Overview of Practical Founders Podcast #202: Paul Hoeper of Invoice ASAP
In this episode of the Practical Founders Podcast, Greg Head talks with Paul Hoeper, founder and CEO of Invoice ASAP, about building a bootstrapped fintech company for home-service pros. Paul explains how Invoice ASAP evolved from a simple mobile invoicing app into a payments-heavy platform with its own payment rails, giving the company more control over fraud, payouts, deposits, and financial products. The conversation focuses on surviving platform shifts, avoiding dependence on VC, and building a durable business in a complex payments ecosystem.
What Invoice ASAP Does
Invoice ASAP is a mobile invoicing, payments, and field-service workflow platform for home-service businesses such as:
- HVAC
- Plumbing
- Landscaping
- Roofing
- General contractors and repair services
Core use case
The software helps service pros:
- Create estimates and invoices in the field
- Accept payments via tap-to-pay or digital invoice links
- Manage customer records and accounts receivable
- Integrate with accounting systems like QuickBooks and Xero
Paul describes the product as especially useful for businesses where the sale is not always immediate, partial payments are common, and follow-up billing matters.
Key Business Metrics
- Revenue: just under $3.5 million
- Team size: 12
- Premium accounts: about 23,000
- Free or dormant users: about 400,000
- Primary market: U.S. customers, with additional activity in Canada, Australia, and other app-store markets
How the Business Model Evolved
Early model: SaaS-first
Invoice ASAP originally started as a classic software product with:
- Monthly SaaS fees
- App-store distribution
- Integrations with Square and Clover
- A strong focus on desktop-to-mobile workflows, especially QuickBooks
Shift to fintech and payments
Over time, the company moved toward a payments-led model, where:
- The software is free for merchants who use payments through Invoice ASAP
- Revenue comes from transaction fees, instant deposit, merchant cash advance, and related payment products
- SaaS still exists as a fallback, but it is no longer the primary growth engine
Paul says the payments business now grows much faster than SaaS, with annual growth in the high double digits in many periods.
Why They Built Their Own Payment Rails
A major theme in the interview is control.
Paul explains that most competitors rely on Stripe or similar out-of-the-box payment products, which are easier to launch with but limit flexibility. Invoice ASAP instead built its own payfac-style infrastructure close to the legal line, allowing the company to control:
- Payment holding and disbursement
- Merchant payment disabling
- Fraud controls
- ID verification
- Split payments
- Instant deposit
- Short-term capital products for merchants
Why that matters
Paul argues that home-service businesses need payment tools designed for their real-world workflow, not generic payment software. For example:
- Home-service pros want faster access to cash
- They often need short-term funding tied to incoming invoices
- They benefit from tools built around jobs, deposits, and service calls rather than retail checkout
Go-to-Market and Customer Acquisition
Invoice ASAP’s growth came from several channels over time:
- Early organic app-store discovery
- Distribution through Square and Clover app ecosystems
- Apple Search Ads
- Facebook video ads and other paid social
- CRM and marketing automation improvements
A key operational change
Paul notes that the company moved internal CRM and marketing systems from HubSpot/Mailchimp to GoHighLevel, cutting annual spend dramatically while simplifying operations.
Funding Strategy and Independence
Paul is clearly committed to staying independent.
What the company used instead of VC
- Friends-and-family and angel investors
- A history of debt financing since roughly 2014
- Revenue-based and balance-sheet-style capital sources
- Ongoing use of tools like Plaid to show lenders real business performance
Why he avoided venture capital
Paul warns that institutional capital often comes with:
- Board control
- Loss of voting rights
- Pressure to pursue a specific exit
- Misalignment with long-term software-building
His view is that VC can be useful, but only if a founder is willing to give up a lot of control. He is not.
Founder Advice
Paul shared a few practical lessons for founders, especially those operating in complex or infrastructure-heavy markets:
- Have multiple capital sources, including an emergency source
- Be very selective about the platforms you depend on
- Don’t assume SaaS-only metrics tell the whole story
- Understand how payment infrastructure affects your margins and control
- Use the right business credit cards to maximize points and working-capital flexibility
- Favor tools and systems that reduce operational overhead
Outlook for the Business
Paul sees several paths forward:
- Expand further in the U.S. market
- Release more product features, especially scheduling and dispatch
- Continue growing the payments business
- Potentially explore strategic exits later, such as:
- a payments company
- a CRM provider
- a field-service software company
- a larger enterprise software player like ServiceTitan
He also notes that the home-service market is relatively resilient, including during recessions, because people still need repairs even when they delay bigger purchases.
Main Takeaways
- Invoice ASAP is a bootstrapped fintech/software hybrid built for home-service pros.
- The company’s biggest advantage is control over its own payments infrastructure.
- Moving from SaaS to payments improved monetization and strategic flexibility.
- Paul values independence and has deliberately avoided VC-style dilution and control.
- The home-service market, while seasonal, is durable and well-suited to transaction-based software.