Happy New Year!

A new decade is here, which feels like a good time to reflect on our journey so far at Homebase. It feels like just yesterday that I put up our inaugural blog post, but we actually launched in 2015. That means we’ve been serving incredible teams across the country for 5 years now. I started Homebase for my friends and family members. I saw the headaches and challenges they were dealing with at work, and I thought technology could help. Over the last five years, we’ve had the honor to serve over 100,000 businesses and grow from a few people to over a hundred. We’ve also grown up alongside some of our early customers. I’ve seen them go through the joys and challenges of adding new locations. I’ve seen them have children, and take on the challenges of building a business and a family at the same time. I’ve also seen them go through the struggle of closing locations and businesses. I hope that we’ve saved them a lot of time and headaches, but I also hope we can do more. Whatever your goal is—growing a business, spending time with your family, or just taking a day off—we want to help you get there. We are building the next stage of Homebase to make work easier for you so you can spend your time on all the things that matter most. And while our business is a constantly changing, what we believe does not: Paperwork is evil and should be killed. We’ve made a dent, but business owners are still spending countless hours on wasteful admin and overhead. It’s not helping them accomplish their goals, but it’s required. It’s a drag on them and our entire economy. We want to fix this. Everyone should benefit from technology. Local businesses haven’t had the same advantages as large corporations. And their employees often don’t know how much money they’re making on their next paycheck nor what their schedule is next week. Technology hasn’t been fairly distributed. We can fix this. Work is important, and it should be easier to access. Even as unemployment remains low, hourly workers struggle to find meaningful work and support themselves and their families. And for business owners trying to grow, there are a lot of frictions in hiring and managing a team. These frictions get in the way of both entrepreneurs accomplishing their goals and of great people finding work to support their own goals. We will fix this. As we enter a new decade with you, I am thankful for all of our customers, who have supported Homebase, provided feedback, and recommended us to other businesses. You have helped us grow, get better, and help new businesses. We will keep working hard to serve you better. I am also thankful for all the team members at Homebase who have joined us on this mission. We are now over 100 people, and it’s thrilling to see how we get better every day. In the past five years I’ve had the joy to watch:

• • Former Homebase users become Homebase employees
  • Former Homebase employees start their own local businesses—and become Homebase users
  • Reports from Homebase team members during vacations and holidays as they visit our customers across the country
  • Team members thriving in entirely new roles and careers from where they joined the company
  • The way we approach our mission with the same level of urgency and intensity that we did on Day 1

I’m looking forward to watching all of you achieve your goals in this new decade and all the new milestones we’ll reach as we support you along the way. In Service, John Waldmann Local Business Superfan and CEO of Homebase