody's full time, that kind of thing.

Nathan Latka

16:59How many are full time?

Markku Vuorinen

17:01Full time we have five people. So three co-founders plus two people. Yeah, I think, well, that's the case to grow in like 26, 27, like trying to be super lean.

Nathan Latka

17:03So it's good, you're small, nimble, you can move quick. Yeah, very cool, Markku. Hey, look, if people want to follow you online, where can they find your story?

Markku Vuorinen

17:19Well, usehomie.com, you can check the manifesto that you mentioned. ⁓ Of course, happy to connect with people on LinkedIn.

Nathan Latka

17:26Guys, there you have it. Usehomie.com, turning your network into pipeline with smart introductions, wrote the first line of code in 2024, 2025, uh, brought on their first design partners, went through the antler program and in 2026 close to 2 million, uh, USD pre-seed, uh, round. you know, right now in May here of 2026, approaching a hundred K of ARR with 20 customers with our team of five folks looking to scale here using their own tool as they now fully commercialized. They only started selling about three months ago now scaling quickly. Markku, thanks for taking us to the top.

Markku Vuorinen

17:56Hey, thanks Nathan. It was fun.

Nathan Latka

17:58All right.