Boom company update - 2022 Q1
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Progress in 2022 Q1
TL;DR: closed our Seed round, rapid revenue growth, hired 2 great engineers, more inbound partnerships due to a competitor acquisition. More detail:
Closed our seed round → priced round + SAFE note we opened for additional demand. Investors included Starting Line, Clocktower Ventures, Company Ventures, Gilgamesh Ventures (Petal co-founders) and angels such as Sergio Furio (CEO of Creditas), Cyril Berdugo and Tom Petit (Landis co-founders), and Alex Samoylovich (Livly founder). Anchor investors from our angel round including William Hockey also re-joined.
Monthly revenue increased 146% in the 3 months from December to March → revenue has accelerated faster than anticipated, and faster than we can build capacity. 2022 Q1 total revenue was already 116% of total 2021 revenue.
Grew our engineering team → amazing engineers Tin Che and Goral Maheshwari started in the last 3 months, has accelerated product significantly.
Released BoomReport product updates → launched Intercom across all channels (web, iOS, Android) to streamline comms, launched our Boom Affiliate Program platform, added significant backend automation on BoomReport to expand capacity (more to come here).
Received more than anticipated inbound B2B partnership opportunities → across verticals including fintech, proptech and owner/operator landlords; we are building capacity and hiring as fast as possible to meet demand. Some of this is due to the recent acquisition mentioned below.
Our Boom Affiliate platform we built/launched in Q1:
Industry news
Our competitor LevelCredit was acquired by Self, a credit building neobank. With the acquisition, neobank and credit building companies who had partnered with LevelCredit now find themselves partnered with a competitor. As a result, we’re seeing an influx of partner demand that we’re working to serve.
Asks
Hiring Chief of Staff, referrals appreciated: Help us find our Chief of Staff (JD here). 3+ years of experience, ideally with some past MBB consulting experience. Austin, TX-based preferred. Here are filtered lists it might be helpful to scan:
List to scan: 1st-DEGREE CONNECTIONS currently in MANAGEMENT CONSULTING (EARLY CAREER)
List to scan: 1st-DEGREE CONNECTIONS OF TEXAS-BASED OPS LEADERS
If you see someone who looks good: share the link or screenshot and I’ll lyk if it’s interesting to connect. Thank you! 🙏
What could be better
Not hiring fast enough: we’re being very picky with these first few hires, especially engineering and our most senior non-eng role (Chief of Staff) and it’s slowing down our bus dev efforts in particular.
Product dev cycle is too long: I’m playing too many roles while we maintain a high bar on early hires, and it’s resulted in product development having too many bottlenecks. To solve this, (1) we’ve implemented new ways of working for product/eng (e.g. PRD processes, check-ins), and (2) we’re recruiting 1-2 more product/ops oriented FTEs.
What’s next
Our main focus for the next quarter (2022 Q2) include:
Complete majority of backend automation of BoomReport: grow user capacity by completing our Metro 2 furnishment buildout (to move off 3rd party vendor), rental payment verification service, and other backend automation.
Add credit score in-app: at the request of partners and to understand our consumer impact more directly, we’re adding a credit score in the app.
Improve the in-app experience: current in-app experience is highly limited and leads to growing customer support inquiries, so we’re providing more self service tools.
Continue progress on BoomSplit roll out: a couple large rollouts in process for BoomSplit, need to make more progress on underwriting process and property management software integrations.
Make at least 1-2 more hires: primarily non-engineering, e.g. Chief of Staff, which will help on product, ops and business development.
Thanks!
Rob and Kirill
About Boom
Boom is building the financial hub for the 110 million renters in the US. We’ve started by creating rent payment tools that enable renters to pay on the schedule they define and build credit in the process. Boom is the first company to offer a direct-to-consumer method for renters to build credit with their rent payments with all three credit bureaus. The team is led by second-time founders Rob Whiting (ex-BCG, Rubicon) and Kirill Moizik (Eco, Technion, Grubhub). It's backed by investors such as Starting Line, Clocktower Ventures, Gilgamesh Ventures (Petal co-founders), and angels such as William Hockey and Zach Perret (Co-founders of Plaid) who led Boom's pre-seed round (joined by Harry Stebbings and others from places like Cash App, Mint House, Party Round, and Redfin).