meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

$28M Series A at $100M Val: The Pest Control SaaS Nobody Saw Coming

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Business, Entrepreneurship

4.6701 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2026

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How do you build a $100M SaaS company by charging apartment residents $5 a month to keep rats out of their bedroom?

Justin Clements is the co-founder and CEO of PestShare, an on-demand pest control platform embedded inside property management software. He bootstrapped from 2019 to 2020, raised just $5M over two rounds, then closed a $28M Series A at a $100M valuation in 2025, the same year he crossed $10M ARR.

You'll learn:

— Why PestShare's revenue model is structured like a warranty, and why that makes it nearly impossible to churn

— The difference between contracted ARR and live ARR, and how that gap almost killed their valuation story 

— How embedding into the lease instead of selling direct to residents creates structural GRR that VC-backed competitors can't replicate

— What it actually took to raise at 10x ARR from an investor that only backs 9 companies at a time

— Why Justin's Series A investor pushed him to take $3M in personal secondary and why he says it made him take bigger swings 

— How IGP's PE background forced a full COGS and gross margin rebuild right after closing the round

— Why "if you don't see pests it means the product isn't working" is the exact wrong way to think about pest control retention

— How PestShare went from $1M (2022) to $5M (2024) to $10M (2025), doubling every year with under 1x ARR in prior capital raised

— What property managers actually pay vs. what residents pay and how PestShare navigates that split without losing either side

— Why Justin chose a hyper-concentrated, low-profile fund over a brand-name VC, and what they got in return

 

Connect:
YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch
PestShare: pestshare.com
Founderpath: founderpath.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

We take that $300,000 door count times the $5 a month to $29 a month that puts you somewhere between $1.5 million a month in revenue and $3 million a month in revenue. Is that directionally correct? Yeah, that's about right. What year was your first million dollar year? Do you remember? First million dollar year, I want to say it was in 2022. If you're targeting $18 million by the end of this year, what growth rate would that represent? Where did you finish in December 2025?

0:22.3

Just over 10 million in 2025.

0:24.7

We've doubled pretty much every year since inception.

0:27.9

We know that you grew from 1 million in 2022 to 5 million in 2024 to 10 million 2025, targeting 20 million-ish at the end of this year.

0:35.1

2,000 logos, 300,000 door install base. So where did you guys trade at? Were we talking like 100 million evaluation or under that? Yeah, we said $100 million evaluation. But guys, Justin's is a D1 college football athlete, turned entrepreneur and co-founder of PestShare. He co-founded the company to transform property management with technology that turns these costly

0:54.2

pet problems into profitable solutions. Justin, you ready to take us to the top? Are you doing?

0:58.0

I do you make more money being a college athlete on nil or on pest control AI software?

1:03.0

You know, I wish they had those deals back when I was playing. I feel like that old guy's

1:08.3

back in my day, you know, but, you know, I guess I wish they had those deals back when we were playing, but I don't know if I was going to be ever good enough to be able to secure a deal there too. So, but it was a good time. What position did you play? I was a strong safety. Nice. All right. Strong safety to pest control. Tell us what you're selling here. What's the company do? Yeah. So we're a kind of first ever on-demand pest control platform that's designed to give residents the tools directly in their hands to request pest control services.

1:37.8

Really, it's meant to alleviate a lot of the friction between, you know, the property manager and the resident and really kind of

1:45.3

the negative experience that exists there. You know, not only, you know, who's responsible

1:49.3

for paying for pest control, but also, you know, what, how does the, you know, operational

1:54.6

execution, you know, live kind of within our platforms in that experience today. And it's a very

1:59.7

fragmented, very broken system. Right now, you know, kind of the antiqu platforms in that experience today. And it's a very fragmented, very broken system.

2:01.7

Right now, you know, kind of the antiquated, you know, traditional pest control model just

2:07.1

doesn't necessarily help facilitate that through and through from request of pest patrol infestation

2:13.1

to the execution of the service. And so it's a very kind of broken, broken system. And we are kind of

2:18.8

linking that together. We still believe that professional pest control is the best remediation

2:24.1

effort. But in order for us to do that, we have to have a layer of deep technology that's

2:30.2

integrated within their systems. And so that's ultimately what we're building with the platform today. What's the go to market motion here? Does the property manager, when someone new leases from their property, do they send them a link to say, hey, download the Pest Share app. If you have ants on your kitchen counter, take a picture, we'll get it solved in their 24 hours. Or how do people get the thing installed to take pictures of the ants in their garden? Yeah, that, that's a great question. Really, our effort is to make it as seamless and as easy as

2:55.3

possible. So really, as soon as we onboard a new client, our integration within their

3:00.8

property management software systems where they're actually, you know, managing their doors,

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 17 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nathan Latka, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nathan Latka and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.