How Buildern Reached $2M Revenue With 300 Customers | Hmayak Tigranyan

Summary

Podcast Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Host: Nathan Latka
Guest: Hmayak Tigranyan, CEO & Founder of Buildern
Topic: How Buildern Reached $2M Revenue With 300 Customers
Date: April 8, 2026

This episode dives into the growth story of Buildern, a SaaS for construction management founded by Hmayak (“Mike”) Tigranyan. Nathan and Mike discuss Buildern’s origins, go-to-market strategy, financials, hiring tactics, and how a sharp focus on SEO propelled the business from zero to $2M ARR in a few years with extremely high profitability.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Buildern’s Product & Market

• What Buildern Does ([00:22], [01:34]):
  • Buildern is construction management software for residential and commercial builders.
  • It replaces legacy tools to help firms “streamline their workflows to better manage everything internally and externally.”
  • Mike explains the acute pain and lack of effective digital tools in construction, which led to starting Buildern:

    "It was clear it’s an underserved market and people need that one." ([02:33])

Founder Background & Motivation

• Mike’s Journey to SaaS and Buildern ([03:22]-[05:42]):
  • Started with travel tech and a software development shop (Codelno).
  • Previous ventures didn’t lead to major exits; learned about business and product building through “acting as semi-product manager.”
  • Codelno reached $3M/year but lacked product excitement; the move to Buildern was about impact:

    “My passion is creating product…the product is the key.” ([05:58])

Funding & Profitability

• Funding Overview ([00:11], [07:15]):

  • Raised $500,000 in angel investment for 10% equity.
  • Investors were experts in construction, providing more than just capital.
  • Mike is “never” regretful:

    “It was good because it was not just money, it was people coming from industry and helping you to build the product.” ([07:44])

• Profitability & Efficiency ([08:02]-[08:28]):

  • Buildern is highly profitable:

    "On $160,000 a month of revenue, will you profit 20,000 or 10,000?"
    "40." — Mike ([08:20])

  • Profits are reinvested into growth; the business is “profitable for a very long time.”

Team Structure & Global Operations

• Headcount & Cost Management ([08:59]-[09:41]):
  • Team of 35, mostly in Armenia (R&D), some in the Philippines (support), and growing presence in the USA and Australia (sales/customer roles).
  • Latka points out the “human arbitrage” due to lower costs but high revenue per employee by international standards.

Customer Acquisition & SEO-Driven Growth

• SEO as Core Growth Channel ([09:55]-[13:42]):

  • All customer growth is inbound—zero outbound sales or paid marketing to date.

  • Early focus on long-tail content and blog articles optimized for construction-related keywords.

  • Buildern draws over 18,000 organic website visits per month; key pieces like “construction management software for small businesses” perform especially well.

    “95% of your 2 million of revenue today, today has come exclusively from your SEO optimization strategy?”
    “I believe so.” ([13:47])

  • Buildern’s SEO strategy:

    • In-house content team, with Mike involved in topic selection and review.
    • Transparent, industry-helpful articles (often mentioning competitors):

      “In some specific scenarios, some of the other competitors softwares are better match for them. So you need to like be very transparent…” ([11:36])

    • Highly structured content—optimized H1/H2 tags, table of contents, visuals, and FAQ schema.

  • Minimal effort toward AI search optimization:

    “We actually optimizing for Google and whatever we do, same impact is happening also in LLMs.” ([13:24])

Scaling Sales & Future Growth

• Sales Team Just Getting Started ([14:03]-[16:39]):
  • First two sales hires in 2026—both industry veterans.
  • Historically, Mike handled all sales himself; only added customer-facing teams in the last 6 months.
  • Average contract value is $7,500–$8,000 (adjusted up from early legacy customers).
  • Building out sales with clear quotas:

    "They have to close a million of new ARR each year. That's their quota." ([15:29])

  • AE base salaries are $80–100k, with OTEs up to $150k ([15:40]).

Challenges & Reflections

• Growth from $2M to $4M ([14:03]):
  • Plan to scale inbound SEO further, but now layering on sales—especially in the US and Australia.
  • Balancing price point for sales motions (“death trap” segment: ACV not high enough for expensive reps, not low enough for zero-touch self-serve).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why Mike agreed to the interview:

  “If I can help to someone else, as usually people help me, then I will be more than happy to participate.” — Mike ([01:11])

• On the power of SEO:

  “I would say 95%, most likely [of our $2M in revenue came from SEO].” — Mike ([13:47])

• On building for impact, not just revenue:

  “With dev shops…you’re getting money but you don’t have too much impact…With Builder, it’s always interesting because you’re actually working with end customers trying to find a reason what you can improve. And I’m passionate about creating products.” — Mike ([05:58])

• On funding and investor value:

  “It was not just money, it was people coming from industry and helping you to build the product.” — Mike ([07:44])

• On SEO content transparency:

  “It’s not about only promoting yourself…but always try to be like honest. So whenever people read, they actually see the value.” — Mike ([11:36])

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Key Timestamps

| Time | Segment / Topic | |----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:22 | What Buildern does; overview of product | | 02:08 | Company origins: why Mike chose construction SaaS | | 03:22 | Mike’s founder journey, previous business ventures | | 05:42 | Move from dev shop ($3M/year) to SaaS product-building passion | | 07:15 | Early funding: $500K for 10%, strategic value of investors | | 08:02 | Profitability snapshot and approach to hiring | | 09:05 | Global team structure, cost advantages, and headcount management | | 09:55 | Inbound-only customer growth; core SEO strategy explained | | 11:36 | In-depth look at content strategy, keyword targeting, and helpful content | | 13:24 | AI/LLM optimization (or lack thereof) | | 13:47 | Attribution: 95% of revenue from SEO | | 14:03 | Building sales for the first time; balancing ACV and sales costs | | 15:29 | Sales quota for new hires: $1M ARR/year | | 15:40 | Comp structure for reps: base, OTE | | 16:37 | Only 2 sales reps to date; team scale plans | | 16:47 | Mike’s preferred social: LinkedIn |

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The Buildern Playbook: How They Did It

• Product-Led & Industry-Deep: Spoke to end users, identified underserved segments, and built a deeply integrated product.
• SEO as Growth Engine: 95% of all revenue attributed to helpful, long-tail keyword strategy in blog content, internal team execution.
• Lean & Profitable: Early investor capital from insiders, reinvesting profits, efficient international teams.
• Slow-to-Sell, Fast-to-Scale Model: Two years of product building, then rapid revenue growth post-product-market-fit.
• Now: Layering Sales: With inbound at max, Buildern is assembling an industry-expert sales team to pursue bigger deals and double growth.

Find more about Buildern at buildern.com and connect with Hmayak Tigranyan on LinkedIn.

Transcript

[A]

You've scaled over $2 million of revenue today. Do you do podcasts a lot or is this exclusive? No, it's exclusive on $160,000 a month of revenue. Will you profit 20,000 or 10,000?

[B]

Around 40.

[A]

How much money have you raised from investors and what percent of the company do you sell?

[B]

So we raised around half million.

[A]

How much equity did the angel investors get for the 500,000 investment total?

[B]

Around 10%.

[A]

Just tell us what you sell. What's the tool do?

[B]

So how we help the builders? It's like Billen is construction management software. So. So we had residential and commercial builders to better manage their finances and better manage their workflows. A lot of those are legacy tools. And whenever you try to find some good tool, it was very hard. That was the reason why we created Builder.

[A]

Where did most of your new customers come from? Hey, folks. My guest today is Mike Tigranian. He is the CEO and founder of Build Earn a platform modernizing the 10 trillion construction industry. With over 15 years in SaaS development, he's helped thousands of builders replace outdated paperwork with digital workflows that save these firms up to 30% of their management time. Mike, you ready to take us to the top?

[B]

Yeah. Thanks for.

[A]

And this is very nice of you. I said before, I said, why did you say yes to this interview? And what did you say?

[B]

So I said, if I'm listening to your podcast, so if I can help to someone else, as usually people help me, then I will be more than happy to participate.

[A]

Well, I love that. I love that you're here. And do you do podcasts a lot or is this exclusive?

[B]

No, it's exclusive.

[A]

We love that. Okay, so you've scaled over to over $2 million of revenue today. Tell me before we get into more economics. I was sort of joking with the revenue question. Just tell us what you sell. What's the tool do?

[B]

Yeah, so how we help to builders, it's like Pillar is construction management software. So we had residential and commercial builders to better manage their finances and better manage their workflows. So basically what happened in construction industry, a lot of those are legacy tools. And whenever you're trying to find some good tool, it was very hard. So that was the reason why we created Builder. So Builder helps mostly residential construction companies to streamline their workflows to better manage everything internally and externally.

[A]

This is great. And when did you write the first line of code for the company? What year?

[B]

Soon will be fifth year. So we start in 2021.

[A]

2021. Okay, great. And how many customers are you now serving today?

[B]

So right now we are serving around 300 customers. Usually as users they are more like 3,4000.

[A]

And where did you, you know, walk me through when you launched this business in 2021, where'd you get the idea from?

[B]

So idea came from like I was trying to find something else to work on because I was moving from my previous startup which was travel tech. And historically I know like construction is very big market, it's very interesting market because it's less digitalized. And when I was young I worked at construction so I tried to find some interesting idea to work on. And whenever I speak with different people, usually at the end of the day they are when we barbecue with friends, they usually complain that they are starting to go for next project, whatever they have or renovating their home. So it was like continuous discussion about like don't having enough resources, enough project management tools to manage construction. And then I spoke with another construction companies and the idea came over like it was clean, that it's underserved market and people need that one.

[A]

And when you look at, I'm just looking at your history here on screen. You were at upwork, Trip Planner, Travelo Solutions, Kodelno. Did any of these create a major financial win for you?

[B]

Some of them.

[A]

Tell me more.

[B]

So previously I ran like B2B travel and before that one, before B2C travel. And I also had my dev shop previously. So during my lifetime in different situations I get some financial benefits but it was not major exit. So in past I I was more engineer. Let's say I was software engineer.

[A]

So team leaded upwork up to 2016. And then you founded Trip Plana from 2015 to 2018. Did you sell that company?

[B]

No, it was my first company as a startup. I don't have skills at that time to sell company. And I was in Armenia.

[A]

Slowly shut it down.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I was in Armenia. I moved to US three years ago. So before that one when I was in Armenia. The market's a little bit different in Armenia. So whenever you try to sell there is not many buyers.

[A]

Okay, so you shut that slowly shuts down. And then you launched Travelo Solutions in 2018. This looks like it was a travel agency. Did you make good money doing this?

[B]

That one was B2B Software Company for outgoing or incoming travel agencies. So it was us.

[A]

Okay, did you sell this or shut this one down?

[B]

No, Covid shut this down. Like if you see it was 2020 so the COVID hit and everything was shut down.

[A]

All right, take me into codelno. What does this do?

[B]

So codeno was software company, it was just a software dev shop.

[A]

Would this generate good revenue for you

[B]

during COVID So yeah, during COVID and before that one it was generating proper revenue. But with dev shops it's the sales is very challenging because you work, it has good and bad things. So whenever you're working with many companies offering software solutions, you gaining the skills to understand what really people want. So you acting as semi product manager in some of the situations for other B2B companies. So that was a lot of experience to learning what people want and, and how it need to be created. But financially, again, we just made a lot of money there. Yeah. And that was the reason like when I started Build Learn I already had a team with me. So it was not like starting from scratch. I had team and also I have money to bootstrap.

[A]

So you built this dev shop called Codelno between 2018 and 2022. What was your best revenue year?

[B]

I think it was 3 million somewhere that amount.

[A]

3 million. Okay, that's great. Congratulations. And so why did you shut this down to go all in on builder and if Kodelno was doing 3 million a year?

[B]

So my passion is creating product. Like with Kalina, you're getting money but you're working different projects on and you don't have too much impact on projects because you're acting as dev shop. But with builder it's always interesting because you're actually working with end customers trying to find a reason what you can improve. And I'm passionate about creating products.

[A]

Yep, I love that. Okay, so BuildEarn gets going. In 2021 you launched. What year did you break your first million of revenue?

[B]

So we broke our first year revenue last year. Init like first two years we don't have any paying customers, we just were building. Then came two angel investors, both from construction. They saw the value and with them so they invested some money and they helped us to get the product the shape that it need to be. So people in the market need that one because with construction management software it's a little different. You need to have many different modules to work on because in construction there are specific things. So whenever you're looking over legacy softwares, you need to bring so many different new modules so people can use that one. It's not just like one estimating or one schedule because they are not techie so they can't do any integrations. So you need to have a lot of features integrated so it's suitable for them to use.

[A]

That makes sense. How much money have you raised from investors and what percent of the company do you sell?

[B]

So we raised around half million from them. So with that money we came profitable. So we are profitable for a very long time and hopefully we keep the same way for in future as well.

[A]

How much equity did the angel investors get for the 500?

[B]

Around like total around 10%.

[A]

Do you regret that deal?

[B]

No, never.

[A]

It was good.

[B]

It was good because it's. It was not just money, it was people coming from industry and helping you to build the product.

[A]

You told me today as of right now recording you're doing about $160,000 a month of revenue which is 2 million of ARR. You also said you're very profitable. Can you share how profitable?

[B]

So we actually like every month we are growing, we're getting new revenue based on that new revenue, we hiring more people. So it's just continuous loop. We never just hold money for a long period.

[A]

We just rew on $160,000 a month of revenue. Will you profit 20,000 or 10,000?

[B]

40.

[A]

40,000, yeah. Oh my goodness, dude, 40,000 of profits on that monthly. That's incredible. Nice work.

[B]

Thank you guys.

[A]

Remember, I am not just a YouTuber, I'm investing in my third fund. We've deployed $250 million into 550 software companies so far. [e-mail] if you're interested in capital I would love to cut you a check because I know you're investing in your education. You watch my show. So sign [e-mail] and when you get the onboarding email, I reply and I see all those. Just reply and say Nathan, I found you through YouTube and I'll make sure to prioritize you. I would love to cut you a check. Check out founderpath.com okay, how many are on the team today? Full time?

[B]

So full time we are around 35. They are. Not everyone is in US but across different countries.

[A]

So here's a question I have for you. If Anyone took your 2 million of AR today divided by 35, your revenue per employee looks really low by US standards but you're still profiting $40,000 a month. That means you have human arbitrage on a lot of your headcount. Where are these people based, what are they doing and what are you paying them?

[B]

So mostly they are based in Armenia. Our headquarter on R and D side is in Armenia. We have also people from Philippines sales in US So right now we are going to hire also people from Australia because we have many clients in Australia as well. So customer facing roles. We usually hire in U.S. australia or abroad. Engineering QA product. We hire in Army.

[A]

Love that. Okay, how are you growing today? You're almost doubling year over year. Basically bootstrapped. You've only raised 500k against 2 million of arrows. You have 300 customers like talk to me about like last month, February 2026. Where did most of your new customers come from?

[B]

So we don't do any outbound everything. Whatever we have is just inbound. We don't spend any marketing money on any paid ads or etc. So people know about us. We targeting initially we targeted blog articles with long tail keywords. Very specific articles about construction, how to manage different things. So that one is bringing each article might bring not many visitors, but those visitors are very, very relevant. So what are you creating? You're creating like something which is interesting for them.

[A]

Yep. I looked at this in my research before this. You're doing a great job with SEO. If we pull up your website in Ahrefs, a popular SEO monitoring tool, you'll see 18,800 organic traffic 49 domain rating, which is pretty healthy. But generally speaking, really good trends over time Here. Walk me through how you run your SEO strategy. Do you have an external agency? Do you do it personally?

[B]

We do internally. So I'm not much involved there. I usually approve for example, what keywords should be right and what will be interesting to customers. So I'm involved in that part. But we have like content team they are working on like to polish the article. Sometimes I review sometimes very, very frequently. I also publish myself.

[A]

Okay, let's, let's go deep for a second here. Construction management software for small businesses brings you a lot of traffic. 17004 free clicks per month. That's amazing cost savings. Other people might pay $10 per lead for Google Ads. That's like, you know, $17,000 of free value you're getting from one blog post every month. So if you annualize that, you know that's like $200,000 of free value every month from this one blog post. So a couple questions. How did you know that you wanted to target this long tail keyword and how did you specifically structure this page to optimize for Google's SEO schema?

[B]

So there are different techniques but for, for example, for this particular one, you try to find what people look for. Even some people, some companies are listed here are our competitors. But we understand like from industry, what people need and what they research for. So based on that one, we try to create those articles so it will be relevant for customers. So it's not about only promoting yourself, but you can just showcase. For example, you can. Here are other companies that you should take a look and this is the reasons of their pros and cons. So in some specific scenarios, some of the other competitors softwares are better match for them. So you need to like be very transparent what you publishing, not just like trying to be on the first one for some of the reasons, but always try to be like honest. And so whenever people read, they actually see the value rather than just like you promoting yourself.

[A]

So if you guys are just getting started on SEO and you want to copy this tactic, a couple things to keep in mind. The table of contents at the top that links to the rest of the article is a very good SEO signal. It shows that you understand internal linking and that this is a critical anchor piece of piece of content here. As you scroll down, obviously really good visuals. There's H1 and H2 tags that are optimized. As we continue scrolling down here, there's a clear pattern. So the visual design is obvious. It's 1 through 6 listing all the competitors with specific strengths and limitations. Again, SEO optimize. They've also got really nice FAQ schema. I think it's probably optimized for Google's FAQ schema down here at the bottom, which is really good for the chatbots. Right? If you're searching in ChatGPT, you know how long does it take to set up construction software right there? They hopefully show up in this article. How much are you doing in terms Mike, how much are you doing in terms of SEO optimization to show up in ChatGPT or Gemini or cloud results?

[B]

We kind of doing not much. We actually optimizing for Google and whatever we do, same impact is happening also in LLMs. So not much specific for charge GPT you actually doing exactly for SEO it have a lot of impact on charging.

[A]

Okay, so what percent of the 2 million of revenue you're doing today would you credit to your SEO strategy?

[B]

I would say 95, most likely.

[A]

So 95% of your 2 million of revenue today, today has come exclusively from your SEO optimization strategy?

[B]

I believe so.

[A]

Wow, very impressive. Okay, how are we going to grow in the future? How do you go from 2 million of revenue to 4 million of revenue over the next 12 months?

[B]

So we hired our first salespeople in 2026. So we're building right now the sales team. And from January and February they came over, they're coming from same industry. So they already know like how to sell and how to sell. So the thing is that because we are operating the way how we operate, like trying to find good partners, narrow down the product because the product is the key. Selling the software is much, much easier. I've been selling for over three years. There was no salesperson, there was no support, there was no customer success. We built customer facing teams last last six months.

[A]

Mike, let me ask you a question. You're in the death trap in terms of pricing. What I mean by that is 2 million of ARR and 300 customers means you're doing about 6,000 6.5k in ACV annual contract value per account. That is like a little low to incentivize a sales rep to touch every call and hit a quota target. But it's way too high for a no touch credit card checkout on your website. How do you fix that?

[B]

So we historically have some customers we came like very early so we're keeping their pricing is low. So our ACV is little bit higher than 6,000 something. So it's becoming like more close to seven and half and eight. And also when you have like good retention rate then it makes sense to have sales reps.

[A]

Okay, so do your account executives you're hiring now have a sales quota?

[B]

Yeah. What quota do you analyze? Around 1 million.

[A]

Okay, so they have to close a million of new ARR each year. That's their quota.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And what can you share? Don't name a specific, obviously employ, but what's the base salary you're paying your new AES?

[B]

It's different based on their skills, but usually like you targeting to have for them as pays around like 80k. Maybe 100 ot will be like around 150 somewhere around.

[A]

Yep. And guys, real quick resource I want you guys to have. And Mike just nailed it. But at Founder Path we anonymize all of the payroll data that founders give us and we publish real time changes in salaries. You know SaaS companies are paying based off real time data. So Mike, you'll see this matches almost what you just said. So 833 real salaries and payroll flowing through Founder Path. If we go into account executive, you'll see the highest, the best. The top performers are getting 122base. The new guys are getting 50k base. And then OTE is about double each of those things. You can see the different brackets here. So you're sort of right on the money in terms of quota. Targets relative to ote.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Very good. All right, so that's your growth strategy today. How many sales reps are on your team? You said there's 35 total. How many sales?

[B]

So right now, two. Just only two.

[A]

Two. Okay, very good. Well, look, we really appreciate you coming on. I learned a bunch. If people want to follow your story over the next 12 months, where can they find you? Online, You.

[B]

I'm usually active on LinkedIn, so they can find me there.

[A]

All right, guys, builder.com it is software for construction companies. Maya got going on this back in 2021 after Covid killed his travel business. But he had a dev shop before that is doing 3 million a year in revenue. So he really knew how to get talented engineers. Their first two years of building, from 2021 to 2023, they had no customers, but they landed some angel investors who put in 500k for 10%. Then lightning struck in a bottle. A million bucks of revenue. In 2025, they've already doubled 2026 to 2 million of revenue. They're serving 300 customers, and they're very profitable. 150,000. $160,000 a month in revenue. They're taking 40,000 to the bottom line, which they are reinvesting those profits into new hires. They're currently 35 folks, mainly based in Armenia, but scaling the sales team in the USA today. Most of this growth. Mike said 95% of his revenue has come from his SEO strategy, which is pulling in 18,000 organic clicks for free per month. We're rooting for him. Mayank, you're a loyal listener to the show, right?

[B]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

All right, I'm rooting for you then. That's how it works, guys. Check them out at Build Earn. B U I L D E R N Mike, thank you for taking us to the top. You won't believe this. CEOs revenue. Click here to watch the next episode Right now.