How SubBase Reached 100 Paying Customers With Its Construction Procurement SaaS and Raised $4M to Date (Interview with CEO Eric Helitzer)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Folks, Eric is building subbase. It is a procurement system for plumbers and other enterprise construction like companies. He's eating his own dog food coming from the construction industry. Wrote the first line of code for subbase with his founding team back in 2021. Gave it away for free. They got his first paying customer for $300 a month in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. Fast forward today, he's got a 100 paying customers. They're aiming for over a

00:21million bucks of ARR finishing out this year. But again, post revenue, which is great. And just recently closed a $4,000,000 seed round selling, know, called an average between 15-20% of the business as they look to scale with their 20 folks on the team and double down on product engineering, marketing, and go to market in general. Hey, folks. My guest today is Eric Helitzer. He's a third generation builder and double gator from the University of Florida. He's

00:42transformed construction with his expertise. After impactful roles with Baker Concrete and Grycon, he founded subbase to revolutionize material procurement. Under his leadership, the company streamlines procurement, managing thousands of orders and millions in invoices. Eric, are you ready to take us to the top?

Eric Helitzer's Background in Construction

Eric Helitzer

00:52>> Yeah, Nathan. Appreciate it. I always love someone that is eating their own dog food. So you were in the industry and said, this is the problem and I gotta go fix it. What year

Founding Story: Identifying the Problem in 2020

Nathan Latka

01:06was that?

Eric Helitzer

01:06>> Yeah. So I actually started in the industry in 2008 interning, went to college and then graduated to work in the subcontractor world in 2011. But really started to see in 2014 the shift of the digitization at the GC level of how workflows are being transformed. The problem that we solve for today really came about in 2020 really post the COVID era where material management was in flux, pricing fluctuations were happening and that's where we really saw

01:37>> the opportunity to build software for subcontractors, which is how subbase turned into what it is today.

Nathan Latka

01:43So to be clear, the first line of code was written in 2020?

First Line of Code and Building the MVP in 2021

Eric Helitzer

01:46>> The first line of code was written in 2021, actually. 2020 was more of surfacing the idea, but the actual MVP was built in 2021.

Co-Founding Team and Technical Advisor

Nathan Latka

01:56And how'd you get that done? Are you an engineer by by heart? Or how'd you get it what's co founding team look like?

Eric Helitzer

02:01>> Yeah. So I'm not an engineer by heart. I was actually partnered and paired with a technical advisor who reached out to me through a mutual contact who was very involved in the manufacturing and the technology space out in Silicon Valley. Wanted to break into the construction tech world because he witnessed that there was a lot of fragmentation and a lot of manual processes there. So as he was searching for someone to help guide him on the

02:25>> journey, we kind of met up together through a mutual friend and honestly, the rest is history.

Nathan Latka

02:30Okay. So just the two of you at the start?

Eric Helitzer

02:32>> It was just the two of us at the start and it was both actually part time. So I was working at a company running operations for a commercial contractor in South Florida and he was actually working at a company out in Silicon Valley. So we were kind of both paired together and he took on more of a technical advisory role and then I actually took it over in late twenty twenty one because I saw the opportunity

02:55>> which is what subbase is now because we were actually using it and building it with our subcontractors in the field.

Equity Split and Early Capital Structure

Nathan Latka

03:01So before we get into your first customers and what the tool does for them, etcetera, how'd you guys this is the hardest part of starting a company. It's also the most dilutive event in the company's history. How'd you decide the equity split?

Eric Helitzer

03:11>> So the equity split was very nontraditional. We had an original investor who was the company I was working for. We had my technical advisor and then we had myself. And the split was really getting out, putting on a piece of paper, and all agreeing that this is it. There was no, there was no real structure to it which was, the interesting part upfront. And we weren't really thinking about that as much as we were thinking about

03:38>> the problem that we were gonna solve for and how we can execute in the short term. But it was a it was a very nontraditional equity split. Let's put it that way.

Nathan Latka

03:45Okay. So you got it wasn't thirty three, thirty three, 33. It wasn't equal.

Eric Helitzer

03:49>> No. It was not equal.

Nathan Latka

03:50Is it fair to say you mean, usually, the person with the money at the start has the most equity. Is it fair to say the company that sort of put the original capital up owns majority and then you two split the rest?

Eric Helitzer

03:59>> I would say it was kind of similar to that. Although the company that did put up the money, I actually was a part of that as well. So it was a little bit I see. Different than your traditional split with two co founders because there was really only one person who was full time at that point and that was me. The other two were were more Eric, we lost your audio. Investors. Oh. Can you hear me?

Nathan Latka

04:20You're You're now.

Eric Helitzer

04:20>> You're back.

04:21>> Yep. So it was really myself that was going full time, capital partner who had the expertise that was putting money, and then a technical adviser who was not full time. So that's how we try to divvy up the the shares to make it, you know, even and equal for those putting capital versus those putting in just time.

Nathan Latka

04:37Yep. And that was effect I mean, you could consider that kind of your pre pre pre seed round. Right? Are we talking like a 100 k investment or like a million dollar investment?

Eric Helitzer

04:44>> That was under a million, and that was a I would call it a pre pre seed. Yes. And then we did Why did you did it actually just

Nathan Latka

04:53Why couldn't you hustle? Why couldn't you presell a little bit and avoid that dilution?

Eric Helitzer

04:57>> So we did hustle as much as we could, but coming from a nontechnical background, I needed to put more technical people in place that were able to build and take the vision we had of the product and put, you know, code to it. And so that's where all of our money went upfront was just on the product and engineering front. I was doing the product management. I was doing all the sales, everything else I was doing,

05:18>> but we that's what we needed the money for. It was all for building product and engineering. Yep.

Pricing Model and Average Customer ACV

Nathan Latka

05:22I see. Okay. I wanna foreshadow a bit and then come back to how you got your first customer and what their use case was. But let's again, let's sort of tease the audience here for a second. What is your average customer paying you today to use subbase monthly?

Eric Helitzer

05:34>> Yeah. So the average customer depending on size because our our our our platform is our pricing is based on size, meaning like transaction volume could range anywhere from 10,000 a year all the way upwards of, you know, 30 to $40-50,000 a year depending on size. Really depends We on grow as the company grows. We are not a one size fits all. We go based on the company and most of the time our customer our pricing is

06:01>> customized.

Nathan Latka

06:03I see. Was it fair to say that the average customer though is towards the lower end of that range, but you have some outliers are paying way more?

Eric Helitzer

06:10>> No. I would say 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 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 size. And

Nathan Latka

06:25and if I'm paying you $20,000 per year, how much transaction volume am I likely putting through you?

Eric Helitzer

06:30>> You're seeing thousands of invoices. You're seeing hundreds of purchase orders. You're looking at millions of dollars that are per that that are moving through the system that would normally be done very manual. So you're talking about a large large volume of of of purchasing.

Nathan Latka

06:45So that's the tease. Now let's go back to day one. You be your first customer? How'd you price that contract?

First Customer: Free Trial and Design Partner Approach

Eric Helitzer

06:50>> Well,

06:51>> lesson learned. The first customer was free. Probably should have charged something. But the first customer came about at a scoping meeting when we were on the GC side and we were we were awarding a new job to that customer. And at the time of the award, after that job after that award, I'd said, hey, I don't wanna name the name of who it was. But I said, hey, come into my office and let me show you

07:15>> how we're gonna streamline your material procurement. And he was so blown away with the software front. And this was like a really early on MVP that the next week we were in his office. We onboarded their team and we didn't charge anything for it. It was a free account. They started using it. We started to see traction. Why not?

Nathan Latka

07:33And we started We're just not confident?

Eric Helitzer

07:35>> I honestly There was two things. One, I felt that the platform wasn't fully built out yet and I really didn't want there to be any friction. There's a lot of pricing friction for some that come in that have never bought software before and we wanted to prove to them that there was value there, but we also wanted to we wanted to also bring on a true design partner who's gonna use it enough and we did not

07:55>> want any friction for there to be any anyone to say no. We just wanted to get the software in their hands as fast as possible. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

08:02Okay. Tell me about the first paying customer.

First Paying Customer and Early Pricing

Eric Helitzer

08:04>> Yep. First paying customer was a plumber who was a little bit smaller than we would even go after today, but they were a plumber who really liked the idea of the software. And we didn't know what we were gonna charge. We threw a number out there that we thought was fair. And immediately, he said, yes. That's fine. Took his credit card information. And I remember when we charged his credit card, I sent it to our investors

08:27>> at the time and said, hey, someone's paying for subbase. Where that led us was the conviction that, okay, like, we got someone who is a lot smaller but still seeing some pain willing to pay for us to solve problems, and we were not even fully built out yet with integrations, with our invoice module, and all these other modules we built. And so from there, we actually were able to start testing pricing. We did a tiered pricing

08:50>> model which is now a little bit changed from where we are today. But one of the biggest regrets I have was that we a, didn't charge enough upfront and also What'd you charge? Customers. We charged about a I couple 100

Nathan Latka

09:03think your headset is like batteries are low. You you go in and out on audio every now and then. But say that one more time. What'd you what'd you charge on day one for that first customer?

Eric Helitzer

09:09>> On on day one, we charged about a couple $100 a month and it was a monthly contract. Yep. Okay. And so that was a couple 100 a month. But my point was this was the wrong way to do it. 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 charged. And now, you know, obviously, we see where the pain is. We

09:35>> shifted our product focus, and our pricing model now reflects the value that we are adding to these customers.

Nathan Latka

09:40Hey, folks. If we haven't met yet, my name is Nathan Latka. I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it, which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies. Thank you so much for that. After the book, I launched this show and one went on to create founderpath.com. I raised a large fund to do non dilutive deals with b to b software

10:06founders. So far, we've invested in over 400 software founders totaling a $150,000,000. Here in 2024, we're doing three to four new deals per week. So if you're looking for capital and don't wanna give up equity, go sign up at founderpath.com for free to get your offer. Alright. Let's jump into the interview. Okay. So then fast forward today. How many total customers are paying you today?

Current Customer Count and Go-to-Market Build-Out

Eric Helitzer

10:29>> Yeah. So we have over almost a 100 companies that are on the platform Mhmm. And paying in some way as far as monetization. We we have a lot of interest on both sides of the market. And right now, the customers that are paying today are the ones that obviously are seeing the most value as far as the return on investment. But today, it's still everything mostly founder led, but we now are starting to build out our

10:55>> go to market solution with a true head of sales and really start dialing into a lot of the a lot of the the nuances that we do well in specific trades, specific size companies, and that's where our focus is.

Team Size and Organizational Structure

Nathan Latka

11:05How many folks are full time at the business today?

Eric Helitzer

11:09>> We have over 20 full time, and we have a lot more on the, you know, advisory positions in our company that are helping support as well. So 20 over 20 full time.

Nathan Latka

11:24And can I multiply to back into revenue? You said earlier about 20 to 30,000 ACV, and then you just said a 100 customers. I'll put you somewhere like a 2,000,000, 3,000,000 run rate today. Is that accurate?

Revenue Discussion and 2024 ARR Target

Eric Helitzer

11:36>> Not yet, but I will I would like to keep that confidential, but we are we're not there yet. Our our our revenue our forecasting of where we're going to be heading should be there pretty soon, but right now we're not there yet. A lot of the earlier customers that we brought on are still on early adopter pricing, which is where we wanna keep them right now because the value they're providing. So as we begin to grow

11:58>> and we can begin to see the pricing change a little bit more towards the higher, you know, larger subcontractors, we should be able to attain there a lot faster.

Nathan Latka

12:07We're recording this in September. We've got a couple more months left this year. Do you think you can break a 2,000,000 run rate this year or is 1,000,000 more the target?

Eric Helitzer

12:15>> Right now, 1,000,000 is the target.

Nathan Latka

12:18Okay. Okay. Great. So when you said 20 to 30,000 average ACV earlier, that's that's not a true average. You might have some customers paying that, but you still have a 100 of those customers say that are paying lower tiers. You're trying to figure out how to get them up or go target more enterprise accounts moving forward.

Eric Helitzer

12:31>> Yep. Exactly. And our our move into the enterprise is our move into the enterprise is actually a big push for us because that's where the biggest pain is for a lot of these companies that you would be surprised have never seen, you know, solutions that can offer digitization. Still very manual and still a process that most don't understand at that level as well. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

12:52Talk Mhmm. To me a little bit more about how you've built out the 20 person team today. So for example, do you have quota carrying sales reps or no?

Eric Helitzer

13:01>> Yes. Yep. We have quota carrying sales reps. The team was built out. Everything, you know, up until recently was founder led on the sales front, still is very founder oriented. But a lot of our a lot of our team was built around product and engineering with a very, very also heavy focus on customer success. One of the biggest challenges I saw in the industry early on was that support from day one. Implementing new software into construction

13:26>> 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 personalities and a lot of different hands in construction. And it's been a big, big success for us.

$4M Seed Round and Use of Funds

Nathan Latka

13:43Mhmm. Now I think you've you've raised some additional capital. I think you did a seed round in March this year. Is that accurate? Yes. Can you tell us more about that? How much did you end up raising and why was it important for the business?

Eric Helitzer

13:55>> Yeah. So between the seed and the the safe converted, we've raised a total. This is now outside before the pre before the pre pre seed of 4,000,000. That capital was important because it allowed us to grow on multiple fronts. It allowed us to bring on our head of sales, invest a lot more in go to market, and bring on, you know, a lot more senior level product experience and engineering experience that is taking the platform to

14:22>> the next level. We've found a phenomenal partner who is in the space already, who has seen this type of

14:30>> to have seen this type of company grow in certain areas in the construction tech space, and they were phenomenal as far as the vision and really focused on what is gonna make us successful. Our success is from the people we surround ourselves with, and those that we were talking to on the investment front were very excited about subbase, but we chose the partner that we believe is gonna be able to take us to the next level

14:53>> by understanding the not just the industry, but how to grow this business in a industry that is most likely lackluster when it comes to, you know, trying to sell software into.

Nathan Latka

15:03Now, Eric, to no fault of your own, but this equity market right now is just terrible for any software builder. Right? Maybe that turns of interest rates come down here on September 17 or, you know, the election goes smoothly or things like that. You chose to do this sort of round anyway. I I you know, most of the seed rounds I see closing, you know, in the last month, two months, they're selling on the order of

15:20somewhere between 15-20% of their business. Were you in that same sort of range?

Eric Helitzer

15:26>> Yeah. Mean, look, it's a range that is very common. I would say that, yes, that's a range that, you know, without disclosing fully is the norm. What I will say is that the actual business of raising money and raising capital through the venture space is not easy. There's a lot of great companies out there, but, you know, the bar is set very high. And at the end of the day, you know, you have to find for

15:50>> yourself who's gonna be the right partner because, you know, the way that I look at this is this is a team effort. This is not a solo person that's gonna be able to build a billion dollar business. You have to bring in the right people, but you have to also be incentivized. And so incentivize on both sides. Investors need to be incentivized, and also the founder needs to be incentivized. So I would say that the the

16:10>> equity percentage that you mentioned is is is accurate, but it also depends on the scenario. Each company, each founder has a little bit of different diff different ask there when it comes to their investors where they're raising capital.

Nathan Latka

16:22What use of funds? Where's most of it gonna go?

Eric Helitzer

16:25>> Go to market. So mostly go to market. That was where, you know, honing in on the ICP that we know is hitting well and really helping support the founder led motion. And again, accelerating on the product. So the product right now is hitting very well, but we have a lot that we wanna do. Focus on both sides of the marketplace, but more so focused on where our current customers are finding the most value. And so I

16:49>> would say more heavily leaning towards go to market, but the product still is is moving just as fast. So

Favorite Tools, Sleep, and Personal Insights

Nathan Latka

16:55Eric, good stuff. Let's wrap up here with the famous map. Number one, what's a business book you read recently?

Eric Helitzer

17:02>> The mom test which I think is a business book because I was reading it really understand how to ask the right questions from a lot of our users that I spend a lot of time with. I was told to read this book by a couple of people. And so very fast read, but honestly, of the most informative books I've read about how to really talk to users and ask questions that actually will get you results a

17:23>> lot faster.

Nathan Latka

17:25Eric, name the last CEO or founder you got coffee with that really impressed you.

Eric Helitzer

17:31>> That's a great question. The last founder I got coffee with was or CEO, let's put it that way, the founder of a company in Miami called Novo. They're a financial a fintech company based out of Miami. It was really really exciting to talk to him about his journey. They just recently raised a couple of really large rounds. I was introduced to him through a user of ours, and it was really insightful conversation. But I would say

18:02>> that's the most pressing one that I've that I remember. Founder, his name Michael Michael Rangel. Yeah. So out of Novo Michael's great.

Nathan Latka

18:10Yep. We met in Miami, and he was he was really, really insightful.

18:15Something Something special is happening in Miami in terms of SMBs finally also just raised a massive round. Felix and his team is based down there in Miami too. So something something special is going to to be clear though, even though you sit very close to the transactions right now, you do not currently have like an embedded lending or, you know, advance on inventory purchases, you know, lending product, nothing like that yet. Right?

Eric Helitzer

18:36>> So currently, it is on our roadmap and it's something that we're very much looking into as far as how to wedge that into what we've already built. But our focus right now is workflow optimization and then getting into the financial piece.

Nathan Latka

18:49Yeah. It's a huge space. We had build on recently b I l l d and they're they're big in that space too, I don't think they have quite the software that you have. So different angles to approach different problems.

Eric Helitzer

18:58>> Exactly.

Nathan Latka

18:59>> 100%.

18:59Number three here.

Eric Helitzer

19:00>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

19:01Number three here, Eric. What's your favorite online tool for building subbase?

Eric Helitzer

19:04>> Oh. My favorite online tool for building subbase. Right now, we really like I really like retool. We're using retool in a lot of areas of the platform to help on our end and also a big fan of Redash. So Redash allows us to see like where we can optimize more usage in the platform, where customers are getting a lot more value, and we're very data focused. So a lot of the data that we're looking at is

19:28>> really helping optimize the usage there. Those would be the two that I would say we I I look at as a founder very much so. And I would I would say that those are the two two of my favorite right now.

Nathan Latka

19:39Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Eric Helitzer

19:42>> About four to five.

Nathan Latka

19:44That's not a lot. Wait. So what's the situation? Married, single, kids?

Eric Helitzer

19:47>> I have three kids, married. I typically like to spend around and this is eastern time from 05:30 to 07:30, eight with my kids. And then a lot of our teams on the West Coast, so by the time I get, you know, relaxed, I'm usually on my computer about until about 10:30, eleven, I sleep, and then I'm typically up by five. Five, 05:30 because sometime one of my three kids will be up. It's not because of work.

20:13>> It's because one of my three kids will be up, and then I usually start my day around 06:30, seven.

Nathan Latka

20:18That's great. And Eric, how old are you?

Eric Helitzer

20:19>> I am 38.

Nathan Latka

20:21Last question. Somebody wishing you back when you were 20.

Eric Helitzer

20:25>> I'm sorry. I'm 36. I don't know why I said 38 because I was born in 1988.

Nathan Latka

20:28You're good. Sorry.

Eric Helitzer

20:29>> What was that last question?

Nathan Latka

20:31Something you wish you knew back when you were 20.

Eric Helitzer

20:35>> I wish I knew more about getting into the software space earlier. When I was 20, I was more focused on building my career

20:47>> in construction, but wasn't yet thinking about how software can overtake the construction world. And if I was doing it a little bit earlier, I think I would have had more insights as to, even more insights as to how I could make a bigger impact. That was the biggest thing. I wasn't really into software until, my my later stages of my career.

Closing Thoughts and Future Roadmap

Nathan Latka

21:07Folks, Eric is building subbase. It is a procurement system for plumbers and other enterprise construction like companies. He's eating his own dog food coming from the construction industry. Wrote the first line of code for subbase with his founding team back in 2021. Gave it away for free. They got his first paying customer for $300 a month in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. Fast forward today, he's got a 100 paying customers. They're aiming for over a

21:28million bucks of ARR finishing out this year. But again, post revenue, which is great. And just recently closed a $4,000,000 seed round selling, know, called an average between 15-20% of the business as they look to scale with their 20 folks on the team and double down on product engineering, marketing, and go to market in general. Eric, thanks for taking us to the top.

Eric Helitzer

21:45>> Yeah. Thanks, Nathan. Appreciate it.