Real Estate Agent Builds $60K MRR AI SaaS in 10 Months

You don't need a computer science degree to build a serious AI company. You just need to understand a real problem deeply enough that you can't stop thinking about it.

Three years ago, Chris Baxter was selling houses in Auckland, New Zealand. Today, he's the co-founder and CEO of Aeva.AI, an AI receptionist SaaS product that's transforming how allied health clinics handle their phones. In just 10 months, with only two founders and zero VC money, he's grown to $60,000 Australian dollars in monthly recurring revenue with hundreds of customers across six countries.

Here's what makes Chris's story different: he doesn't come from tech. He came from making 20,000 real estate cold calls and learning firsthand how much business gets lost when no one picks up the phone. When he discovered clinics were facing the same problem, he built a solution. And that's probably exactly why Aeva is winning so fast.

No technical background. No funding. Just a problem worth solving and the courage to bet on himself.

Key Takeaways: Building Without a Technical Degree

The Non-Traditional Path:

• Skipped university at 18 to jump into real estate, got a company car and paid training
• Made 20,000+ cold calls over 3 years, learning discipline and relentless execution
• Left a successful real estate career making "dream money" to chase something more challenging

Building and Scaling Aeva.AI:

• Grew from $0 to $60K MRR in 10 months with just two founders
• Bootstrapped entirely - no VC funding, no outside investors
• AI receptionist answers calls for allied health clinics in under 2 minutes, preventing missed appointments

The Bootstrap Playbook:

• Moved to Bali to extend runway, eating $2.50 meals three times a day for six months
• Used cold email as primary lead generation strategy ($600 course was "best money ever spent")
• Built referral network from day one, turning happy customers into growth engines

Q: You didn't go to university. Most people would say that's career suicide, especially for tech. What made you skip it?

Chris: I was in school, probably finished in 2019. All my friends and everyone was applying to universities, trying to get in, trying to get good courses. I looked at the whole process, went to a few university introductions, and I went, "You know what, there's not even a little part of me that wants to try and go to university. Nothing inside of me wants to even give it a go."

So I went, "I'm not even going to try." Towards the end of the year, I went, "Right, I'm not going to university, so I'm going to have to find something else to do." That's when I thought, "Let's try and just jump into the workforce." I wanted to make money. I looked at what can make a lot of money, and of course, like most people see, I looked at real estate residential sales. They just looked cool - they always had the nice cars, the nice suits.

I basically met with a real estate agent, begged them for a job. He gave me an intro into a property management firm. I worked as a letting agent for about two years, then I went into real estate sales and did that for 3 years. So my real estate career was 5 years total. I just got all this practical learning of how the world works, how a corporate company works, how sales works, what mindset I need to have determination and grit. At 18 years old when I got that job, I had a company car. I was getting paid to learn. I highly recommend people these days looking into that option - university isn't the answer for some things.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: University teaches you to be an expert employee. Real estate at 18 teaches you to survive. One of these matters more for founders.

Q: Take us back to those real estate years. You did 20,000 cold calls. That's insane. How did that prepare you for building a startup?

Chris: I got the job because I said, "Look, I'll do whatever you want. I'll work for free until I deserve money." That's how I got my job in a sales role working for a top agent. They just put me on the phones and tried to get me to generate leads for them. I did 20,000 cold calls, and it just taught me to be really relentless. It taught me that you have to just keep going - discipline every day.

You're not going to feel like doing it every day. Some days you're going to wish you didn't have to call. I got to the point after 20,000 calls where I did get sick of it and tried to look for other options. That's what drove me to the next chapter.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Most people quit after 100 rejections. Chris made 20,000 calls. Relentlessness isn't a personality trait - it's a skill you build through pain.

Q: The first hundred calls must have been brutal. How do you get over the fear of rejection?

Chris: The first hundred calls were for sure the hardest. These were the calls where you didn't know what script would work best. I was making up my own script, seeing what would work. You didn't know what they were going to say to you. As an example, when I got the first person that said, "Yeah sure, I'd love for an agent to come and appraise my home," I hadn't prepared to answer if someone said yes. I only prepared if someone had said no.

After the first 100 calls, you realize it's just a numbers game. You've got to set a target - for example, doing 50 calls every single day, and you've got to do it. There's no excuses. Bring up a spreadsheet, and every day, each date, write the amount of calls you're doing. That's the way to stay focused.

I knew that for every hundred calls I made, two of them would convert into leads. I literally knew the numbers. Every time I did 50 calls each day, I knew I was going to get on average about one lead per day.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Fear disappears when you have data. Two yeses per hundred calls isn't rejection - it's math.

Q: You had a successful real estate career going. Why walk away from that to start an AI company?

Chris: I had a dream that I'd always wanted to be a successful agent. When it got near when I left my real estate job, that dream changed. I realized it wasn't going to fulfill me enough. I needed something more challenging. It was too repetitive. I could see the future. I could see it was a very successful path - I was making dream money for my age, like any kid my age would have loved to be in that position.

But I realized it was just taking me on a path that I didn't want to end up on, and it wasn't going to fulfill me. I knew that if I got to my deathbed, I would regret not making a move at that time. That's when I realized, "Let's see what else is out there."

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The scariest career move isn't quitting a bad job. It's quitting a good one that's slowly killing who you want to become.

Q: How did you go from real estate to voice AI? That's a pretty big leap.

Chris: After 20,000 calls, I was pretty good at making cold calls. I thought, "How can I leverage this?" I came across the idea and technology of voice AI - being able to speak to an AI assistant over the phone and have a human, natural conversation with it. I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I saw the potential. I saw this vision - "This is going to be massive."

This was in 2023. No one had heard about this. There were no companies exploring it. It was very new. I decided to research every single bit about it, work out how it works. I tried to build a system myself, tried to learn how to develop and build that system. That was far too hard, so I gave up on learning development from scratch.

Instead, I waited a little bit until the product matured in the marketplace and there were third-party providers that were allowing people to access this technology without needing to know coding. Sort of no-code access to this technology, more prompting. That's when I realized, "Great, this is where I can start getting commercial about it." I decided I was going to start an AI receptionist agency.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Smart founders don't learn to code. They wait for no-code tools to catch up to their vision.

Q: You teamed up with your best friend Louie. How did that partnership form?

Chris: We met in the middle of high school. We were just troublemakers, to be honest, at high school - just having fun, trying to see what we could do. After school, he took the more traditional route of going to university, studying development, studying AI as well. I took the real estate path. We were still good friends, but we were going different paths until I shared a little bit about the business I was looking into.

He shared the same vision as me. He said, "Wow, this is going to be big. I want in as well. Let's do this together." That's when we went for a beer and decided to become business partners. The reason it works so well with someone you know intimately is because you understand their barriers. You understand how to not piss them off, or you understand how they could get pissed off, so you can work around each other. My co-founder and I, we've never had a fight about the company. That's only because we've been best friends for so long.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Co-founders who met at a hackathon have chemistry. Co-founders who survived high school together have immunity.

Q: What were the first 12 months like? Zero leads, zero revenue, just figuring things out?

Chris: The first 6 months of 2024, I was doing the AI agency on the side of real estate. I was still in real estate - I was sort of just scared to leave such a successful role. While I was in that real estate role, I was honestly just trying to save up money, trying to plan out my AI business. That first 6 months was testing the market.

We were sending thousands and thousands of cold emails, scraping data from all these different industries from Google Maps, just trying to find where we could create a business around AI receptionists and voice AI. The whole of 2024, we were a generalist agency just trying to make money anywhere we could.

At the end of 2024, we sent a cold email to a physio clinic based in New Zealand. They replied back saying they were really keen to review an AI receptionist system. We went, "Great, let's build it." That was the first version of what we've got today. That was the first customer we built for, and that's what launched Aeva.AI receptionist.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: You don't find product-market fit in a conference room. You find it in a customer's reply to a cold email at 11 PM.

Q: Was cold email the main thing that got you leads?

Chris: For sure. I did an email course in early to mid-2024. It was by a guy called Lead Gen Jay. I paid about $600 for his course. It was the best money I've ever spent on any course. That's what drove all of our first leads. It's what allowed us to find our niche. It's what allowed us to grow our whole business, to be really honest.

I really studied that course, learned everything there was to know about cold email - what platforms worked, how to get data, how to set up campaigns. That's how we got all of our first leads.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Everyone's chasing the next growth hack. Chris spent $600 on email fundamentals and built a $60K MRR business. Boring works.

Q: Let's talk about the financial reality. You were making great money in real estate. How did you afford to make the jump?

Chris: You're absolutely right - it was bugger all money. We didn't really know how to make money. We didn't know how to monetize it. In that first 6 months after I left my real estate job, I was just relying on savings. I had a certain amount of savings and was trying to work out a way to make those savings last as long as possible.

The way I did that was I moved to Bali. I'm currently still in Bali, Indonesia. The only reason is because of the cost of living. For the first six months that I'd left my job, I was eating $2.50 Nasi Gorengs in Indonesia every single meal - three times a day. I was so frugal. I was just really trying to make my runway of savings last as long as possible.

The worst thing that could have happened is I ran out of money and had to go back to New Zealand and work in real estate again. That's the absolute worst thing - and it's not that bad. It puts it into perspective that you should take risks because you can always go back.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Most founders fail because they run out of money. Chris ate $2.50 meals for six months so he wouldn't. Runway isn't optional - it's oxygen.

Q: Explain what Aeva does. For people hearing about an AI receptionist for the first time, what's the product?

Chris: When you talk over the phone, your voice is transcribed into text and sent to an AI model like ChatGPT. ChatGPT reads your response, creates its own response, and that text is sent back to the phone via text-to-speech which generates a natural-sounding voice. That's how the process works - it leaves you talking in a natural conversation.

Our product implements that into medical clinics, specifically allied health clinics. They subscribe to our system and have an AI receptionist that can pick up every incoming call and allow no call to ever go to voicemail. No patient ever has to not speak to anyone. They've always got an AI there to help with their appointment, answer questions, or leave a message with their practitioner to call them back.

It's been really revolutionary for clinics, especially ones without receptionists who just don't have the cash or revenue for a receptionist, or even ones with a receptionist who need support because they're getting too many calls and it's not enough for one person.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Missed calls aren't an operations problem. They're revenue bleeding out one voicemail at a time.

Q: Do people know they're talking to AI?

Chris: For sure. We actually tested this. Legally in some areas we sell in, it's not required to share that it's AI, but we always recommend sharing that it is AI. Not just to be transparent, but actually when patients understand they're speaking to a system, they realize they want the most efficient call possible. And that's what we've created.

If they're a new patient trying to book an appointment, we can get them to a booking in 2 minutes. From new patient to booked appointment in just over 2 minutes. They really appreciate an efficient call like that from a system.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Hiding that you're AI is like catfishing. Owning it turns skeptics into efficiency addicts.

Q: Is Aeva built to replace receptionists?

Chris: No. Aeva's been built to basically support receptionists. It's to allow them to focus on higher-value activities. Something AI can never replace that a receptionist does is being able to greet a patient when they come in person and smile at them and say, "Hey, welcome back - how's your dog doing?" That's never going to be replaced. That's where they offer value - in that face-to-face work and interaction throughout the clinic.

AI is really just stepping in. It's able to help with the phones - things that are just repetitive, new bookings, cancellations, stuff that shouldn't be a human's job to start off with.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI doesn't replace jobs. It replaces the soul-crushing parts of jobs humans shouldn't have been doing anyway.

Q: You grew from zero to $60K MRR in 10 months bootstrapped. What were the key drivers?

Chris: The way we grew it was by creating a referral network. Every single person that jumped on and loved the system, we said, "Hey, can you tell a friend? We'll give you a reward for sharing this." That drove a massive amount of people. It also got word of mouth talked about over Facebook groups and all these different groups online.

The other one was cold emailing. That generated a lot of leads for us to start off with. But it didn't come fast. The first month we grew by $500, then the next month it was another thousand, then the next month after that it was $2,000. It was incremental.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Viral growth is a myth. Real growth is $500, then $1,000, then $2,000 - compounding slowly until it looks like overnight success.

Q: Did you ever consider raising VC money?

Chris: We didn't. The reason I left real estate was I wanted to become my own boss. My concern with VCs was that we would have to still answer to them. Everything we did, any major changes to the product, would have to be answered to and approved first.

Both myself and my business partner, we didn't want that. We wanted to be in charge of our product. We wanted to be able to move fast as needed. If something wasn't working, we'd fix it. If someone requested something massive, we'd work out how to put it in the next day. We didn't want to go through all those processes and have someone always telling us what to do.

Most VC companies within our stage aren't profitable - they might have the same customers or grown a lot of customers, but they're not aiming for efficiency and actual profit. They're aiming for revenue. That's what we were doing differently. If we didn't get profit, we wouldn't be able to run the company because we would run out of money ourselves. It forced us to be very analytical, very focused on making the company a good business rather than just getting revenue in the door at all costs.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: VC money trades speed for control. Bootstrap trades comfort for freedom. Pick your poison based on what you can't live without.

Final Thoughts: You Don't Need Permission to Build

Chris's closing insight: "The worst thing that could have happened is I ran out of money and had to go back to New Zealand and work in real estate again. That's the absolute worst thing - and it's not that bad. You should take risks because you can always go back."

The bottom line: Chris's story destroys the myth that you need a technical degree, VC funding, or Silicon Valley connections to build a serious AI company. What you actually need is simpler and harder: a real problem you understand deeply, the discipline to execute relentlessly, and the courage to bet on yourself when the outcome is uncertain.

He made 20,000 cold calls and learned that rejection is just math. He ate $2.50 meals for six months to extend his runway. He turned down VC money to keep control. He built referral loops from day one. And he grew to $60K MRR in 10 months with just two founders.

The barriers to building aren't technical anymore. No-code tools, AI APIs, and offshore dev talent have flattened that playing field. The real barriers are psychological: the fear of leaving a good job, the discomfort of frugality, the discipline of daily execution, and the willingness to do boring things like cold email consistently.

Chris isn't special because he's smarter or more talented. He's special because he refused to wait for the perfect moment. He saw a problem worth solving, had the courage to walk away from security, and executed with the relentlessness he learned making 20,000 cold calls in real estate.

You don't need permission to build. You just need a problem, a plan, and the refusal to quit when it gets uncomfortable.

Q: How can people connect with you and learn more about Aeva?

Chris: You can find me on LinkedIn where I'm documenting the journey behind building Aeva. I share a lot of behind-the-scenes insights about what we're doing, what's working, what's not working. I think transparency helps other founders, and it's been a great way to connect with people who are on similar journeys or facing similar problems.

Final words: The best founders don't start with advantages. They start with problems they can't stop thinking about and the courage to bet on themselves when everyone else thinks they're crazy. If you're waiting for the perfect time, the perfect idea, or the perfect credentials - you're just waiting to lose. Start messy. Start scared. Start now. The worst that happens is you learn something and go back. The best that happens is you build something that changes lives. The only unforgivable choice is staying comfortable when you know you're capable of more.