[SaaS Series & Israel Business Series] The SaaS Growth Playbook With David Bitton of DoorLoop

David Bitton is Co-founder of DoorLoop, a company that provides a comprehensive property management software solution aimed at residential and commercial property owners and managers. Under his leadership, DoorLoop has raised over $130 million and expanded to a team of about 200 staff, significantly impacting the real estate industry with innovative solutions. David is a five-time serial entrepreneur with two previous successful exits — and is also a best-selling author known for his expertise in SaaS companies and growth strategies. His journey in property management software was inspired by personal experiences, aiming to simplify and improve the management of rental properties for owners and managers alike.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:10] David Bitton discusses how DoorLoop simplifies property management for owners
• [05:03] Tips for having a successful relationship with your co-founder
• [08:10] DoorLoop’s product development and market research journey
• [11:33] The benefits of bootstrapping before pursuing funding
• [14:16] David talks about the lessons learned from previous companies
• [17:13] Top hiring strategies for identifying and attracting talent
• [20:31] Common mistakes SaaS companies face and how to avoid them
• [23:04] How to manage a smooth transition post-acquisition
• [29:50] DoorLoop’s pricing model and how it acquired its initial customers
• [35:53] Strategic fundraising and effective plans for using the money
• [41:48] How to better your customer experience

In this episode…

In the dynamic world of property management, few ventures manage to stand out by truly revolutionizing the industry. How does a company evolve from a small startup to a powerhouse team of 200 that has raised over $130 million? What unique strategies and insights drive such companies toward growth and success?

David Bitton, a five-time serial entrepreneur, shares the journey that led to the creation of his company, a property management software addressing critical gaps in the market. He recounts how personal experiences and a keen understanding of the market’s pain points inspired the company’s inception. Emphasizing the importance of a solid founding team, he describes how DoorLoop’s leadership handpicked top talent across sales, marketing, and development to ensure robust growth. David also details the strategic decisions around fundraising, the emphasis on product-market fit before seeking investment, and the importance of tracking analytics and feedback to hone the company’s offerings.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews David Bitton, Co-founder of DoorLoop, about the transformative journey of DoorLoop. David discusses how DoorLoop simplifies property management for owners, its product development and market research journey, lessons learned from previous companies, and how to navigate the acquisition process.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• David Bitton on LinkedIn
• DoorLoop

Special Mention(s):

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
• Ultimate Guide to Google Ads by Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes, and Bryan Todd
• Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising: How to Access 1 Billion Potential Customers in 10 Minutes by Perry Marshall, Keith Krance, and Thomas Meloche
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall
• Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• Topgrading: The Proven Hiring and Promoting Method that Turbocharges Company Performance by Bradford D. Smart

Related episode(s):

• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Tips To Thrive in the SaaS Space With Sujan Patel” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Revolutionizing Online Forms and Productivity With Aytekin Tank of Jotform” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Negotiation Tactics From FBI Agent Christopher Voss, Founder of Black Swan Ltd” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “How to Hire A-Players and Build a Great Company with Chris Mursau of Topgrading” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Does God Exist? with Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “No one is going to care more about your company than the founders.”
• “It’s rare you find a random market with zero competition today.”
• “There’s also the opposite story, where Google offered $10 billion to this company, and now it’s worth not even $1 billion — you never know.”
• “If one person is complaining, they must be really upset. Many are probably thinking the same thing.”
• “It’s amazing how many business owners track and measure everything, yet some don’t.”

Action Steps:

1. Emphasize building strong relationships and teams: Execute a robust business strategy by ensuring each department is led by someone highly invested in the company’s success.
2. Conduct thorough market research and due diligence: Mitigate the risk of developing features or products that do not resonate with the target audience.
3. Adopt a lean startup approach: Address the challenge of resource allocation by minimizing waste and ensuring that what is developed is truly needed by the market.
4. Invest in SEO and content marketing: Organically grow the brand’s presence while establishing authority.
5. Utilize customer feedback for continuous improvement: Refine the product based on real user needs to ensure the company remains responsive and customer-centric.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have David Bitton of DoorLoop. You can check him out at doorloop.com. David, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. This is part of the top SaaS series. It’s also part of the Top Israel Business Leader series. Some of the top SaaS fan favorites David episodes over the years. I did a episode with Zapier, the founder of Zapier, Wade foster. That was a really good one. I did the one with the founder of Mailshake and how they grew to like 70,000 users. Pipedrive was a good one. Pipedrive. I think when I interviewed them there were like 10,000 customers. 

Now there are over 100,000. That was a really great one. Also the founder of Jotform and how they grew to 25 million users and just some good solid information on how they grew their company. And we’re going to get into it today. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. And Rise25. We help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. And we do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So kind of, Dave, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it look easy for the host and the company so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, and most importantly, run their business. 

You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have personally found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected] to learn more. And big shout out to Michael Toss who introduced David and I. And I’m excited to introduce David BItton. He’s a best selling author. He’s a five time serial entrepreneur with two previous exits. Today he’s the co-founder of DoorLoop. And DoorLoop is a property management software. They’ve raised over $130 million. They have over at this point in time, 200 staff. And they’re really helping to reshape the real estate industry. And David, thanks for joining me.

David Bitton 02:51

Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And thank you, Michael, for the introduction.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 02:57

Just start us off and there’s a video portion to this. So if people are listening to the audio I’m going to pull up DoorLoop as David’s talking right now. But talk about DoorLoop and what you do.

David Bitton 03:10

Yeah. So DoorLoop started off as a property management software for residential and commercial property owners and property managers and management companies. Oh, you got it up there on the screen to help them pretty much manage their portfolio and all their rentals. So collecting rent, managing their accounting, handling maintenance requests, finding new tenants, everything A to Z that you could ever want when owning or managing a property you could do with DoorLoop.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 03:37

We’ll talk about it, because I know you’ve done this multiple times. This is your third SaaS company. And so we are going to talk about growth and team and scaling and possibly raising money because $130 million, that’s a full time job raising money too. Congrats on that. But I do want to start with the idea. And then, you know, it’s hard to get product market fit and, and get this going. So talk about the idea. And I think it came from a personal experience.

David Bitton 04:08

Yeah. That’s right. So when we were running our last company, one of our co-founders and partner at and the CEO of Thomas, he was managing his own investment properties, and a lot of the other co-founders also had investment properties, real estate. And there was no easy way to manage the rentals. 

No easy, affordable way, especially if you had only a handful and not larger companies that can afford thousands of dollars a month. So we knew we could do it better. We knew we could do it more affordable. We knew we could make it easier to use because of our history in SAS and building software companies. So that’s what we set out to do in 2019. And kudos to Ori. He built a rock star team of five incredible co-founders and brought in some great investors from early on, and we hit the ground running. And here we are five years later, almost 200 people on the team now.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 05:00

How did you meet your co-founders?

David Bitton 05:03

Yeah. So, Ori, you know, over the span of his career, you know, we all either worked together or friends or wanted to work together. So with arena, we worked together with other co-founders. You know, he always wanted to work with them. Just super talented people in every realm. So, you know, pretty much handpicked the best of the best. So, you know, for example, I was in charge of marketing and then we had a sales expert and we had a customer success expert, and we had a CTO for development. So he just handpicked the best of the best people in their respective fields and, and grew the company, which is also a great lesson because no one is going to care more about your company than the founders. So we had a founder sitting on top and managing every major department of the company for the first five years.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 05:47

How did you originally meet Ori?

David Bitton 05:51

Wow. So shout out to an old friend, Corinne, who is my old neighbor. She introduced me to him after college. It’s a long time ago. Many, many years ago, over almost 15 years ago. And he was looking to hire someone for his first SaaS company in Miami, Florida. And I joined as employee number three at his company. And then after that, that company got acquired. I started my own company that also got acquired, and then we ended up teaming up and starting another company called Practice Panther, which was a legal practice management software.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 06:23

We’ll go back in time a little bit, in a few. But you know, how did you divide roles. Right. So like I know you are head of marketing or a CEO and you have other co-founders. Talk about the division of labor.

David Bitton 06:43

In this company it was relatively easy because we had so many co-founders. It’s unlikely to have five co-founders. So you can have an easier division. Okay. You’re only doing sales. You’re only doing customer service. You’re only doing marketing, you’re only doing development. So that was much easier. So for us it was easy. But in our last company, in the last two companies, you know, you have two partners. That’s much harder. And I think what helped us is the initial, you know, partnership agreement that everyone should have. I see a lot of people not doing that early on, and that’s definitely good because it’s setting expectations, responsibilities, job titles, job descriptions, maybe scorecards. 

So hey partner, you’re in charge of XYZ. Do you agree? Great. I’m in charge of this. We agree. Great. And there’s clear lines in the sand. And the hardest thing to figure out what happens if you have a disagreement between two 50-50 partners who wins. And that’s always the hardest thing. So, you know, even a third partner could be good to mediate those situations. But in our case, anytime we had disagreements, we would just look at the data and a B tested and see whatever the data says wins. Not who yells the loudest or loudest or who has the fanciest title. Whatever the data says wins. We love to test every single thing we can possibly.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 07:51

So I could see you already know a lot of these, the co-founders and people from previous companies. Ori has this problem, right? And so what’s the first thing you do? Did you go out and raise money? Was there a proof of concept? What do you do to start your loop?

David Bitton 08:11

So like every problem you know that we want to solve, we try to see okay, this is a personal problem which is great. We could solve our own problem. We know the pain. But is this a big enough problem? Do other people have the same problem? What are they doing about that problem? Is there a solution for that problem? Is it a good solution? So we look at all those things first. Can we make a better solution. And once we come to that. So a lot of due diligence maybe a few months of due diligence and research and surveys and analysis and speaking to potential customers and getting demos of competitors also, then you do market research how big is the market? 

So you have the Tam, the total addressable market, the Sam, the serviceable addressable market and then some. You know, you can go on and on and on, but you just want to see how big is this market. How big can this company be. Can we compete. And then you go from there and then you start trying to see okay, who can build it. How do we market it? What’s the marketing strategy. What’s the business plan. You build all that and then it’s off to the races start going.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 09:04

So you discovered at that point from the research. Yes. We definitely, there’s a huge addressable market. There’s I think we can, you know, dominate as far as a solution goes. I’m curious early on. Right. Because building a product is a big deal. How do you decide features. Right. Like right now we’re looking at the features page. I don’t know if that’s grown over time or you you launched with certain features to start. Talk about the idea behind what do you start with from a feature perspective?

David Bitton 09:38

Yeah. So just one last thing. In the last question, people always say to me, hey, so do you have competitors? And I’m like, yeah, we have a lot of competitors. Well, isn’t isn’t that bad? So to me, not really, because if it’s a market where there’s no competition, it’s going to be rare that you found some random market with zero competition today in 2025 when this is posted. So to me, it shows me the market is big enough for everyone to eat a piece of the pie. And it is a gigantic market. So we don’t necessarily need to dominate the competitors and take over. You know, people always say, I just want 1% of the market and sometimes 1% is gigantic. It’s big enough. So that’s always what I say. And then number two, what features to build. First, there’s an amazing book that we love called Lean Startup by Eric Reese. You’re nodding your head. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. And they always say you want to build your MVP, your minimum viable product. 

What’s the basic version that you’re almost embarrassed to launch as a beta product? Just get some early testers, see what they want, see what they need. What are their pain points? The mistake we see a lot of people make when building their own companies. They’ll build and build. They’ll be in stealth mode for three years and they launch and then no one cares. And everyone’s like, well, I don’t really care for that feature. Oh, wow. Why do we spend a year building that feature so early on? We launched quickly, maybe within 12 months. It does take time to still build the software, even with a good team. And it does cost a considerable amount of money. So we launched and then just listen to our customers. And as a founder, it’s your responsibility to have as many calls with customers as much as possible and hear from them and see what they need and what are their pain points, and then you build from there. In our case, it was a bit different. 

Also, we knew the market we wanted to go into. There was a lot of competitors. So you could also see, hey, every competitor has to collect rent. It’s a basic necessity. Every competitor has to have accounting. So we already knew the core features that needed to be built out. That’s a little bit easier for us.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 11:27

Talk about raising money. Do you decide to raise money from the get go?

David Bitton 11:33

Yeah. So historically, no, we always wanted to what’s called bootstrapping, which is just grow organically, maybe invest a little bit of our own money, maybe a lot of our own money, depending on how much money you have in the beginning. So I personally love starting companies without a lot of money behind us, because it makes you very scrappy and it makes you think of all the organic growth hacking strategies you can do to grow your company and be really lean and mean and apply for startup loans. And, you know, when we first signed up to maybe it was Slack or Intercom or Zendesk, they have startup packages for companies that don’t raise money. So you can get, you know, AWS has AWS credits. 

There’s a lot of really cool things you can get as a startup that you cannot get if you’ve raised a lot of money. So number one, and number two, as a marketer speaking, you know, now that we have money to invest, we’re not focusing so much on those free organic hacks that someone else might focus on. But in the beginning we did a lot of that. So that’s also very important. So there’s a lot of people that make the mistake in my opinion, that’s like, oh yeah, I want to start a company, but I have to raise $20 million. I’m like, why do you have to raise $20 million to build the best app in the world? I was like, can you prove the concept for $1,000 for free? Maybe, you know, so, you know, it makes you think differently. And I think for us, we always wanted to hit product market fit before raising money to prove the concept out. Number one, to not get distracted. 

It does take a lot of time and effort and energy to raise money. Number two and then number three, if you’re raising money and you’re a pre-seed pre-revenue pre-launch, you’re giving away a lot more equity of your company because it’s a lot riskier for the investor versus, hey, I’m 5 million of IRR. We hit product market fit. Oh okay. Great. Your valuation is much higher now. But that was.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 13:15

So what point did you decide with DoorLoop that okay it’s time to raise money?

David Bitton 13:21

So with us since this was our third SaaS company in a row, we know what we needed to do to grow the business. We have our playbook, so to speak. That’s a repeatable process Mostly. So there were things in the business where we knew, hey, we know how to grow this company. We just need more money to grow it. And sure, you’re reinvesting the profits every month into it, but the profits aren’t so big in year one and year two. So you said, hey, if we could raise a little bit of money now and just pour gas on the fire on the channels that are working, we know we can grow this much faster if we just had more capital. Why wait five years when we could do this right now? In five months? So that was the reason for our series, our seed round and then series A round.

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