Baton Update - Q1 Recap + April 2025
Hi Baton team,
Here is the latest on what’s happening over here.
Q1 2025 - Revenue
We’ve started the year strong.
January - $264.6k (102% inc over 2024)
February - $252.7k (102% inc)
March - $417.1k (87% inc)
Most of the increase in revenue this year has come from growing our existing relationships with clients.
Though we’ve had ~2x increases in monthly revenue, we’re only generating about ~50% more leads. The rest of the growth has come from increased bids for referrals. Network effects in action!
What we worked on during Q1
The theme for Q1 was “Build the Foundation.” We focused on laying the groundwork to capitalize on the busy season, boost profitability, and prep for expansion into new verticals.
Here’s some of what we built:
New reporting tools to help partners understand what drives more referrals — including where to raise bids and how to win more leads
Thumbtack integration, allowing us to better monetize referrals across additional industries
Ranking algorithm improvements to more intelligently decide which partner gets the lead when there are multiple matches
For now, my focus is staying locked on growing the value of our existing client base and network. That approach seems to be working — bids are rising, partners are happy, and margins are trending up. We were profitable in both March and April, and we expect that to continue through the rest of the year.
April 2025 - Revenue
April - $515k (90% increase over 2024)
April was more of the same efficiency focus.
Call buying optimization. We deepened our integration with external Pay Per Call networks by leveraging our real-time coverage API. This allows us to selectively source only the most profitable calls for referral. We also revised our sourcing strategy to prioritize quality over volume, resulting in improved margins across key call categories.
Referral team upgrades. As the majority of referrals now route through our referral team, we’ve implemented new systems to track agent performance and enforce accountability. This included setting clear conversion benchmarks, upgrading scripts and quality control measures, and parting ways with underperforming agents. Caller trust is critical to our business model—if agents sound unclear, unconfident, or disconnected, the caller will hang up without a referral. By tightening our standards, we increased call conversion by 5% in April alone, ensuring more referred callers are successfully connected to network partners.
Challenges we are facing
Of course, not all is fun and roses.
Partner churn and engagement drops. While most Baton partners increase their referral activity over time, some have slowed down or stopped entirely. Part of this is seasonal — it’s always a challenge to re-engage companies after the slower months — but some of it comes down to execution. Our model depends on sales reps remembering to follow the referral process in real time.
To get ahead of this, we launched a “secret shopping” initiative where one of our agents calls in as a nonqualified lead to test if we’re actually being referred. The results have been eye-opening. Even some of our more promising partners are only referring a small percentage of the time. We’re now building targeted incentive campaigns to re-ignite those accounts.Delayed launch to new verticals. I keep thinking we’re just around the corner from diving into new verticals… but the truth is, we’re still finding meaningful ways to improve monetization and performance in our existing network. Until we feel like we’ve really optimized that, I’ve been holding off on launching new industries. It’s frustrating… but intentional.
The Thumbtack integration has been quirky. Integrating Thumbtack has come with a few growing pains. Their platform requires all communication between consumers and pros to stay within their system, which meant we couldn’t just forward calls like we normally do. We’ve had to get creative, but we’ve now figured out a reliable flow that plays nice with their rules.
Looking forward
Q2’s theme is “Launch and Validate.” We officially launched our Thumbtack integration and are now in the process of validating just how much we can rely on it to drive growth beyond pest control. We also rolled out several other improvements mentioned earlier. I’m excited to see how they translate into real traction.
If Thumbtack continues to prove out, we’ve already lined up intros with major players in roofing, cleaning, plumbing, and more. A refreshed outbound campaign is scheduled to kick off in Q3 to capitalize on that momentum.
We’re also gearing up to hire for growth-focused roles in Q3, including an enterprise sales rep, a VP of Growth, and potentially others to help scale both sides of the marketplace.
Thanks to the efficiency gains over the past several months, we’re forecasting over $300k in net income on $6M+ revenue this year, making 2025 our first profitable year!
Help we need
Know anyone who was VP of Growth or Marketing at another fast growing startup? Would love to meet them.
For now, that’s all I have for you.
Please reach out if you have feedback or questions. I’m all ears.
Till next time. 👍
-Phil