How a Solo Founder Built SaaS Selling to Home Inspectors

**Fexingo** (0:01)
So, here's a niche I will bet most of you have never thought about home inspection software.

**Luna** (0:07)
As in the person who checks your foundation and roof before you buy a house?

**Fexingo** (0:11)
Exactly. And it's a surprisingly large market. In the US alone, there are about 30,000 home inspectors. They each do hundreds of inspections a year.
And until recently, most of them were still using paper forms or generic PDF fill-ins.

**Luna** (0:29)
That sounds like a pain. And a compliance risk if you miss something.

**Fexingo** (0:34)
Right. And that's exactly the opening a solo founder named David saw about five years ago. He was a software developer who just bought his first house.
His inspector showed up with a clipboard and a camera. David asked what software he used, and the guy said, I use a template in Word.

**Luna** (0:54)
And David thought, I can build something better.

**Fexingo** (0:57)
He started with just one feature, a mobile-friendly form for recording radon test results, because that's a specific measurement that has to be reported in a certain way. He built it over a weekend, put a simple landing page up, and started emailing inspectors he found on Google Maps.

**Luna** (1:15)
Cold outreach to a very specific list. How did that go?

**Fexingo** (1:20)
Honestly, pretty well.
Inspectors are early adopters when it comes to anything that saves them time on-site. He got his first five customers in two weeks. They paid $15 per inspection report. No monthly subscription, just pay-per-use.

**Luna** (1:37)
That's smart. Low barrier to try it. And the pricing matches their variable income.

**Fexingo** (1:44)
Exactly. Over the next year, he added more features based on what those first customers asked for.
Photo annotation, automatic report generation, scheduling, and eventually integration with real estate agent portals. By year two, he had 200 active inspectors and was making about $30,000 a month.

**Luna** (2:05)
And he's still solo at this point? No co-founder, no employees?

**Fexingo** (2:11)
Solo. He did hire a part-time customer support person after year two.
But that was it. He kept the codebase lean, no bloated feature requests. He said no to anything that didn't fit the inspection workflow. For example, inspectors kept asking for a CRM for their real estate leads. He said no, that's a separate product.

**Luna** (2:33)
Staying focused on the core job to be done. That's hard when customers are asking for more.

**Fexingo** (2:39)
It is. But he knew that if he became everything to everyone, he'd lose the simplicity that made inspectors love the product.
And by July 2026, his company has over 2,000 paying inspectors and roughly $4 million in annual recurring revenue. Still a solo founder, still lean.

**Luna** (2:59)
That's impressive. And I imagine the real estate market being what it is, interest rates up, but people still need inspections. That actually helps.
Inspectors are busy.

**Fexingo** (3:10)
Yeah, the volume hasn't dropped as much as you'd think. Because even if fewer homes sell, the ones that do sell require inspection.

**Luna** (3:23)
Let's talk about the mobile aspect. Because an inspector is walking through a house, taking photos, checking outlets. They can't sit at a desk.

**Fexingo** (3:32)
Right, mobile first was critical.
David built the app as a progressive web app first, no app store friction, and then later a native iOS app. The key was that everything worked offline. You take photos, record measurements, and it syncs when you're back on Wi-Fi.

**Luna** (3:50)
And the reports? I assume those get generated automatically.

**Fexingo** (3:55)
Yes. You tap a few buttons. The app compiles the report with photos and comments in a format that meets the industry standard, the InterNACHI or ASHI guidelines. Then the inspector emails it straight to the client and the realtor.
It used to take them 30 minutes to write a report after each inspection. Now it's done before they leave the driveway.

**Luna** (4:18)
That's the kind of time savings that makes a tool sticky. Once you're used to that, you're never going back to paper.

**Fexingo** (4:25)
Exactly. And that's why David's churn rate is below 5% annually.
Inspectors don't switch because the switching cost is too high. They'd have to retrain their whole workflow.

**Luna** (4:37)
And the pricing model evolved, right? I thought you said it started per inspection.

**Fexingo** (4:42)
It did. But after a couple years, David introduced a monthly subscription tier, $99 a month for unlimited inspections.
That was a better deal for high-volume inspectors. But he kept the per-report option for part-timers. That flexibility matters in a fragmented market.

**Luna** (5:02)
That reminds me of how Basecamp or Mailchimp started. Simple pricing, then tiers.
But for a micro-SAAS, that's a smart way to increase ARPU without alienating the low end.