Update: Porch.com adds Lowes as Strategic Partner:
What can you learn from your family, friends and neighbors when they are gathered around your front porch? When the question is about home improvement, the answer is: A lot!
Serial entrepreneur Matt Ehrlichman credits the lessons he’s learned about building long-term value in innovative startups not to his two degrees in engineering and management at Stanford, but to the conversations people have closer to home, specifically the lessons he learned from his father, a successful Seattle litigation attorney, who has been his lifelong business coach.
This week, by building and launching America’s first home improvement network for neighbors, friends and professionals to use, appropriately called Porch, Matt has created a vehicle where homeowners can talk to one another, just as they might do across the backyard fence or jawboning on a porch swing about who’s doing what in the neighborhood. What improvements are underway? Who are they hiring? “Like LinkedIn for homeowners,” Matt says.
[Porch.com has also announced a strategic partnership with Lowe’s. This partnership will give Lowe’s employees access to Porch’s local data so that they can better recommend local handymen to customers. – Ed. note]
The virtual conversations Porch has “listened in on” speak volumes. The “big data” represents more than $2 trillion worth of home improvement projects from the past 15 years, which is larger than the entire economy of the United Kingdom. Porch also has insight into 75% of US homes and 90 million home improvement projects, including dates, cost, photos, and service professionals used at a specific address.
As the Website proclaims with missionary zeal: “Porch is disrupting the $500B home improvement and repair industry by allowing homeowners to browse projects their neighbors have done, see project costs, and find the professionals they have used and endorsed. For the first time, with the national Porch marketplace, homeowners are able to find trusted professionals specific to any home and any project-all for free.”
“Until now, a roof repair, kitchen remodel, or backyard landscaping project has been frustrating and painful because there is no single source to evaluate projects, understand costs, and find professionals based on trusted word of mouth recommendations,” said Ehrlichman.
“Porch is changing this by organizing home project information and providing transparency for everyone across the country to know which professionals have done specific types of projects, at precise costs, for neighbors and similar homes,” he explained. “This is just the start for Porch — we are committed to adding tools and information to make it easy for everyone to improve and maintain their homes based on their priorities.”
Besides homeowners and renters, more than 1.5 million professionals are on Porch covering 250 repair, maintenance, and improvement categories. Porch charges no fee to join and create a business profile to showcase unlimited work experience and photos, gain exposure to neighbors and friends of past clients, and solicit endorsements. Professionals who want to maximize their exposure on the platform and get competitive insights on pricing can turn on Marketing and Analytics tools for $35 per month.
Porch has unique collaborations in the works that will connect millions of homeowners and professionals. The company plans to make several announcements in the coming months around these partnerships, its Board of Directors, experienced leadership team, feature enhancements, and continued momentum.
After his first role as CEO helming HelpScore, Matt founded and built @Thriva starting with less than $200K in funding and resulting in a $60M sale. He then took Active Network from $65M to around $400M and an IPO.
While in pre-launch mode over the past year, Porch’s 20-person team raised $6.25 million in seed financing from top Silicon Valley and Seattle investors , “And, yes, we’ve filed our provisional patents.,” says Matt. In a blog post for the Wall Street Journal, he talked about assembling the team.
“The average tenure of a core team at a startup is diminishing. If you want a core team for the long term then yes, find the right team members and make expectations clear upfront, but also design your incentives appropriately.
I learned this both from my dad and through my own errors. In my first startup, we had early members who departed after just one year, but who ended up receiving a healthy check when the company was sold. To avoid that at Porch, we started with a larger founding team with expertise spanning technology, design, marketing, consumer acquisition and engineering. Then we provided this team and the rest of the early employees with options that vest over eight years with a three-year cliff. While employees receive more options, it helps protect the company and aligns everyone to build for the long term.” [24×7]
