Founder Interview
How VendorPm Reached 5,000 Buildings and 35,000 Vendors on Its Marketplace Platform (Interview with CEO Emiel Bril)
- Interview Date
- March 24, 2022
- Interviewee
- Emiel BrilCEO and Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Buildings on Platform (March 2022)
5,000
Vendors on Platform (March 2022)
35,000
Seed Round Raised (2021)
$4,000,000
Team Size (March 2022)
65
Avg Contract Value (Property Mgmt Side) (2022)
$6,000 to $10,000 per year
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Emiel Bril during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in March 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See VendorPm’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways
- 01VendorPm launched in 2020 and grew to 5,000 buildings and 35,000 vendors on its marketplace by early 2022
- 02Roughly 2,000 property managers manage the 5,000 buildings on the platform
- 03The platform processed approximately 500 to 600 RFPs in February 2022
- 04RFP fill rate (percentage of RFPs receiving three bids) reached over 90% in major metro markets, up from 15% six months prior
- 05Blended RFP fill rate across all markets was approximately 80% at interview time
- 06VendorPm raised a $4,000,000 seed round in June or July of 2021
- 07The team stood at 65 people as of March 2022
- 08Average contract value on the property management side is $6,000 to $10,000 per year
- 09The company was growing at more than 100% year over year according to the founder
- 10VendorPm operates in Canada and was launching into the US market at interview time
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings on Platform (March 2022) | 5,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Vendors on Platform (March 2022) | 35,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Property Managers (individual users) (March 2022) | 2,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| RFPs Submitted (February 2022) | 500 to 600 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| RFP Fill Rate (Major Metro Markets) (March 2022) | Over 90% | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| RFP Fill Rate (Secondary/Tertiary Markets) (March 2022) | 75% | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Blended RFP Fill Rate (March 2022) | 80% | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| RFP Fill Rate (6 Months Prior) (September 2021) | 15% | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Seed Round Raised (2021) | $4,000,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Team Size (March 2022) | 65 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2020 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Avg Contract Value (Property Mgmt Side) (2022) | $6,000 to $10,000 per year | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Top Vendor Conversion Channel Rate (March 2022) | Over 50% | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Year-over-Year Growth (2022) | More than 100% | Founder interview, March 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Emiel declined to share specific revenue figures but stated the business was growing at more than 100% year over year and described the growth rate as meeting tier-one SaaS benchmarks for their stage. The company monetizes primarily on the vendor supply side, with average contract values of $3,000 to $6,000 per year per vendor at volume. Asked whether 35,000 vendors at $3,000 each implied a much larger revenue number, Emiel said no and pointed to the freemium model on the vendor side.
Customers and Marketplace Scale
By March 2022, VendorPm had grown from virtually zero to 5,000 buildings on the demand side and 35,000 vendors on the supply side, all in Canada. Approximately 2,000 property managers manage those buildings on the platform. The company was actively onboarding a backlog of US supply and demand at interview time.
Team
The team had grown to 65 people by March 2022. Emiel noted the company over-indexes on product engineering and customer success to address the significant change management challenge of moving property managers off manual processes.
Funding
VendorPm raised a $4,000,000 seed round in June or July of 2021, along with venture debt as an insurance policy. Emiel indicated a further announcement was imminent at the time of the interview, consistent with the company's next financing stage.
Growth Strategy
Marketplace Liquidity as the Core Metric
VendorPm defines success by the percentage of RFPs that receive three bids back, which it treats as a service-level guarantee. This metric rose from 15% to over 90% in major metro markets in six months by shifting company focus entirely to solving supply liquidity at the right moment in the product journey.
Replacing Manual Processes as the Value Proposition
The primary reason vendors respond to RFPs on VendorPm is that the alternative is phone calls, emails, and word-of-mouth, which have been the industry standard for three to four decades. By offering a structured digital channel, VendorPm creates a strong activation trigger without needing to outcompete other technology platforms.
Freemium Model with Conversion Triggers
VendorPm uses a freemium model on the vendor side, with conversion triggers built around activation events such as responding to an RFP. The strongest conversion channel converts at over 50%, and activation itself serves as the primary upgrade trigger.
Over-Indexing on Customer Success
Because the property management market is behind on technology adoption, VendorPm treats change management as a core product challenge. The company deliberately over-indexes on customer success headcount to drive adoption and retention among property managers who are accustomed to manual workflows.
Expansion into the US and Future Fintech Layer
At interview time, VendorPm was launching in the US with a backlog of supply and demand already being onboarded. Emiel confirmed a lending and factoring business, advancing RFP cash flows to vendors, is 100% coming, but said he would take a crawl-walk-run approach and start small rather than guess at the size of it.
Best Quotes
“We've gone from virtually zero on both to 5,000 buildings on the property management side, the demand side, and 35,000 vendors on the supply side. Now, that is all in Canada. We're launching now in The US.”
“An insurance policy. Don't need to draw on it, but I I I'd like to to derisk.”
“Because the alternative for them is phone calls, emails, and word-of-mouth. The same manual processes and heavy cost of sales that they've been reliant on for the past three, four decades.”
“I mean, our our model has very strong triggers and retention that result in these conversions and and, you know, in the revenue growth we've been able to achieve today.”
“focus is not what you say yes to, it's what you say no to. And the reason I say that is because we make a point, as a company, value of being so hyper focused and over focused on solving the direct problem in front of us that this simply wasn't a focus until we reached that part within the process.”
“Full size of the team today is around 65. We have some exciting news that I can't I won't talk about now.”
“How hard it would be to start a tech company?”
What Happened Next
This interview captured VendorPm at an early stage in March 2022, about nine months after the company closed its $4,000,000 seed round, as it prepared to expand from Canada into the US market. The figures here, including 5,000 buildings, 35,000 vendors, and a team of 65, reflect what Emiel Bril reported at that point in time and are not current. Visit the VendorPm company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data on revenue, funding, and growth.
View VendorPm’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Guest Background
- 0:10Starting a Window Cleaning Business at Age 14
- 2:08Joining a High Rise Window Cleaning Company
- 7:22Launching VendorPm in 2020
- 9:15Customers: Buildings, Property Managers, and Vendors
- 10:38Defining Active Buildings and Marketplace Liquidity
- 13:04RFP Fill Rate Growth from 15% to 90%
- 14:16Team Size and Composition
- 15:03Funding: $4M Seed and Venture Debt
- 16:03Revenue Model and Freemium Structure
- 16:34Activating Vendors and Conversion Channels
- 18:05Per-RFP Economics, Growth Rate, and Series A Positioning
- 19:56Embedded SaaS Tools and a Future Lending Business
- 20:47Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
- 21:55Closing Summary and Wrap
Introduction and Guest Background
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Emiel Bril. He's the Founder and CEO of vendorpm. His mission is to modernize the way property managers work with service vendors. Alright, Emiel. You ready to take us to the top?
Starting a Window Cleaning Business at Age 14
Emiel Bril
00:10>> Yeah. Happy to. I'll give a quick origin story here. Started my first business when I was 14 years old. It was just a shitty family situation. I had to make some money to help out my mom and sister at the time. So I started going door to door in my neighborhood, selling window cleaning services of all things, because at 14 years old, where else are you gonna get a job and make money? Ended up actually being
00:27>> quite decent at it. Brought, you know, my friends along, they brought theirs. And before we knew it, you know, we had this team of fifty, sixty really, really hardworking, dedicated, like minded individuals at a young age. And we were all selling door to door, and we started, you know, building this relatively large business. We're doing about 10,000 homes a summer at the time.
Nathan Latka
00:44Emiel, where were you? Oh,
Emiel Bril
00:45>> this is Toronto. Okay. Great. This is Toronto. Yeah. And so we built this business through our high school, very early days of university, eventually sold that business, and then I started heading up sales for a high rise window.
Nathan Latka
00:56Well, hold on. So when did you sell that business? How old were you?
Emiel Bril
00:58>> That would have been around 20 '1, I believe.
Nathan Latka
01:00And what do you
Emiel Bril
01:01>> guys sell it for? In a relatively small amount, but also just undisclosed, and we'll keep that private for now.
Nathan Latka
01:07Why did you guys decide to sell it at that? Why was that the right point in time to sell it?
Emiel Bril
01:11>> You know, we were doing the same thing for for seven years and felt that we had learned everything that we, you know, we wanted to at the time. The initial motivation behind it was certainly monetary simply for the fact that I wanted to help my family out. And once especially at that stage in my life, high school, university, your needs are not, you know, what they are when you're, you know, later in your life, I felt
01:30>> that I met my monetary goals, and I also felt that I'd learned and and expanded that business to a stage that I was comfortable with, and I was ready to take on the next challenge.
Nathan Latka
01:37And what was but just before I move on to the next challenge, the scale of that business when you sold it was about how much in revenue that year?
Emiel Bril
01:42>> Yeah. So I mean, again, this is a seasonal business. A, because most of your staff are are in school, high school, or uni.
Nathan Latka
01:48Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, we talking like a $100 in sales or 2,000,000?
Emiel Bril
01:50>> No. No. Roughly 1,000,000 a year was where we where we were sitting.
Nathan Latka
01:53Yeah. Okay. Got it. And there was four of you, you said?
Emiel Bril
01:56>> Oh, no. No. This was, I mean, this was myself that that had started that business, but there was, you know, a relatively large team. It was a a labor intensive intensive business, business, not not just just on on the the actual completion labor side of the of work, but also from a sales side as well.
Joining a High Rise Window Cleaning Company
Nathan Latka
02:08Okay. Now take us into after '21. What happened next?
Emiel Bril
02:11>> Sure. Sure. So I started heading up sales for a high rise window cleaning company. It's still, you know, within that world that I was familiar with, and I started getting an idea of, you know, really that sticker shock when you go from, we'll call it, single family home to commercial. And by the way, just for definition purposes, when I say commercial, we're talking about office, condo, apartment, hospitality, hotels, anything that's not consumer single family homes. And
02:33>> really, really got that sticker shock. Reason being is, you know, to clean the windows, let's say, just the exterior windows of a single family home, $1,200. To clean the exterior windows of a, you know, an average condo or apartment building could be $10,000 to $20,000. Or these contracts, these multiyear contracts could be, you know, in in the 7 figures. Right? And so I'd gotten really excited by just how much money property managers, because I'm selling to property
02:56>> managers, not homeowners anymore, are are spending on something like window cleaning. And so I thought to myself, well, if they're spending this much money to make their windows shine and sparkle, how much are they spending on literally every other building service? Okay. And that number annually in North America is over 400,000,000,000. So it's a very hard number to ignore.
03:16>> Now from there, I was evaluating the way that they're spending this money, the workflows involved.
Nathan Latka
03:21I'm sorry. Personal context. You're you're skipping college or you're in college doing this?
Emiel Bril
03:25>> So I I actually didn't graduate. I never went to to class. It was pretty much just I went to McMaster's in Hamilton. And I would just drive over to Hamilton, cram the night before, do my exams. But the focus throughout my university days was certainly on business.
Nathan Latka
03:40Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect
04:03your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna
04:28get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is
04:49not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired, the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're
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05:37you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into the
06:03interview. Two questions. Why do university? And do you do university? But also, why go join a high rise cleaning company as head of sales if you just sort of sold your company for it sounds like potentially a nice chunk of money for a 21 year old?
Emiel Bril
06:17>> Yeah. So two fold. Okay. So the first question was sorry. Could you repeat the first question again, Nathan?
Nathan Latka
06:22Why go to college?
Emiel Bril
06:24>> Oh, yeah. A 100%. So listen. If I could go back and do it again, I don't I don't know if I would. The truth is that, you know, both my parents are immigrants. There's something that's super important to them. I said to myself, look. If I can do both and it really doesn't come at a material cost to growing a business, then I'd rather make them happy. And especially my dad being ill, this is something really
06:40>> important to him. You know, I it it came at little cost, and it was something that I justified as being worthwhile. Listen. And Again, this is you know, we're talking about soft skills here. Right? It's not something that you necessarily need to learn through a textbook. When you're studying hard skills, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to to complete your education. So very different conversation and a whole other rabbit hole. But to your second
07:00>> question around why join this company? Because the scale, the requirements, the knowledge, it's a completely different world. You're talking about in a single family home space, two story, three story homes, and now you're talking about sixty, seventy story buildings. So there's simply a learning curve, and I I wanted to derisk by by learning from, you know, someone who's been there, done that, and and built a successful business in the space.
Launching VendorPm in 2020
Nathan Latka
07:22Mhmm. So fast forward here. What year did you launch vendorpm?
Emiel Bril
07:26>> Launched vendorpm in 2020, And I'll give you just a quick thirty seconds of what I learned and what led to that being in that high rise window opening world. So a, the massive spend. You know, the GMV in this market is for over $400,000,000,000 annually. The workflows today are completely manual and offline. They're heavily reliant on email, Excel, word-of-mouth. And remember, I sat on the supply side of this dynamic, and I saw this transpire thousands of
07:48>> times. Every single time, this would come at the expense of property management. Right? And I just wanna clarify, we're not talking about the manager of an individual condo unit or a single family home. This is institutional property management. They're managing entire assets, buildings. Right?
Nathan Latka
08:01Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The the water flows hot, cold going the right way, the fire pumps working, the HVAC working correctly, a paint jobs, like that kind of stuff.
Emiel Bril
08:09>> Exactly. And that's what led to starting vendorpm in 2020.
Nathan Latka
08:12I see. Okay. Got it. So you're out of college at this point?
Emiel Bril
08:16>> Out of college at this point. Yeah. Just graduated.
Nathan Latka
08:18How's dad doing?
Emiel Bril
08:20>> Not doing anymore.
Nathan Latka
08:22I'm sorry to hear that. Okay. So so did did well, I guess, mean, since you sort of shared that as part of your story, did did, I guess, his passing have any impact on you saying, you know what? I'm gonna go try and hit a home run for myself here.
Emiel Bril
08:34>> Quite candidly, I don't feel, that it had much of an impact. I know that his wish wasn't for business or wealth or any of that sort. He just wants me to live a happy and balanced life. Listen. That said, every time you I'll be be quite candid and honest with you. Every time you hit a major milestone, go, Oh shit, it would be great if he was here to see this, to celebrate this, right? But no,
08:54>> it had nothing to do with it directly, I would say.
Nathan Latka
08:57And what about your mom?
Emiel Bril
08:59>> I mean, listen, she's an amazing woman. She lives quite a simple life. And I all I have to say is she's, you know, she's seen this, you know, let's say one degree out, seen us grow vendorpm over the past years. And and you could tell that there's genuine pride there, which is obviously a great feeling.
Customers: Buildings, Property Managers, and Vendors
Nathan Latka
09:15That's amazing. Okay. So let's let's sort of not bury the headline. Fengate's a customer. Vision Young's a you know, BentallGreenOak coming off your website. Right? Community Living Toronto is a customer. What are these companies or these sort of owners of properties paying you on average per month to use your vendor management software?
Emiel Bril
09:33>> Right. So at a high level, I'll just talk about what ACV is on both sides of the marketplace because this is a software enabled marketplace. ACV on the property management side, some of the names that you mentioned, is relatively nominal. Right? It could be anywhere between 6 to $10,000 a year. Okay. Where we do monetize is predominantly on the supply side, and that's on the vendors. And so ACV on the vendor side, it could be anywhere
09:57>> between, let's say, 3 and $6,000 a year, but that's at volume.
Nathan Latka
10:01Yep. Yep. Well, let's talk about that. So how many vendors, right, have made at least a dollar got at least a dollar of work on your platform over the past year?
Emiel Bril
10:09>> Yeah. I mean, I I wouldn't have those exact stats, but I could tell you that in the past two years, just a couple quick, I guess, headline points on both sides of that marketplace is that we've gone from virtually zero on both to 5,000 buildings on the property management side, the demand side, and 35,000 vendors on the supply side. Now, that is all in Canada. We're launching now in The US. And so we do have a
10:30>> big backlog of both supply and demand that's being implemented, being onboarded. But I yeah, I won't speak to those numbers yet, a, because they're so fluid, and b, I don't have them off the top of my head.
Defining Active Buildings and Marketplace Liquidity
Nathan Latka
10:38Yeah. We wanna talk about The US. But but look, there's a lot of marketplaces that build a lot of demand, but they can't get people to actually use the marketplace to transact. So how do you manage an active building? Are all 5,000 active?
Emiel Bril
10:50>> Yeah. The vast majority are. And and and, you know, it's it's a very good point, especially our market is our our yeah. Our market is rather, we'll call it, behind as far as technology and adoption goes. So there's this massive change management piece that you need to deal with. You know, we're predominantly competing with manual processes, emails, phone calls. Right? So it's very difficult from a change management lens, and we've over indexed on product engineering and
11:17>> customer success as a byproduct to to mitigate that, and we've done a good job doing so.
Nathan Latka
11:21But just to be clear, how do you define an active building? Is it a dollar spent in the past thirty days or what?
Emiel Bril
11:26>> Yeah. No. It's it's predominantly based on what we call wallet share. So we have this tool, this feature in vendorpm, where they're actually planning all of their services and all their contracts through vendorpm. That becomes the benchmark, what we call the scorecard for success. And you can take a fulfillment rate based on that.
Nathan Latka
11:40I see. I see. Okay. And obviously, there's buildings and then property managers, but a property manager could have a lot of buildings. So how many property managers are there that manage the 5,000 buildings?
Emiel Bril
11:48>> Yeah. Roughly 2,000. So the way that it works is, yeah, so the way that it works is, yes, you do have I mean, listen. You can have triple a office assets where you have a team of three or four, even five managing one building. And then you get a b and c class assets, which to your point, you have one property manager managing, let's say, two or three buildings per person. Right? Mhmm.
Nathan Latka
12:07And then quickly, same set of questions on the other side of your marketplace. How do you define an active vendor?
Emiel Bril
12:12>> Right. So an active vendor would be, are they responding to RFQs and RFPs that they're receiving from the property management side?
Nathan Latka
12:19In the last thirty days?
Emiel Bril
12:21>> Yeah. I mean, listen. The way we measure marketplace success is what are the percentage of RFPs that are getting three bids back? See, because that means that you have look right? That that means you have liquidity of supply, which is fundamental in a marketplace. It's not used to anybody. But that's also what the successful value exchange is for a property manager. You see the way that I look at it, I love I love comparing this to
12:41>> Uber. Right? You you download Uber, you press a button, and that's that's your moment. Oh, this is so cool. A car is coming to me. That car doesn't get you to the right destination. You're not using Uber again. You don't have a successful value exchange. So that metric that I just defined, the percentage of RFPs that get three bids back, that defines both a successful value change for the PM and liquidity of supply. So that is
13:02>> our service level guarantee. That's what
RFP Fill Rate Growth from 15% to 90%
Nathan Latka
13:04we're What's going the percent?
Emiel Bril
13:07>> So today, in major metropolitan cities, it's over 90%. In some more, we'll call it secondary tertiary markets, it's about 75%. And I'll give you just some context here. Only six months ago, that number was at 15%.
Nathan Latka
13:21Okay. A blend a blend a weighted average across both is something like 80% then, up from 15 Correct.
Emiel Bril
13:26>> Correct. Yes.
Nathan Latka
13:27What did you do to what leverage you put to go from 15% to fill rate to 80%?
Emiel Bril
13:31>> Listen, it's a really corny line, and I can't remember who said it. I think it was Jobs. But essentially, focus is not what you say yes to, it's what you say no to. And the reason I say that is because we make a point, as a company, value of being so hyper focused and over focused on solving the direct problem in front of us that this simply wasn't a focus until we reached that part within the
13:50>> process. I wouldn't say there's any one silver bullet. It was simply shifting our focus because it was the right time and place to do so and then a whole slew of lead bullets that led to improving this. And we're not done yet. There's still many more lead bullets that are gonna get this up to 100% or very close to.
Nathan Latka
14:06So in February, your last full sort of month, right, of operating, how many RFPs were submitted through the platform?
Emiel Bril
14:12>> Oh, yeah. Probably between five and six hundred.
Team Size and Composition
Nathan Latka
14:16600. Okay. Interesting. And and then, I guess, tell me how you built the team out. You mentioned you mentioned some team sort of categories earlier, but what's the full size today?
Emiel Bril
14:25>> Yeah. So full size of the team today is around 65. We have some exciting news that I can't I won't talk about now.
Nathan Latka
14:31But How many how many engineers?
Emiel Bril
14:34>> Engineer? I I actually need to go back and find the specifics, and I wouldn't wanna speak to those specifics right now either.
Nathan Latka
14:39I mean, is it heavy engineering, or is this way more about, you know, signing up new vendors, new PMs?
Emiel Bril
14:44>> I don't wanna say it's not heavy engineering. Listen. At the end of the day, you're selling a technology product, and your engineers are, you know, one of your greatest assets. So, listen, we're not building antimatter here, but this is largely an execution play as most marketplaces are. So you're definitely over indexing on areas like customer success, as an example.
Funding: $4M Seed and Venture Debt
Nathan Latka
15:03Mhmm. And how have you decided to fund the business data? Are you bootstrapped?
Emiel Bril
15:07>> No. Venture.
Nathan Latka
15:08Okay. So tell me about sort of why did you decide to raise? When was the last raise completed?
Emiel Bril
15:13>> So the last raise that was announced was in June or July of last year. That would have been our seed round. And look. The reason is ultimately the fact
Nathan Latka
15:22How much was that for?
Emiel Bril
15:24>> So that would have been a $4,000,000 round.
Nathan Latka
15:26Okay. Got it.
Emiel Bril
15:27>> And then, you know, some venture debt on top of that as well.
Nathan Latka
15:30Tell me more about that. A lot of people don't use venture debt that early. Why did you decide to go that route?
Emiel Bril
15:34>> An insurance policy. Don't need to draw on it, but I I I'd like to to derisk.
Nathan Latka
15:38Do have to pay unused fees?
Emiel Bril
15:39>> No. No unused fees on the debt.
Nathan Latka
15:41Okay. Interesting. Do you bank with the bank that also gave you that line?
Emiel Bril
15:45>> No. So there's no deposit relationship they're banking on?
Nathan Latka
15:49No. Interesting. Okay. Got it.
Emiel Bril
15:50>> So 4,000,000 seed. And then it sounds like you've got an announcement coming up. People can infer whatever they want about that, but that's great. Talk to me a little bit about, look, if you do this math. Right?
Revenue Model and Freemium Structure
Nathan Latka
16:03You you said 3 to 6,000 per vendor. Right? And, obviously, we can take 35 vendors or sorry, 35,000 vendors times three k a pop. I mean, I don't think you're doing a 105,000,000 in revenue.
Emiel Bril
16:15>> No. See, there's a freemium model, and I don't wanna go into the details and specifics here, but but I will say there's a a freemium model. And we have yeah. We I mean, our our model has very strong triggers and retention that result in these conversions and and, you know, in the revenue growth we've been able to achieve today. I don't wanna speak to those numbers either, but
Activating Vendors and Conversion Channels
Nathan Latka
16:34Well, I mean, by the way, Emiel, that's your genius. That's why we do the show. Right? So there's a lot of marketplaces where you hear everything you just said, but you know what? They're duds. They do nothing. They're worth nothing because no one uses them. Right? So how are you activating these vendors, which you define as they're responding to an RFP in the last thirty days?
Emiel Bril
16:49>> Correct. That's the trigger as that's defining activation. That's also the trigger for upgrading in a lot of cases.
Nathan Latka
16:55Yeah. But question is how? Right? A lot people can sign up 35,000 vendors. They can scrape Craigslist and do that in two seconds. The the genius in what you're doing is you're activating them. Right? So why are they responding to your RFPs and not other people's RFPs?
Emiel Bril
17:06>> Because the alternative for them is phone calls, emails, and word-of-mouth. The same manual processes and heavy cost of sales that they've been reliant on for the past three, four decades. Mhmm.
Nathan Latka
17:17And what would you consider again? It sounds like you don't wanna share your own numbers, but for general, in a marketplace, what would you consider a good conversion rate, right, on this side of the marketplace?
Emiel Bril
17:26>> Well, it really depends on the triggers. I mean and sorry, the channels. Because there are multiple channels to which vendors are upgrading. Our strongest channel is is north of 50%. But look, ultimately, there's so many variables that were you couldn't give a solid answer to that question. You could be talking about a B2C marketplace where the average, we'll call it transaction, is in the hundreds. And as a byproduct, you don't have as strong of a trigger,
17:51>> and therefore, the conversion is lessened. I think competition and tech stack the market is using currently plays a big role leading or I guess tying into your previous question, there's just way too many variables, and they're unique to each business and channel.
Per-RFP Economics, Growth Rate, and Series A Positioning
Nathan Latka
18:05Mhmm. You talked about economics on both sides of the marketplace. But do you ever try and get to the point where you can actually quantify the money that vendorpm can generate from each RFP, like submitted and done through the platform? And if so, like, do you think about that?
Emiel Bril
18:17>> Yeah. It's no. It's a really good question. It's I could tell that you're, you know, very thoughtful because these are questions that VCs would get to very quickly as well. Yes. We it is something that we think about, something that we were tracking early days. We were no longer tracking it because the business is growing at a at an incredibly rapid rate and the number's too fluid that it's
Nathan Latka
18:35not What's incredibly rapid rate? You're talking like a 100% year over year or something different?
Emiel Bril
18:39>> More than that.
Nathan Latka
18:40Okay. Got it. Obviously, now going from a dollar to $5 is 500% growth. Right? So that doesn't it's not a not hugely valuable there in understanding your business.
Emiel Bril
18:48>> Correct. I would say we're hitting, you know, where what tier one SaaS metrics is tier one growth, you know, growth targets would be for our stage.
Nathan Latka
18:55Got it. We don't know what stage you're at. So why don't you talk about what those tier one metrics are?
Emiel Bril
19:00>> Sure. Well, I mean, listen, as far as stage goes, we did, you know, we did our seed in January or sorry, June or July of last year. So so, you know, the next stage would be your series A.
Nathan Latka
19:09When you do Yeah, I think it's kind of silly, I would think, to define a company by what they've raised. There's hundreds of companies that raise a lot of money and they do no revenue. Reflektive raised $150,000,000. They did 14,000,000 in revenue and sold for $14,000,000. It was a total dud. Yes. Right? So like, I don't think defining stage to what you've raised is a smart move. Would say most series A company I would say most
19:28series A companies, obviously, they've gotta be growing at least 300% year over year, triple triple triple double double, right sort of thing. I would say that you're probably finding yourself in a weird spot though because you have to convince markets that you're a software company when really you're a software plus marketplace. And so you have to make sure they see that as a strength, not a weakness. Right? And I would say most people in their series
19:45A right now are seeing between like a twenty five and forty x multiple if they can convince the market that they are truly a SaaS movement.
Emiel Bril
19:51>> You sort
Nathan Latka
19:51of in those ranges?
Emiel Bril
19:53>> Yeah. I'd say yes. Let's say yes.
Embedded SaaS Tools and a Future Lending Business
Nathan Latka
19:56Yeah. Interesting. Look, what I love, there's a lot of folks that only have marketplace. WriterAccess is a good example. And you are in a very unique position where you own the relationship with these folks. You can build unique software specifically for each of them that is pure SaaS for the PMs and for the for the contractors on other side. Do you have any of those embedded SaaS tools yet or no?
Emiel Bril
20:12>> Yes. On the demand side, we wanna build that more on the supply side.
Nathan Latka
20:16Makes a ton of sense. Are you doing factoring or is there a lending business here where you're bringing forward RFP cash flows?
Emiel Bril
20:22>> They're 100% will be.
Nathan Latka
20:23Yeah. It makes a ton of sense there too. How much do you think you could deploy letting people get the cash thirty days upfront know, and then, you know, getting the invoice paid thirty days later? I mean, is it a is it a billion, a 100,000,000, what?
Emiel Bril
20:35>> You know, we're taking a crawl, walk, run approach to it. So it's it's such a dynamic sliding scale. Obviously, the the goal is large numbers, but I'm gonna start small and do this do this the right way without without too much guesswork.
Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
20:47Yeah. I mean, painting that picture in a series a deck gets your valuation much higher. A lot of folks are treating this fintech revenue like SaaS revenue, which is not equal, but it is what it is. So we'll see what happens. We're we're rooting for you, man. Hell of a model here. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book?
Emiel Bril
21:00>> Favorite business book? I actually just finished reading Radical Candor. Love it. I would recommend it to anyone on our stage.
Nathan Latka
21:06Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Emiel Bril
21:10>> You know, not no. Not one in particular. I I couldn't give that answer.
Nathan Latka
21:13Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business?
Emiel Bril
21:17>> I mean, look. I think especially when you think about the remote world, Slack has just been fundamental. It becomes your collaboration and your office when you are remote.
Nathan Latka
21:26Mhmm. Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Emiel Bril
21:29>> Seven.
Nathan Latka
21:30You sleep well.
Emiel Bril
21:31>> That means there's a big secondary component in this round you're about to close.
21:34>> Yeah. I don't know about that. I think it's more so I I just go to bed as early as I can.
Nathan Latka
21:38Fair enough. Alright. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? I
Emiel Bril
21:42>> have a girlfriend. No kids right now.
Nathan Latka
21:44Alright. And how old are you?
Emiel Bril
21:46>> Just turned 26 a week ago.
Nathan Latka
21:4726. Very cool. Last question. Something you wish you knew six years ago when you were 20.
Emiel Bril
21:52>> How hard it would be to start a tech company?
Closing Summary and Wrap
Nathan Latka
21:55Guys, he cut his teeth at 14, sold his first business at 21 when his business was doing, called, a million bucks a year in revenue with him and some buddies. Then went to college, got some cut his teeth in high rise window cleaning, realized how big the GMV was in that space and said, you know what? I'm gonna launch my own company here called vendorpm in 2020. Raised a $4,000,000 seed round last year, scaling nicely. Now
22:15he's got over 5,000 properties on on the platform across 2,000 property managers on one side, the supply side, the window cleaners, the painters, the HVAC crew, all that jazz. He's got 35,000 vendors signed up. 600 RFPs completed on the platform in February with a big announcement coming up. We'll see what happens. Emiel, thanks for taking us to top.
Emiel Bril
22:31>> Awesome. Have a good one.
Nathan Latka
22:34One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers. They try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM
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