Nikki Pechet On Raising $150 Million To Simplify Your Path To The Perfect Home

Nikki Pechet’s technology startup has now raised some serious capital through a Series C round. Even though she left her job and started pitching while pregnant. Her venture, Homebound has recently acquired funding from top-tier like Khosla Ventures and Goldman Sachs.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The future of building your own home
• Startup fundraising
• Where to apply for a job with Homebound

SUBSCRIBE ON:

For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

About Nikki Pechet:

After the 2017 wildfires in Napa, Nikki watched as the community around her home set out to rebuild, and knew there had to be a better way. With a background in technology, construction and real estate, she teamed up with other experts in the area to found Homebound, with a focus on making the process of building a custom home simple, transparent, and human.

A serial remodeler and DIY aficionado, Nikki has been managing her own construction projects for a decade. Nikki started her career in real estate in New York City, spent almost a decade at Bain & Company leading innovation strategy across industries, and then returned to the building world to help make it easier to get home projects done as an early executive at Thumbtack, the fastest-growing online home services marketplace, now valued at over $1B.

Connect with Nikki Pechet:

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Hey, guys. Today’s episode is brought to you by Zencastr. I remember back in the day when I was looking at putting together Zencastr. I was looking for a solution that would help me in putting things together. Essentially, this is what allowed me to bring DealMakers to life. Basically, Zencastr, what it is is an all-in-one solution where you just send a link to the person that you’re looking to interview. They would plug in their computer with their video, with the audio, and then you are good to go. You would piece everything together, give it to your audio engineer or even edit it yourself, and you are off to the races. Now, if you’re looking at getting into podcasting, you should definitely check Zencastr out, and you could also get a 30% discount, and this is the discount code that you will be able to redeem by going to Zen.ai/dealmakers0. Lastly, I was very much blown away when I found out that investing in wine has been one of the best-kept secrets amongst the wealthy. This is now not the case anymore. I came across this solution, which is called VinoVest, and they are a great solution that allows you to diversify investing by implementing or including wines into your portfolio. Take a look at this: wine has one-third of the volatility of the stock market, and yet it has outperformed the global equities market over the past 30 years with 10.6% annualized revenues. It’s a really good way to diversify your portfolio, and you could also get two months of free investing by just going to Zen.ai/dealmakers, and by going there, you will be able to redeem your discount.
* * * * * *

Alejandro: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. super super excited actually you know with the founder that we have today you know quite a powerhouse I think that we’re gonna be learning a lot. We’re gonna be learning about going from corporate to startups stay from startups to building your own. I think that we’re going to be learning a lot about building scaling financing and everything in between. So I guess without farther ado let’s welcome our guest today niki petchat welcome to the show. So originally from minnesota.

Nikki Pechet: Thank you so much for having me looking forward to the conversation. Yes.

Alejandro: So tell us give us a little of a walkthrough memory lane. How was life growing up in Minnesota.

Nikki Pechet: Um, it was great. Minnesota’s an incredible place to grow up. Um I grew up in a family. Ah, just outside of Minneapolis Super handy family totally middle class. Um, but with a mom who was extremely handy and fixed everything and built everything around our house and with an extended family that believed everyone needed to know how to use power tools at a very young age and with a dad who is an entrepreneur he started a business in our basement and as I grew up his business grew. And he moved out to offices and added employees and so I got to watch all that and I think what I learned from both of those things is I’m really handy I love building things I have tremendous respect for people who are much much better than I am at building things and it also had a lot of the same traits that made my dad. Both happy and reasonably successful as an entrepreneur and so I left growing up in Minnesota thinking I love building things and someday I want to be an entrepreneur like my dad.

Alejandro: And how is how is say seeing your dad you know going through the ups and downs because people think that entrepreneurship is like what you see on the press. You know everything is super glamorous, but it’s not glamorous at all. Actually you know there’s a lot that happens you know behind the Flashes. So How was. Seeing your dad going through those ups and downs.

Nikki Pechet: Ah, that’s a great question I think that it is None thing that I’ve reflected on a lot transitioning from being an executive to being an entrepreneur. Ah is you just really have no idea and will never know. How painful and excruciating and miserable. It is especially in the early days to be an entrepreneur until you’re in the seat and so even growing up I saw ups and downs with my dad and I would see him get really frustrated or worried or stressed and. But I didn’t understand nearly how difficult it was and even in my early experiences you know I was reasonably early at thumbtack and I was really close to the founders and I always thought oh I’m I’m like another founder and it’s so funny in retrospect like I was not I had no idea the. Cruciating pain and misery that they had been through and that they were continuously going through until after I started my own company and then went back to all of them and I was like why did you tell me to do this. This is awful like yeah, it’s real bad isn’t it isn’t it so bad.

Alejandro: I hear you I hear you? So so in your case, you know you ended up going to Michigan and obviously no, no, no nothing nothing surprising there. You studied business. So right? after Michigan is where you get you got right into it. You know and and. You didn’t want to test the waters right away on the market you you went at it all in in 2 different jobs at the same time. So how was that journey like.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, so I went to Michigan because they had a great business school and because I did not get into wharton so Michigan and Wharton were tied for the best undergrad business school in the country and I didn’t get into Wharton which I’d say was a lifelong chip on my shoulder which I think is important and helpful in building anything and and so I went to Michigan. And um, was able to graduate in 3 years and in that process um I both got a job at Pepsi which I wanted to do like a big brand job and understand how do you build brands that build incredible affinity with customers millions of people and so I took that job and then in that process I’d also met Stephen Ross who is. Process of giving money to Michigan to rename the business school after him and he asked me to come work for him and because I was graduating college in 3 years I was moving to New York city by myself and so I said well I already signed this contract with Pepsi and I’m going to work during the day for them. But I don’t have any friends so I can work nights and weekends for you if that works and. Um, that seems kind of crazy in retrospect but seemed totally rational at the time and so I did I worked nights and weekends for the related companies working on residential real estate. They’re the largest residential developer in Manhattan and it was this incredible juxtaposition of during the day working on this big iconic brand. That was sugar water but had so much following with consumers and then nights and weekends working on apartments that were none a month in rent that were beautiful, incredible apartments. But that people felt almost no affinity to and it was this moment of like re real estate is messed up like why aren’t there brands. This is the most important thing in your whole life and yet you feel more affinity for sugar water that you buy at none this doesn’t make any sense.

Alejandro: So then so in a business school at what point you know do the user decide. It’s time to go to business school back to studying.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, so I never actually planned on going back to business school because I did business school undergrad. Um, but again I’d moved to New York City by myself with literally no friends. Ah, which is a very lonely thing that I don’t recommend to anyone and I worked all the time. And finally I had ended up getting a roommate who was a year ahead of me at Michigan and I met through um some older sorority sisters who introduced her to me she was then my roommate she was an investment banking and she was miserable. She was working none a week and so she was applying to business school to get out of investment banking. I was like well you’re my only friend. So if you’re doing it I guess I’ll do it too which school should I apply to and she was like well I guess I don’t know Harvard and so I only applied to Hbs and I only did it because she was doing it but in the process I fell in love with the school and the idea of being able to think about business and career. And meet really incredible people and so applied and thank god I got in it was an absolutely incredible None ars of learning and thinking about business but also meeting just an incredible network of people who are now my husband my best friends my colleagues. Um, and so love that place and it was incredibly formative in my development as a leader.

Alejandro: But hey Harvard business school. You definitely took out the chip from wharton and so so good stuff. So I mean the the network of of of Hbs you know is is pretty insane. So how do you think you know it has served you later on as. As you were you know, perhaps pursuing your your professional career.

Nikki Pechet: So you know one thing I think a lot about is you really just become the average of the people around you and so I went to hbs having worked None jobs in New York City graduating college early. And I always felt like sort of an outcast people just thought I was crazy like why do you work so much I I read but like any free time I had mosa becauseant how many friends but also because I love to read I was reading business biographies of Rockefeller and Buffett and I felt like such an odd duck and. Going to hbos I found my people I found people who were sort of on par with me in terms of crazy ambition about what they wanted to do and work ethic that didn’t necessarily make a ton of sense and I really just felt like I found my people and so ah, having that group of people both in business school. And then in the years after business school where I was at Bain and I loved being at Bain. But I wasn’t sure how my path was going to go from Bain which was a great job but where I felt like None of you know none of really good people to a job where I felt like I was doing something that was. What the world needed and what my skills could uniquely contribute to the world and having a group of supporters of other really ambitious talented friends who some of them were doing wild risky crazy things. Many of them were also doing things that weren’t wild and crazy but that were challenging interesting jobs. Um, and I think that support network has been wildly helpful for taking risks and knowing you’d be okay and for brainstorming about what you might do and getting to watch through the eyes of somebody else like what does it feel like when you take this leap and so wildly helpful and then my husband has been. The most unbelievable partner in supporting doing really crazy things over and over in my career um like starting a company when I was six months pregnant with our none kid and taking her to malibu to launch our none market like he’s been just a wild and incredible supporter. He’s also an entrepreneur and so deeply understands what that is like. Um, and couldn’t have done any of that without him.

Alejandro: Now in the in you know with your experience in Bain. You know that’s that’s very interesting here because you know I find that when you go into consulting you get to be able to and you were there for 8 years or so quite ah quite some time. Ah, you’re able to really grab.

Nikki Pechet: Um, yes, um.

Alejandro: Ah, big problem and really break it down into smaller problems and you know then you go start tackling one after the other. How do you think that that experience at working at Bain maybe has has served you as an entrepreneur later on.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, yeah.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah I think that is a really good encapsulation of one of the skills that you get it Bain and I think other consulting firms as well. That is wildly helpful which is take a problem that seems insurmountable and break it down into component parts that are surmountable and so. When you break it down. It is actually just the scientific method where you come up with a hypothesis and then you come up with sub hypotheses and then you figure out. Well what has to be true or not true to prove or disprove each of these and that ladders up to how you get to an answer and but it’s an incredibly powerful thing to do in the face of really complicated business problems. So. Spent a lot of time while I was at bain working for private equity firms and we would help them on diligence cases where they would say None example I worked on was a poll line hardware company which means a company that manufactures the components that go between a power pole and a power line. It is a connector piece that is a ceramic piece like the most obscure industry. How do you size the industry. How do you know if these guys are any good. How do you know what their projections for growth mean and if they’re reasonable and so taking something like that and having three or four weeks to be able to confidently tell a group of really smart people. Who know way more than you do about the industry and the deal what they should be thinking about what should the growth rate be what do you need to believe how should be underwriting the deal. Um, all of that is it’s an incredible chance to say I didn’t know that poll line hardware was a category but now I do so. How do you size it and how do you think about. Um, answering all these questions and you break it down into components and that is wildly helpful and then you create the work plan that says okay, here’s my hypothesis tree. What is the work that I need to do and what’s the work that my team needs to do to get to these answers and so I think that is one of the most helpful skills that consulting teaches you for anybody who. Does not have an experience of going through consulting I’d highly recommend spending time with a consultant putting together a hypothesis tree and a work plan because I think that training your brain to think that way enables you to solve problems more effectively. But I also think it enables you to be really brave in the face of. Scary problems that at none glance, you don’t know anything about how to solve if you can just take that breath and say okay well what’s the hypothesis and being able to break that down is wildly helpful for doing things that feel very very scary on the face of them.

Alejandro: That’s so cool now in your case I mean here you are you know making a killing at Bain you know obviously now 8 years in you know you probably had an amazing salary. Why do you decide to go into the world of startups.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, so I loved my time at Bain I learned so many things that I never would have learned elsewhere and I’d gone I’d originally gone to Bain because I saw lots of people at Pepsi who had the consulting skill set who were getting promoted faster and who had this analytical toolkit that I wanted. So I knew I was going for the training ended up saying quite a bit longer than I anticipated because I kept learning and the people that are incredible and I got to work on really interesting projects. Um, but I was pregnant with my first kid. Um I have pretty much only None mode of working which is working all the time and I had this moment. Um, kind of in in having my first kid where I thought if I’m going to work 90 hours a week no matter what I need to work on something that really matters to my kid. They’re going to understand why I am out in the world and I have to be working like this and so. Bain has a really generous maternity leave policy and I spent almost seven months off getting to explore the question of what should I be doing and so I started with lots of conversations with um consumer products companies about executive roles and I was sitting with a friend who had started a venture-backed business who also lives in the bay area and. Telling him about all these job offers that I had and should I do this or should do that and he looked at me and said you are in the midst of history being created and you are not participating and to this date I think that was still the most judgmental thing anyone had ever said to me but it was also true I’m sitting in the bay area in the. Like hotbed of innovation and talking about taking a job that is not inventing the future and I took a breath and I was like you are totally right? And so I spent the rest of my maternity leave meeting with 150 entrepreneurs and venture investors trying to find the team that I wanted to join. But I knew that I needed to go do something where as an early employee I mattered and spending the time that I was going to spend working would change the trajectory of a business that was needed in the world and so I found the thumbtack founders pretty early in um, the size of that team. And just fell in love with them. They’re incredible human beings they were working on a problem that mattered to the world and I felt like I could jump in and I could help and I knew that I could make a difference and so ended up joining the thumbtack team and got to build go-to-market functions and. Help build that into what is now a multibillion dollar business and it was incredible training in how to think bigger than it ever thought before and how to build towards a dream even when the reality today wasn’t what you knew it could be in the future.

Alejandro: That’s amazing and and for those that are listening. You know we had Marco as well on the podcast so you all should go and listen to his episode as well. so so Nikki Pechet: how big was thumbptack when when you joined them.

Nikki Pechet: Thumbtack was about 65 people when I joined and they had not yet announced their hundred million dollar round from Google Capital but they had closed it so they were on a great trajectory. Ah, but it was ah. Pretty small company that was ready to explode and so I came in and the none role I took I was working with their head of product who’s a wonderful leader and very good friend. Um, who I was helping build out our our category management team trying to figure out what. Each category should look like and how the product should vary by category I help build that team for about seven months and then I was pregnant with my none kid and Marco called me on a Sunday and he said um, we need to make a switch with our Cmo. Um I want you to step into that role tomorrow. And I said no no no no I I can’t be a Cmo I’m I’m not I’m not the right person I’ll find us one I can run a search I can find someone incredible and he said nope I already ran search and it’s it’s going to be you and the board wants you to do it and so i. I said well I got to talk to the board about it because the board doesn’t know how unqualified I am and so I put together a spreadsheet of all the things I didn’t know that a Cmo should know literally line by line all of the things I did not know I took it to David Lowy at Google Capital and he looked at the spreadsheet. And I was trying to explain why I shouldn’t be the same o I’ll run a search I’ll find someone and he said no please I I got to run marketing at Google I have all sorts of great people in my network will teach you how to do it and so that doc ended up becoming a work plan for conversations that I had with people like Gary Briggs from Facebook who’s. Ah, Facebook who’s also just an incredible human and an amazing marketing leader. Um, and so we went line by line and said he said well’ll I’ll teach it to you. It’ll take me three months to give you a good overview but we’re going to get it done and so that’s how I ended up getting to lead marketing and we built that all sorts of go-to-marke functions. But um. And and I think that to me really encapsulates one of the things I love about Silicon Valley and about the venture mindset which is you just have to be able to learn fast like if you care deeply you’re willing to work really hard and you’re resourceful about how to learn faster than anyone else. That’s really all that’s ever asked of you and that was a really incredible lesson. And exactly that.

Alejandro: That’s amazing now. Obviously you know thumbtack you know, ah a billion dollar company you know nowadays. But in this case, you know for you, you get to participate in a rocket ship like that I mean amazing experience at what point do you realize hey I think it’s maybe time for me to. But build my own and.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, um, well a couple things happened kind of in parallel. So um, I’m now pregnant with my none child while I was at thumbtack I was about 4 years in and I had built this really fantastic team. Um, that was a separate marketing team and Mark and I were talking about How do we make this team of incredible leaders. Really successful and the correct answer was a bunch of my team needed to be embedded in the product and growth organizations in order to be super successfully shouldn’t be a distinct team and so I said I think we got to break the team up. And half of it goes under product and engineering and the other half of it I think should report to you and markco looked at me. He said well but about you and I said I think it is time for me to move on and I think the company will be in a great spot. Um I’m going to have this baby in six months so I can sail off into the sunset and take. Time off and that should work well for everyone and so we agreed on that plan. Um, but then the wildfires happened in nap unsnoma None houses burned down and in the aftermath homeowners couldn’t figure out how to get their homes rebuilt and I knew firsthand from being at thumbtack at that time that existing marketplace solutions were not. Close to good enough to help solve a problem as complicated as building a house from scratch and so my now cofounder Jack called me he had lost his house in Sonoma and he said we need to start this homebuilder and I want you to do it with me and I said absolutely not I’m pregnant I have have to wrap up it. Thumbtack I know I shouldn’t do this? Um, but I’ll advise you and so I started working around the clock helping in the early days of homebound and at the same time Marco said to me, you’re a founder. You should go be a founder and that was a huge push for me somebody who I respected that much. And I knew was an incredible entrepreneur who knew me really well and who confidently said you’re a founder and so I took that and I said all right. It’s time to build the next generation home builder I know that the world needs it and I think that I can help it come into existence and so. Um, we got started and here we are four years later

Alejandro: That’s how amazing now for the people that are listening. What is the business model of humbound like how do you guys make money.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, so think of homebound as any other general contractor. We are just digitally enabled so our mission is to make it possible for anyone anywhere to build homes using technology and for people who haven’t built homes before haven’t participated in construction. It is the least digitized industry. Globally so a a lot of people say oh, it’s just like healthcare care. It’s not like health care it is like health care ten years ago there is no modern software for the industry and by the way homebuil is the darkest corner of all of construction from a technology perspective the software that does exist for the industry is for. Individual spot components and doesn’t integrate together and so ah, nearly everything that is done in construction is done with paper and pencil or via text message or totally offline and so. Any sort of tracking of well what should happen and what is happening and what are we going to do about it and by the way what are the cash flows associated with that that just doesn’t exist anywhere and so when we set out to build homebod. We set out to build a next- generation homebuilder with technology behind every step of the process that would enable dramatically more efficient builds. But also customer experiences that were totally unprecedented in the industry and so that is the journey that we are on but we act as a general contractor today and work with homeowners to build homes that are perfect for their families.

Alejandro: Yeah, very cool now when you got started with this I mean you you were alluding to it. You know you were you were six months pregnant with your None child and they.

Nikki Pechet: Yep.

Alejandro: And I know that there were some interesting stories like what happened when when you guys were pitching in in in costla ventures.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, so None thing that I think is always interesting. There’s so many stories of you know women trying to raise money and having really terrible experiences and I know that those stories are out there and they exist and they’re super challenging. Um, but. It is really interesting and sort of tests the world of venture to show up to a series a pitch thirty eight weeks pregnant and I’m not a particularly large human being I’m kind of small normally but when I’m pregnant I like double my body weight and so I was hugely pregnant thirty eight weeks pregnant um pitching. All of these investors and it was really incredible experience of not a single person asked me like why should I give you money you obviously are about to have a baby How are you going to build this business that one person asked me that um and so it was a pretty incredible testament to the belief of investors that. We’re going to build businesses and we’re also going to build lives and that’s just how it works ah, but in in fundraising at that late stage of pregnancy. There are lots of really funny stories. Um I was meeting with vanon coastli done a few pitches with other people at costsla and I needed to go meet with vanotde. And I was really nearing my due date and having contractions on the way down and my baby was also sitting in a particular nerve and I couldn’t see out of None eye and so my sister lives down by sandhill road and I texted her and I was like just please be on alert I might need you um, and. Went to the meeting vi no now knows that this happened but at the meeting had no idea anything was going on but was having contractions through the entire meeting went straight to the hospital did not end up having the baby that day but had the baby just a few days later and ah, you know, just a just a wild ride throughout the whole process but we ended up signing. Ah, term sheet with Josh Kushner at thrive to lead the round the day I got home from the hospital with my daughter we closed around thirty days later Kosla participated lots of other really awesome investors participated and we launched our second market when my daughter was just a few weeks old. Um, took her down to Malibu and launched the second market so that was a particularly crazy period for homebound and my family.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. No kidding, no kidding and and you guys have raised close to a None and you know my question to you is how has been the experience. The fundraising experience. How has it been going from one financing cycle to the next for you guys.

Nikki Pechet: Yeah, so ah, you Knowre raising our series. A we were lucky to have a lot of really incredible investors who it’s it’s easy to believe in the market size like we’re talking about a trillion dollar industry in the us alone. That’s extraordinarily fragmented with. Terrible customer experiences and so you even have to prove that it’s like this is the biggest market ever and we’d assembled a small team of great capable people who were on a mission to build this and so um, we’re really lucky to get a lot of great investors into our series a and um, the series b. Um, we also got really lucky with none wall which is a awesome firm that focuses on the built world. Um, when we were we were not outraising but they I was getting a lot of inbound of people who wanted to meet and talk about a next round and we didn’t need money yet. So I was mostly rejecting those meetings. They did something really smart. They emailed and said ah hey can we just have 30 minutes we have a few ideas of things that we think could help your business. Yeah everyone else asking for fundraising meetings was saying ah can can we meet for an hour so that you can pitch me and generally like you come to my office which is super easy to say no to so. For venture capitalists. Take note I think this was super smart. They came to me they asked for 30 minutes and they said we want to pitch you on things we can do to help your business and they did they came and they said here are 3 things that we think we can do for you today introductions we can make people who we think can be materially helpful. Conversations that we think would be really good context for you on the industry you’re in and I was like this is great. Yes, you can do all this. Do you want to do this just as my friend and they said no, we’d actually like to lead your next round and we’ll have a term sheet to you tomorrow and they did and so they made that round pretty easy.

Alejandro: Wow.

Nikki Pechet: And so that one also really easy now. The bad part about having ah easy time fundraising is that you don’t learn how to deal with a hard time fundraising and so I think we still haven’t been in a fundraising environment that’s difficult. But um. As you get to later stages the the stakes change. It’s not just is the market big and do I like your idea and do I like you which is basically what series a is and many times I think series b is the same thing with just a little bit of traction which we definitely had. But. Series c and I always thought this from the beginning I was like oh series c like you got to have your unit economics. You have to know how this is not just a good idea. But how this is actually a business and how you’re on track to make this a really good business and so um, the process of prepping for a series c and making sure not just that I could convince. Investors that we are ready for it. But none and foremost that I could convince myself and I think None thing about me is I’m an atrocious liar and so if I don’t believe something not just like a little bit but if I don’t believe something like deep in my bones I can’t sell somebody else on it and so that seriously for me was a process of. Meeting with a lot of investors who I knew were going to say no but investors who I respected deeply and who I knew would tell me the truth um and talking about here’s what my margins look like today here is what my scaling plan is today here’s what my team looks like what do you think and having a lot of people say. Yeah I won’t invest or I’ll invest in a vauation that you don’t like or I need to see either this or that before I would invest and so I had a lot of conversations that were pretty humbling where I was like oh like our margins aren’t good enough for people. Don’t believe the scalability of what we’ve built so far and so that was I spent almost a year having a lot of conversations. Um, with mostly potential future investors and also some of our existing investors to think about what do we really have to prove and we got to an inflection point where we knew we needed a launch and on disaster markets. We went out and raised a big off balance sheet fund that would help accelerate us into those markets. We built machine learning models that helped us acquire lots we we completely transformed the business over the course of last year and that was what we needed to do to unlock the series c it changed our margin profile it changed our scalability. It changed the control that we had over pace of growth and in. And previewing that with costsla who I spent a lot of time with David Wyden who’s an incredible supporter of the business and thought partner on what we’re building and always willing to tell me all the ways that we’re doing things wrong which is so helpful. Um, he looked at the progress that we’ve made and he said this is really excellent.

Nikki Pechet: I think we should leave your round and so on the series c was a little different in not as much pitching to look for a lead but then we went out and filled out the round with other investors and that was actually my favorite round to raise because instead of just talking about. Vision and the team and the market I got to talk about the business I got to talk about like we actually have really solid margins and a path to considerably improve our margins with just a work plan. That’s just a straight March towards. What I know exists. There’s no moonshot in this There’s no, maybe we get lucky or if we build some really special technology. We haven’t built yet. Maybe this happens. There’s all of that. But that’s upside and so I had a really clear story and it was also fun to get to start talking across over investors who think about public markets and to be. Playing through our path to public markets and really understanding. What do you have to believe if you want to be public at a $5,000,000,000 valuation within a few years like what do we need do from a revenue perspective and from a margin perspective and a growth perspective and we’re going to be comped against and so we got to answer a lot of questions that for me personally I thought were. Really satisfying and really helped me get more confidence than ever before in the business that we’re building and the trajectory that we’re on and where we will go post seriously into maybe another private round but ultimately public markets.

Alejandro: Amazing now. Nikki Pechet: imagine you go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of homebound is fully realized what does that world look like.

Nikki Pechet: Well I think the thing that’s fun about our vision for me ah is that it never ends like a world where anyone anywhere can build a home using technology is so expansive that there will be some version of at our current price points in our current markets. Where it’s really easy for anyone to go online and select a lot and choose a home and personalize it to make it theirs and finance it all online like that will happen and it will happen very soon. Ah, but then we’ve got to expand and we’ve got to do broader price points and we’ve got to figure out how to help with affordable housing and we want. Everyone to be able to participate in this which means we need to create a marketplace where other builders can operate on the platform and so we will never be done and I think theres you know most homebuilders are us focused when I think about the vision of what we’re building. It shouldn’t just be in the us. It should be everywhere and so. There are so many things that we need to build that there I cannot imagine in my lifetime that we get to a point where we say great. We’re done I think it’s going to feel like day one for the next twenty five years and that’s part of why I think this is such an incredible business to build.

Alejandro: That very cool now for the people that are listening to get a better understanding of um, you know the the the market you know and well more than the Market. You know like the scope on the size of your guys operation I mean is there ah anything that you could share about number of employees or anything else that you think you know like we’ll give a. Ah, good understanding to the folks that are listening so.

Nikki Pechet: Um, sure we have about 250 employees today we are remote None which means any employees who don’t have to be in a specific market to build homes can operate anywhere and we are growing faster than ever before so hiring across all teams.

Alejandro: That amazing now if you had the opportunity. You know, let’s say if I was to put you into a time machine and I was to bring you back in time you know perhaps to that moment where you were speaking you know with Marco about you know, becoming a founder and.

Nikki Pechet: Here.

Alejandro: And going at it on your own if you had the opportunity of going back in time and having a chat with your younger self and giving that younger self one piece of advice before launching a business. What will that be and why given what you know now.

Nikki Pechet: Ah, so another entrepreneur who I respect a ton said to me one None time around this question if I had the chance to go back and tell my pre-launching a business self anything I wouldn’t because. Had any idea how difficult it would be I never would have done it and I think that is spot on I think to some extent it’s it is impossible to know what it feels like to be building a business. Um, how lonely it is how hard it is how scary it is until you’re actually doing it. So’m not sure that it actually would help to warn. But if I had any idea I certainly wouldn’t have done it and I remember going back to Marco and to Jonathan Swanson who’s a co-founder of thumbtack who’s also awesome and a great supporter and I said this is awful like I must be doing it wrong and maybe I’m bad at this. Maybe that’s why I hate it so much. And I remember Jonathan Laughing he was like no no, that’s just what it’s like I looked at him and I was like well why did you tell me to do it. This is torture and he’s like well yeah, that’s that’s fair. Ah so None thing that I try to do um I invest in early stage founders and None thing I try to tell everyone I invest in is. Is going to be terrible. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. There are going to be lots of times when you want to quit and you can’t and you got to be ready for that and the thing that I think is incredible about building something is you know if you’re constantly expanding your. Comfort zone by living right on the edge of it you develop into somebody who’s able to do harder things and deal with more uncertainty and that might be the biggest thing I would say for anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur is it’s going to be the hardest thing you ever do. But also you’re going to come out of it a person who is capable of doing bigger braver harder things than you ever would have been able to do before and so I also think it’s incredible, but mostly buckle up because it’s quite a ride.

Alejandro: I Love it I Love it So niki for the people that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

Nikki Pechet: Um, great question. Um, they can. So if you’re interested in a job at homebound reach out via our jobs page. Um, you’re welcome to ping me on Linkedin if you need something specifically for me. Um, but would encourage you we have a fabulous people apps team and we would love to hire lots of incredible people so paying us if there’s a job you’re interested in.

Alejandro: Thank amazing! Well Nikki Pechet: thank you so much for being on the deal maker show. It has been an honor to have you with us today.

Nikki Pechet: Thank you so much. It’s been really fun.

* * *
If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at [email protected]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More