The visualisation layer for the £180bn home improvement market.
ConvertDriveways turns a homeowner's photo into a photoreal AI render of their new driveway in 30 seconds, then captures the lead for the contractor. We start with driveways — fragmented, high-ticket, visually-led — and expand into the full exterior trades stack.
In ten years, every quote starts with a render.
Software ate retail when 'see it before you buy it' became a default expectation. The same shift is reaching trades. We're building the picks-and-shovels for that shift, starting with the highest-friction, highest-ticket exterior trade.
Driveway visualiser + lead capture SaaS for 38K UK contractors.
Multi-trade exterior renderer across UK, US, AU. £8M ARR.
Marketplace + SaaS. The default starting point for any home exterior job.
How big is this, really?
A category nobody's looking at because it's been too unsexy to disrupt — until AI made the unit economics work.
UK. ~38,000 driveway and paving contractors. Average install £4,200. Annual installed value ~£12B. The Trustmark + Checkatrade ecosystem proves contractors will pay £100–£400/month for tools that bring leads.
Globally. Home exteriors (driveways, patios, landscaping, decking, fencing) ~$340B installed value, US alone ~$110B. Contractor SaaS spend globally forecast to cross $9B by 2028 (Grand View, IBISWorld).
Wedge. Driveways are visually-led, expensive, and homeowners have low confidence in what the finish will look like on their property. That friction is the wedge — and it generalises to every other exterior trade.
- UK contractors38,000
- 5-yr penetration15%
- UK paying accounts5,700
- + US / AU / EU+16,300
- Blended ARPU£180/mo
- 5-yr SOM ARR£47.5M
Three tailwinds converged in the last 18 months.
Gemini 2.5 Flash Image and successors generate photoreal architectural surfaces at ~£0.003/render. 18 months ago this cost £0.40 and looked fake.
Jobber, ServiceM8, Housecall Pro normalised £100+/mo recurring spend in trades. The buyer is ready.
Post-Zillow/Rightmove, buyers expect to 'see it before buying it'. Contractors that don't offer this lose to ones that do.
One photo. 30 seconds. A signed lead.
The homeowner does three things; the contractor wakes up to a qualified lead. That's it.
Homeowner snaps or uploads a photo of their drive on contractor's website or branded subdomain.
AI returns a photoreal visualisation in their chosen finish — resin, block, cobble, gravel, etc.
Name, postcode, phone. Lead lands in the contractor's dashboard with the render attached.
What's live and measurable today.
Product is shipped. Render pipeline, embeddable widget, lead capture, branding, custom subdomains, billing-ready architecture — all in production. We are not raising for an idea; we are raising for go-to-market.
The category is wide open.
| Player | Strengths | Weaknesses | Threat |
|---|---|---|---|
Generic AI image tools Midjourney, Nano Banana, ChatGPT | Powerful general models | No lead capture, no contractor workflow, requires prompt skill | Low |
Home design SaaS Houzz Pro, Hover, iVisualize | Established brand, deep features | Roofing/interior focused, not driveway-native, expensive | Medium |
Field-service SaaS Jobber, ServiceM8, Housecall Pro | Owns contractor back-office | No visualisation, no lead-gen layer | Partner |
Lead marketplaces Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark | Huge homeowner audience | Sell same lead 5×, contractors hate them | Disrupt target |
Bespoke agency builds Local web shops | Tailored | £10K+, slow, no updates, no AI | Low |
No category-native player. Generic AI tools lack the workflow; vertical SaaS players lack the AI. We sit in the gap and own the visual moment that triggers the purchase decision.
Four defenses that compound.
Fine-tuned on UK property facades and surface materials — generalist models can't match texture realism on resin or block paving.
Once a contractor's quotes, leads, branding and embed are inside CD, switching costs are weeks of pain.
Every render becomes labelled training data. Quality improves on a curve competitors can't replicate without our distribution.
Material suppliers want this to exist (it sells their product). Each signed partner is a moat brick.
Revenue & valuation, year by year.
Founder-led sales, UK only.
Paid acquisition + partner channel.
US + AU launch, enterprise tier.
Adjacent verticals (patios, landscaping).
Category leader, marketplace layer.
| Year | Customers | ARPU/mo | ARR | Net churn | Valuation range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y1 (2026) | 250 | £119 | £357K | 6%/mo | £1.4M – £2.5M |
| Y2 (2027) | 1,200 | £135 | £1.94M | 4%/mo | £8M – £15M |
| Y3 (2028) | 4,500 | £149 | £8.0M | 3%/mo | £40M – £80M |
| Y4 (2029) | 11,000 | £165 | £21.8M | 2.5%/mo | £110M – £220M |
| Y5 (2030) | 22,000 | £180 | £47.5M | 2%/mo | £280M – £570M |
How we get to 22,000 paying contractors.
Demo-video creative + free-trial funnel. £85 CAC against £1,800 LTV. Primary channel through Y2.
Material suppliers (Marshalls, Brett, Tobermore) co-market to their installer networks. Zero CAC on this path.
Per-style, per-postcode landing pages (e.g. 'resin driveway Manchester'). Already indexing.
Embeds carry a discreet 'powered by' link on free trials → loop with homeowners shopping multiple contractors.
FeRFA, Interbuild, SAPSDA. High-intent, low-cost when run as workshops not stands.
SDR team targeting top-200 multi-branch installers for the enterprise tier.
What's shipped, what's next.
- AI render pipeline (9 finishes: resin, block, cobble, imprinted, tarmac, gravel, slab, pattern, natural stone)
- Embeddable widget (iframe, script loader, direct link) with auto-resize
- Custom subdomain support (e.g. vision.contractor.com)
- Lead capture + dashboard, CSV export, email alerts
- Plan tiers with usage limits + rate limiting on public endpoints
- Custom branding: logo, colours, fonts, CTA copy
- Mobile-optimised customer flow: drag/drop, camera capture, skeleton loading
- Full auth, account management, cascading account deletion
- Stripe billing live with annual + monthly + dunning
- Self-serve subdomain DNS verification flow
- White-label reseller tier for marketing agencies
- Lead routing: SMS, WhatsApp, Zapier, CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive)
- AI quote-estimate add-on (sq metres → price range)
- Multi-language (ES, DE, FR) for EU expansion
- iOS/Android contractor app for on-site quoting
- Marketplace: homeowner directory matching leads to contractors
- Q1 2026Public launch
Stripe live, first 50 paying contractors, public case studies.
- Q2 2026Partner channel signed
First material-supplier co-marketing deal (Marshalls / Brett / Tobermore tier).
- Q4 2026£1M ARR
1,000 paying accounts, NRR >100%, hiring head of growth.
- Q2 2027US soft launch
Dallas + Phoenix metros, USD pricing, contractor advisory board.
- Q4 2027Series A
£8–12M raise on £2M ARR, 4× YoY, expanding to patios + landscaping.
- 2029+Marketplace layer
Homeowner-side directory, take-rate on quoted jobs, IPO-track metrics.
Lean today. Funded plan to scale.
Product, sales, fundraising. Background in scaling vertical SaaS.
Full-stack, billing, integrations. Equity-heavy package modelled.
Material suppliers, trade associations, agency channel.
Two operators from UK SaaS exits, one AI infra lead. Confirmed verbal.
Why you'd invest. Why you might not.
- Category-defining timing. AI-render economics flipped 18 months ago. We are the first credible vertical player.
- Shovel-ready product. Shipped, paying customers possible day one — not a slide deck.
- Defensible data moat. Every render trains a private dataset of UK property facades.
- Multi-vertical option value. Same engine extends to patios, landscaping, roofing — a £340B global opportunity.
- Marketplace endgame. Once we own the visualisation moment, routing leads is a take-rate business worth 10× SaaS.
- Trades adopt SaaS slowly. Long sales cycles; founder-led selling required early.
- Foundation model dependency. Gemini/OpenAI pricing changes affect margin. Mitigated by fine-tuned open path.
- Incumbent entry. Houzz or ServiceTitan could enter — but they're focused on bigger categories.
- Single-category cap. UK-only driveways caps at ~£15M ARR without expansion.
- Founder concentration. Small team today. Capital is partly to de-risk that.
Three credible exit paths.
Houzz, ServiceTitan, Reapit, Wilbur Labs roll-up at Y3 metrics.
Y4–5 cash-flow positive vertical SaaS, EV/Revenue 8–12×.
Marketplace + SaaS combined, multi-vertical, US-listed by 2030.
Questions investors actually ask.
Why won't OpenAI or Google just do this?＋
They don't sell vertical workflow software. They sell APIs. We're a customer of theirs — and the customer they're not built to serve. Same reason Shopify exists despite Stripe.
What happens if AI render cost drops further?＋
Gross margin expands. We've stress-tested the model at 10× current API cost and still hit 65% margin at £119 ARPU.
Why won't contractors just use a generic AI tool for free?＋
Same reason restaurants don't use Excel for bookings. The workflow — lead capture, branded embed on their site, dashboard — is the product. The render is the hook.
Is the moat really defensible?＋
Long-term moat is the fine-tuned vertical model + workflow lock-in + supplier partnerships. Short-term moat is execution speed and being first.
What's the path to £100M+ ARR?＋
Driveways UK gets us to £15M. Add patios/landscaping → £40M. Add US → £100M+. Marketplace take-rate on top is upside.
What kills this company?＋
Slow contractor adoption + capital running out before the partner channel matures. Mitigation: 24-month runway plan and founder-led sales from day one.
What we're raising and why.
Full data room (financial model, customer interviews, render samples, technical architecture) available under NDA.
Forward-looking statements on this page are projections, not guarantees. Forecasts assume continued AI model availability at current price points, successful execution of the marketing plan, and no material regulatory change to AI image generation in the UK or EU.