Professional remodeler Darryl Rose from Get Dwell takes the reins to ask Porch.com CEO Matt Ehrlichman the questions contractors want answered.
As a publication for remodelers, we do our best to identify and explore the issues that matter to you. But we aren’t out in the field every day, actually wading through new regulations or trying to find new leads from online startups. To remedy that, we’ve brought in 2014 Remodeling Big50 recipient Darryl Rose from Get Dwell in Chicago, and asked him to talk to Porch.com founder and CEO Matt Ehrlichman about the issues that matter to remodelers. They chatted for an hour about everything from online startups to who owns an online transaction for a home repair project. Below is the complete and uncensored transcript.
Darryl Rose (DR) – Good to talk to you again, how’s life?
Matt Ehrlichman (ME) – I’m doing very well, how’ve you been?
DR – Doing well. Got my son home for the summer so we’ve been working together, it’s a lot of fun. So, you know, I think it’s pretty incredible. Matt, how old are you if you don’t mind my asking?
ME – No I don’t mind you asking, I just turned 36. I’m getting up there, the grays are coming in fast and furious now.
DR – I would imagine your gray hair came in faster than other guys. You’ve started and sold, what is it a $60 million business already?
ME – I did yeah. I’ve been very fortunate, very blessed along the way. Built a couple of companies. That one I had started out of school when I was a sophomore in college back in 2001. After that I started a larger company, a pretty large company, 2700 people. Porch for me will be the last company that I start and I build so I’m trying to build something really special.
DR – Were those companies internet based?
ME – Yep, everything I’ve done largely involves technology in some shape or form. And so both of those… the first was software as a service the second was both software for small businesses and then consumer experience as well. Porch has a similar type of business where we have, you know, deep relationships with small businesses, professionals. Home service professionals, contractors in this case. And then obviously the consumer experience to help them get in touch with the right professional.
DR – When did you start Porch.com? How long has it been in existence?
ME – Let’s see, so… We launched Porch 23 months ago, a week from now. A good 9 months before that was working in the basement of my rental house with a relatively small group. 12 people probably. Aggregating mass amounts of data about the home, building up our relationship connections with professionals across the country. So there’s a good 9 months of work before we launched, but it has been almost two years now since we launched.
DR – Was that small team, was that guys you’d worked with before?
ME – Yeah, some of them. I certainly believe that it’s so critical that the early team of any company is going to make or break the company. It’s where the culture is formed early on. It’s who hires all the rest of the people. And I’ve just been really fortunate to have really incredible partners in building this company. So yeah, very strong people. Some of whom I’ve worked with in the past, some of whom I’ve been introduced to along the way. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of, probably, is the team that we’ve built at Porch. It’s by far the strongest team I’ve ever worked with. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to go as fast as we have.
DR – Totally makes sense that you’ve had a chance to build some other companies and build that internally and understand the importance of culture and what needs to be done. I can’t remember the guy that started Coyote Logistics in Chicago but he sold a company for… I might be wrong, for like $2 billion, and started Coyote Logistics, kind of one of our big tech players. He had his wife in HR she said, ‘Ok we’ll do this again but I’m hiring everybody’. He said ok, we’ll create the culture we want and work with the people we want to this time.
ME – I think that’s awesome. When I built my first company I had never done it before and I had no idea how important the team is. Didn’t think about the culture until it was far too late. It was still a good culture, but it wasn’t conscious and very thoughtful. From the very beginning we’ve had our values here at Porch up on the wall. And if you can be conscious about the kind of company you want to build and the people you want to be surrounded with. It increases the odds so dramatically of building not just building a great company, but the right kind of company that others want to be a part of. So yeah, I’m totally with you.
DR – So you said your values are on the wall. What are your values?
ME – Good question. There’s five core values. I’d be happy to go through it if you’d like to.
DR – Yeah just briefly. Give us an idea of what it is you value and express to your team.
ME – Yeah. The first is problem solvers. So we are at the core, and this follows for me who we are, we believe that building a company is really about solving one problem after the next. Every day, when things are going great, when things are challenging, if you don’t make it too big of a deal, if you just solve problems, that is what you need to do in the pursuit of building something great. No jerks. This is something from the very beginning of the company. I believe there’s just no room for jerks. The people here are really good people. They’re kind, they care about what we’re doing, what we’re trying to accomplish. Nobody goes about, you know, not having the team or… not putting yourself before the team. Making sure the company and the team come first. Customer delight is third. So, being willing to do the hard things. Going above and beyond to surprise and delight customers. For us, customers are about both contractors, the professionals, and it’s about the homeowners as well. But it’s the small little things the team does and again, deeply caring about customers is something that’s core to who we are. Transparency. We have this conversation here, I just believe in being very transparent, very candid. Every week we have “around the porch” where we bring our whole company together and we put up metrics and numbers. How we’re doing, what we’re not doing well. And if we’re candid and authentic with each other, then that gets the opportunity to be really great. And then the fifth last one is ambition. You know we are taking a big swing to try and fundamentally change how people live in their homes, take care of their homes. Fundamentally change how professionals are able to manage their business and to grow. And we’re taking a very large swing at it. And ambition is again core to who we are as a company.
DR – Those are really cool. I looked at the picture of all your employees they all seem like nice people having a good time. At least when the photo was being taken.
ME – It’s cool when people come into the office because you just feel… like you feel the energy and the spirit and soul of the company. I think about… I want to make sure that’s something that lasts forever. I think now we’re at a point where that will. We’ve got such a strong core in the company. We’re now hiring people, that continues to pass down from one person to the next. Sometime when you’re in Seattle…
DR – When I was with you at the leadership conference, you gave a presentation, can you give an overview of what Porch.com is today and what your gameplan is?
ME – Today, Porch is about helping homeowners love their home by helping them find the best professionals that they can trust. And we do that for homeowners with data. So it’s about helping find the very best professionals and providing them the data to do the research and to be very informed about those decisions about who they’re letting inside their home. Trust is at the center of that experience. Where we’re going is continue to broaden out the experience of homeowners and professionals as well. What we have up on our wall, to give a sense of where we’re going, is “love your home.” That’s the mission that we talk about. Helping homeowners everywhere love your home. What that means is more than just finding the best professional, but helping people to take care of their homes. And this fall you’ll see a bunch of things we’re doing that’ll be very exciting in terms of the next evolution of the company.
DR – So you’re helping the homeowner love his home, you’ve got that as a customer and you’ve got the professional as a customer as well. And would you consider Lowe’s as a customer? How do you look at your relationships with Lowe’s?
ME – We look at our customers as being the homeowner and the contractor, professional. We look at Lowe’s as being part of our partner network. At the very beginning of Porch there’s two things we focused on. One is on aggregating a very massive and very unique data set about the homes. The homes, the contractors that do work in the homes, and the projects that the contractors have done and contractors all across the country. We have over 3 million professionals in the system. Over 130 million projects we have insight into on homes all across the country. It gives us this really unique ability to create solutions that others can’t. For the other things like data, our partner network and so, we had a relationship with Lowe’s early on, Lowe’s invested in our company. We have a great relationship and partnership with that company where we’ve rolled out in all their 1,700 stores and their 250,000 associates use Porch every day in their stores to help homeowners get connected to professionals. When they’re buying paint and they need a painter, that associate can help facilitate that connection right there in the store. So no, we don’t do as much as the customer, but we certainly view Lowe’s and these other companies as being core partners of Porch.
DR – So that Lowe’s associate, how’s that going? When I was in the Lowe’s store I kinda had mixed, I asked people if they knew about Porch. Some kinda did, some didn’t. Some had information, some didn’t. How’s that end of things coming along?
ME – It’s something I’ve learned a lot over the last 20 months or something we’ve been working on it. Overall it’s going incredibly well. Porch is one of Lowe’s fastest national roll outs they’ve ever done. Having worked with a Porch 50 company before, you know, assume that rolled it out… They’re hiring new associates all the time. They’re constantly hiring new people into that engine. And its such a massive army of people, it’s hard to get everyone all the messaging they need. They’re devoting a portion to their new employee on-boarding and their new training session for employees and their, especially their managers to make sure they’re using Porch. That does help that their customers get their projects done. It helps their professionals and other contractors get work from Porch and that’s a great thing. We see right now 65% of associates give or take have actually gone through the training and are active users. What that means is there’s still a third of the associates that, that’s not a natural part of their day to day process, so that’s just part of the ongoing work with Lowe’s. A data point to show how well that’s going, we’ve had 10 people in the field managing different sets of stores going around and making sure the associates are aware and trained and using the Porch system. Lowe’s just actually worked with us to expand that team and more than double that team because they’re seeing as we’re in those stores and as we’re helping associates use those tools technically it’s just working. We’re seeing more use which means homeowners are happier and professionals are happier. A bunch of things that are happening on the signage… There’s huge support and momentum from Lowe’s corporate which is fantastic. It’s just a massive army we continue to operate and make sure everybody is using appropriately.
(Remodeling Magazine) REM – Hey Matt, I’m going to jump in here real quick, I’ve got a question for you. You’ve talked about how the Lowe’s partnership has been really big for you guys. Porch is able to look at everybody that’s going in, and you’ve built Porch from the ground up to hook people up with professionals and then Lowes came in later. My question to you is this, what about Google and Amazon? Those guys are starting to look at doing something, maybe not exactly the same as Porch and connecting but they’re still kind of looking at this as an area they could potentially expand. What does Porch do, or what is Porch’s advantage in this area connecting people with professionals that puts you above and beyond someone like Google or Amazon who’s jumping in here later in the game?
ME – I think that’s an awesome question yeah. Would I want Google and Amazon to be competing? I don’t think any entrepreneur would say yes. But it’s inevitable. I mean this is one of the biggest industries that there is period. We knew from the very beginning that other companies would compete. At the end of the day we designed the company and really designed our whole strategy to stay ahead for a very long time. And what I mean is that I mean we didn’t start building consumer features, you know like features that anyone could copy. We went after things that other people can’t replicate. We bring in all this data with our exclusive partnership that only Porch has access to. Building this massive network of partners that only Porch has access to. So therefore we know, for homeowners who your neighbors have used and which professionals work on homes like yours and who is verified licensed today in any of the 50 states and their grade that they say they have. And that kind of partnership. All these things we’ve kind of done that tell us information about the professionals that lets us create this totally different experience. And its through this large partner network that we get access to all of these consumers that we’re able to connect to professionals and again that’s unique for Porch. Different from our strategy, you know at the end of the day, focus is key. We have well more than 400 people at this point and all we do is we’re focused on helping homeowners with their homes and professionals growing their business. That’s a massively larger investment than the big companies are making. And the level of focus we have is just different in terms of what we’re trying to do in that space. The last thing I would add is just the objective of what we’re trying to do. Amazon and Google actually are a lot more like other companies that are out there that are purely in the business of finding a professional or find any local service. What we’re really doing is we’re helping the homeowner to love their home and we’re helping them to manage their home. If you think about different experiences there’s find a professional, there’s a book a professional, they can get ideas and in the middle of that you know Porch is the only one that’s really for homeowners to help try and take care of their home, to manage their home. You’ll see a bunch more of what that means specifically this fall, but we’re taking a very different approach than other companies out there.
REM – Ok great, thanks!
ME – Yeah you bet.
DR – Those two competitors he mentioned, Amazon and Google that are investing. Amazon, its pro.com, maybe it’s Amazon home services as well. Google has Thumbtack and might as well throw Home Depot in there with Red Beacon, those are all kind of similar, do they take a percentage of the job? That’s quite a bit different than your business model, isn’t it?
ME – Yeah, there’s all kinds of business models out in the market. Some take percentages from the job, when transactions are processed, others charge on a per lead basis, some charge the consumer a fee to get access to information. There’s all kinds of business models that are out there. Porch has a couple of core products that we focus on. You know one offering a subscription package to professionals to be able to get highlighted and be able to show the things that drive them more business in particular zip codes that they want to focus on and to grow in. And the second as we roll this product out, but in Seattle we have our booking site where transactions are processed through the system and whenever those transactions are processed there’s a transaction fee they’re charged and then there’s a transaction fee there. But the product is free to the consumer, it will always be free to the consumer. We don’t charge professionals on a per lead per basis or any of those models. We’ve set it up such that our customer the professionals are excited and happy with what we’re doing.
DR – Did you say you’re going to be booking the transaction?
ME – Yeah we have that live in Seattle today, but we’ve found some homeowners, what they’ve told us, is that for lots of types of things in their home, they need a remodel or a roof repair or there’s this big project, they want to talk to multiple professionals and the number one thing that’s most important is trust. They want to go and see who their neighbors have used, who’s licensed etc… And that, and connect with multiple professionals, reach out to them and call them you know, directly. There’s other things with very small projects, like you know my toilet is plugged. They don’t want to spend time talking to multiple professionals they want to be able to see what it costs and push a button and have a great professional that Porch stands behind come over to my home. You know right now that second product is only available in Seattle, but that is something that we’ll make available to homeowners as we go.
DR – Ok, so part of your gameplan is to schedule the work, and will you make the financial transaction as well?
ME – Yup. The dollars for those smaller jobs process through the system and go through to the professional’s bank account. That’s something that what we believe from professionals, what they’re telling us is what they really do want is the combination of leads, opportunities to go and do bigger projects that they want and some of those smaller things they can tuck in and fill in their schedule. And we’re offering them both of those two things. You know jobs that are ready and available for them to just pick up and those leads, bigger opportunities, that they can go and price up.
DR – You know, I think your success and anyone’s success in that space is ultimately going to be on one, the quality of your product, the homeowners experience with that professional is gonna be the ultimate center of who’s going to be successful. Not that maybe more than one won’t be successful, but ultimately the one that can do the most quality. I think when homeowners look at their home, they’re not putting in something that’s cheap and something that they don’t think is quality. They’re looking at quality and value both.
ME – I think that’s right, that’s spot on. We are more than anything else, Porch is trying to focus on, from the professionals that we work with is about quality. That’s the stuff we talk about internally, that’s the metrics that we look at. They really don’t stand behind those professionals. You know the vetting that Porch does and the data we have on professionals is so much deeper and richer than anybody else’s in the market and the reason we make that investment. It really does come down to the experience the homeowner has with the professional. What we want is the great professionals to want to partner with Porch because we push that and allow them to win and have a really great experience. So that’s a core part of who we are and what we’re focused on.
REM – Matt, I’ve got a follow up question to that. One of the things that happened at the leadership conference was that some of the contractors were concerned and interested in your use of the word professional. And you kind of talked about how you’re not really recommending anybody, you’re putting all of the information out there so the users of your site can make an informed decision. But it sounds like with this quicker thing that there are going to be maybe some Porch sponsored guys that you’re working with. Is that correct? Or how are you getting these guys you’re vetting?
ME – Yeah, that’s exactly right. We are, for certain types of projects, like smaller projects, the professionals we’re working with we’ll, once we are comfortable in the quality of those professionals, we will make those quick jobs available to them. For professionals that are premium professionals of Porch, we can give early access to those, but only if they are of quality. Because we are standing behind that. That work for the consumer. So we need to make sure those are great professionals. Again, we always give consumers the choice, if they want to book this, they can. If they want multiple professionals to come to them they can. If they want to call multiple professionals, that’s great as well. We want them to get their projects done whichever way is convenient to them. That’s generally our approach and how we think about it.
REM – Ok. Let me ask you this too, so say, you’re working on this right now it’s only in one area, I understand that. Say I’ve got an emergency with my toilet and I need to get something replaced on there and I go on Porch, is there going to be a clear designation that these are the Porch recommended guys that I can call? Is there going to be a section, how are you going to demarcate between that? The impression that I got at the remodeling leadership conference was that it wasn’t a recommendation service just yet. You were just putting all the information out there, and now if you’re recommending folks that’s a little bit different.
DR – I would say that if you’re owning the transaction, that’s entirely different as well. You’re assuming ownership then of the project? Aren’t you taking responsibility if you own the transaction?
ME – That’s two different questions there. The first question, sorry I lost it, can you give it to me one more time?
REM – Yeah, you’ve mentioned before that Porch wasn’t’ a recommendation service, it’s just putting all the information out there. So if I have a quick problem that I need fixed, whatever you guys define as one of those simple problems, am I only going to be able to select those Porch recommended guys? Am I going to have a selection? Is there going to be something to show that this is a list of our recommended guys, this is not our recommended guys, these are the professionals in the area? How’s that going to work?
ME – So the primary engine that we run right now, the homeowners come in they do their research, they choose their professionals, we provide them access to the data, and they contact those professionals. So that happens across the country, across all the Lowe’s in the country, etc… Yes, for smaller jobs, for specific jobs, on their phone, hit a button that says “Hey, I need a plumber to come and unclog my toilet” or whatever that might be, those smaller defined services. In that case it goes out to the thoroughly vetted professionals and it pings them and says “Hey, here’s this opportunity to come and do this particular job in this particular home,” then it pings the homeowner and says ok great, the professional is on its way at the time you requested. Whether that’s now or Saturday morning. If the consumer decides they want someone else they can go ahead and choose a different professional. It’s really just a matter of simplifying this process for those smaller projects where the consumer doesn’t want to do research. For the mid-size and big projects, obviously the consumer would always go do their research.
REM – Ok, yeah.
DR – So when you say you’ve got a vetted contractor, what does that mean to you guys?
ME – Yeah we take it to the nexus, it’s all ready for professionals to take all that information for them. But we take it to the next level, things like background checks, to make sure they’re verified, that they’re licensed. You know, make sure we’ve done reputation monitoring across the internet. What kind of negative reviews are out there. It’s part of a number of other things we take in our process to be able to make sure those professionals are great. Clearly we want to see the reviews that they have on them and that project. You know we want to make sure those professionals are great and are high quality.
DR – Homeowners never ask me this, but we don’t walk into a condo in the city of Chicago without having the three following items: general liability, workers comp insurance, and EPA certification for any building that’s pre-1978. If we don’t have those things, we allow that entity to be at risk, at least that’s what I’ve been told. The EPA thing is something that can be verified at a later date. That we used those lead safe practices during the remodeling. If the workers comp isn’t in place then the homeowner, condo owner is in liability, same thing with general liability. If those things are not fulfilled correctly, then you’re leaving that entity or homeowner at risk. Those things cost us a tremendous amount of money as a general contractor, as a professional business. But I would say over 50% of our competitors, and I think this is part of the slack you were getting at the remodeling conference, don’t have any of those things. And so therefore they’re not really legitimate companies. And it’s real hard for us to look at something as a professional, what we would consider a professional, the standards we’re held to being professionals. Which really come out of our pocket book and really come out of our time for training and investment in our employees and classifications. So when you’re doing something online, I don’t really see any of those safeguards.
ME – An interesting learning for us over time is the vetting and requirements that are needed, particularly what consumers care about, and how different that is by trade. Like we provide services, it’s not just contracting services, its maintenance, repair, design, all these different types of services that homeowners use us to be able to connect with different business around the home. They get a cleaner or a lawn service, there are no license requirements for these companies. There’s very different expectations of the certifications that they would get when you’re dealing with a roofer or a handyman or an electrician. These types of folks, you know we understand that at like, state level what the license requirements are. And what kind of insurance they’d have to have in order to be able to get a license. And all these different rules that apply. It’s been a massive amount of work for us to be able to understand and have all these feeds of data coming in across every single state. But again, that’s a part of the value that we offer to the consumer. We can expose that information and let them make good choices. If they want to work with an unlicensed professional, that’s the consumers choice. If they want to, they can find all the licensed professionals, it’ll pull down just those and they can connect with them directly. When they take a job through us in Seattle, we make sure they have to be licensed for us to be able to recommend and push that professional, push that job to that professional. It varies by type of trade, type of professional, because consumers care about different things depending on what they’re trying to get done.
DR – The remodeling side of things, I know a lot of remodelers are kind of hot about review sites. Are remodeling professionals, those types of individuals, are they the majority of your market versus like cleaning services and landscapers and that kind of thing?
ME – Well, we’ve really expanded, so no, I’d say remodeling is not a majority. We’ve expanded across the home. I’d put it into 3 different buckets. You have improvement professionals. So remodelers, we’d put roofing in there, etc… There’s maintenance so, cleaning, window cleaning, carpet cleaning, lawn service, etc… And then there’s repair. Plumbing, handymen. Some of those trades obviously span across categories certainly. But there’s over 140 different types of professional. We really want homeowners to rely on Porch for anything they need done in their home. So no, remodeling isn’t the primary. Clearly people use Porch for remodeling a great deal and remodelers are able to create a beautiful profile in our system and it’s a huge category for us. But homeowners use us for all different kinds of things as well.
DR – You do have a beautiful website and those are beautiful profiles. Very handsome, very well designed. And the people who populate them know what they’re doing. It really looks great. Very similar to Houzz in that way.
ME – Professionals do use these profiles more and more as a website almost sometimes. They’re able to very easily go from their phone or their computer, upload their projects, upload their works. And they take their before and after photos and set that information about the projects they’ve done. And they’re really able to tell that story about their work and what they specialize in. Any way, I appreciate it.
DR: Is Craig still on the line?
Craig Cincotta (chief of staff and vice president, communications, Porch) – I am, hello!
DR – Hey Craig, I saw on contractor talk, there was a long thread on Porch related items and I know you were on there addressing their concerns and they blocked you from the site. I thought that was unfair. I thought, to me, you were the only person that was responding to people’s questions, at least trying to respond in a timely and professional manner. But I did see a few things those guys were talking about. You mentioned a website, Matt. These guys are saying you essentially become their website even though these guys have a website in the search engine ranking. And they felt you were kinda usurping their domain I guess, their website, by having them go to the Porch.com website because it came up first promising photos and costs or something like that. And it seemed to be getting a lot of energy on that site. What are they talking about there and what are they upset about?
ME – The reality is the Porch site is generally ranked well in searches just because we get lots of press and lots of people linking to us and everything else. So homeowners certainly go and find the Porch site. Google is quite good, and Bing as well, they’re quite good at surfacing the website the user wants to see and has the best experience with when they do a search. In terms of what we’re trying to do though in like the relationship with the professional, because it’s a great topic, because we actually go above and beyond to help the professional’s website. When they have a profile with Porch, we’re providing a link on that profile back to their website.
DR – One of these guys was saying, if a consumer clicked on Porch, since you’ve got a higher ranking than his website, when somebody searched his company name that if they came to your site and he didn’t have a profile on there, you guys would direct him to one of your professionals. Is that what you guys do?
ME – So on their profile we have, it’s kind of like… Like LinkedIn or Zolo, like lots of these companies. When somebody comes to the profile, we have all the information about that professional, everything they want to display of their projects. We provide a link so the consumer can actually go back to the professional’s website. And as an aside, having that link back to the professional’s home website, that’s not something most companies do and that does actually help in the search engine optimization. It helps their actual website in the search results. So we’re trying to help them. The last thing we want, a homeowner comes to a profile, some professionals haven’t engaged deeply and if the homeowner has a really bad experience like there’s no information there, we give the conversion rates for that homeowner are really really low. Like they just cancel, they just click out. Certainly we don’t want the homeowner to just close their browser window and be done and so certainly in those situations they’ll show other professionals if they need to get in touch with somebody else. Often for big projects, consumers want to talk to multiple professionals anyway, we’ve done our research, that’s a very common thing for the consumer. We’re actually quite different in terms of how we think of our partners with professionals. We’re perfectly great with helping them with their SEO ranking. And we provide them with links back to their website so we drive consumers back to their site and help them with their search results.
DR – If they want to get on your site and give you their data and all that stuff, then you’ll help them. But otherwise, do they get… If you get a first page ranking and the client contacts you, do you refer that client who’s looking for ABC Remodeling, do you refer them to your paid subscribers? So how does that work?
ME – No, so it always goes to their profile. It always goes to ABC Remodeling profile.
DR – These guys were saying if they didn’t have a profile, there’s not enough information present to verify the profile, it’s like a click here and call this number.
ME – So a couple things, so let’s make sure we’re talking in specifics so you’re getting the right information you’re looking for. So, certainly like every website out there, when people come to our website, we present consumers the ability to call us. We have a support team that people can call, homeowners can call. We help those homeowners. When the homeowner is on the professional’s website, their profile on Porch and they call the professional, that rings right to the professional. That’s a call directly to that professional. If the homeowner comes to the professional’s site and there’s no information on there, we know the homeowner will leave and so we would want them to see other possible professionals before they close their browser. The last thing is we include links back to the professional’s website. We have no problem helping those professionals improve their SEO ranking. So that is something that we do.
DR – Ok. I was called by Porch a while ago to do my site, to align with Porch. And they wanted to have my database. We’ve got 4,000-5,000 clients and 20 thousand projects. If I downloaded that data to you, you essentially own that data, don’t you?
ME – No, you can cancel your profile at any time in the future and have the information removed, we would totally respect that.
DR – So that would all be off the site and that would come back to me and you wouldn’t have the projects that were done at those particular homes any longer?
ME – Yeah, if you ask to have those removed, we would totally remove them. The only exception, I suppose, is if the homeowner has their account and they want the information in their account. You know, it’s equally the homeowners’ information that they can put in the system. At the end of the day, thinking about it like LinkedIn might be a good corollary. It’s our customers. The professionals and the homeowners are our customers and their profiles in the system, whether it’s the homeowners profile or the professionals profile and they’re populating it out, just like a person populates out their resume. If they want to get rid of it sometime in the future, delete their profile or remove their information, that’s their call. There’s nothing we can do about that. Obviously they won’t get as much business from us, because the more information that’s being shown, the more business the professionals get. But the fact that that’s always their decision.
DR – Ok, that’s good, I know that’s a big concern of a lot of people. So fill me in on that house data. So if I have a client and I do a remodeling project for them and I’ve got some data and some pictures and whatnot associated for that remodeling project. How does that data stay with the house? I didn’t quite get how all that worked.
ME – So, professionals upload their data into the system, they specify where that work was done, the home the work was done on the map on the professionals profile. They’re not showing the address obviously of where that happened in the profile. We randomize where that pin is. We make sure that there’s that anonymity for the homeowner. But that gives the professionals the ability to one, show off the neighborhoods that they worked in, so when a homeowner comes in to Porch and they’re searching for a remodeler, one of the things that drives that trust and that connection with that professional is to be able to see who my neighbors have hired in the past. And that creates a tremendous amount of trust. The other thing that creates that trust is knowing that this professional has worked on certain types of homes. Full service professionals have worked on homes just like yours. Some pros specialize in million dollar homes and others specialize in $100,000 homes and those are very different projects. We can surface that, we can link back to all the data that we have about 90 million houses, homes throughout the country. So while we don’t display that information on the address, using the information on the address allows us to create a much better, a very unique user experience.
DR – I think it’s a cool types of data and all kinds of stuff you’ve put together, I’m really impressed by your approach to it. But I did see something that says something if you’re buying that house or something that data stays, you get to see some of that data if you’re the homeowner?
ME – Yeah, the homeowner always gets to see it. And the homeowner is always in control of it. What we’ve found is in our Porch home report where, when a home is actually listed for sale is that homeowners actually want to get credit for all the work they’ve done on their homes so they can sell their homes for more, right?
DR – Yup.
ME – So Porch has a partnership with over 7,000 real estate sites right now that link to the Porch home report. Actually more than 20,000 link to the Porch home report right now. So when a prospective buyer is looking at a home this is one way a homeowner can get the full value for their home. As an aside it allows the professional to get their brand in front of the prospective buyers. No better time to advertise to a new customer than “Hey, I’ve worked on this home before, I’d love to do more work.” If there’s work that needs to be done. So we create that exposure for the homeowner and the professional through that real estate partnership that we have.
DR – So I can’t wait to hear what you’ve got unveiled. I guess you’re not going to tell us what those things are coming down the road, but they sound exciting. I think you’ve got a tough road to hoe there, you’ve got to figure out quality, figure out the professionals you’ve got to figure out your relationship with Lowe’s, battle all those competitors, you’ve got to get professionals to be subscribers. You’ve got a big job ahead of you.
ME – I think any time anyone’s trying to build a really big meaningful company that’s changing a category, that’s all inevitable. That’s what it is. It’s like I said in our values actually, it’s a series of problems. It’s you can solve them. Its remarkable to look back and see what we’ve done. We were 25 people and now we have well over 400 people. I would just say we have positioned ourselves to win in this space and change how homeowners take care of their homes. We’ve become just a really important partner for so many professionals around the country. That’s what we’re more proud of than anything. They really count on us to deliver them great work. That purpose is core to our business and we take it seriously. Yeah, we’ve come a long way and we’re at the beginning of a marathon so there’s no doubt, so much to do. But that’s part of the fun.
DR – Well, I think years ago the consumer used to ask their family, friend or neighbor. I still think they do, when it comes to remodeling or handy men, important things in their house. They turn to some trusted resource to see who they’d advise. I guess there’s a different watershed today where people go online and look at anonymous people really and see their reviews and that’s probably where a majority of people are finding tradespeople today. Is that correct?
ME – Yeah I think that’s right. I think that what we realized early on with Porch as we were out there looking at the market, people want to have word of mouth with a review. Which is kind of hard to get. It’s hard to know, when you’re getting word of mouth, it’s really random. It might not be somebody that’s worked on the home at all. We’re kind of bringing word of mouth online. The way Porch has kind of thought about it. You can get these reviews, recommendations and see who your neighbor has used. The people that they’ve trusted. People with homes just like yours. Who they’ve used and who they really have liked. And that creates a different trust than what other people are able to do because of the information that we have. At the end of the day that’s something consumers… There’s a reason we’ve grown as quickly as we have. We’re solving a gap for consumers that are out there that they’re gravitating toward.
DR – I’m sure Curtis wants to wrap up with a question, but I’ve got one more. What advice do you have for professionals and how they approach they’re marketing and why they might use Porch etc… What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who are starting companies?
ME – For professionals I’ll keep it easy which is of course they should have a profile on Porch and download the Porch app and their profile. I’m clearly, clearly biased and maybe joking a bit. But it is shown that people invest, professionals invest in their profiles it’s a big thing. I would encourage them to look at our premium offering. We’re showing that a premium professional is able to get 12-15 more leads per month than basic professionals. From an entrepreneur’s perspective, I think its important people are passionate about what they’re doing. If they’re passionate about the problems their trying to solve. Because building a company takes a long time, takes a tremendous amount of effort. It’s not easy. That is something, the only way to really do it and enjoy it is to have people you really like that you’re doing it with and to really believe in the problem you’re trying to solve and be passionate. That’d be my recommendation for entrepreneurs.
DR – Thanks a lot Matt.
ME – My pleasure, great to connect! Nice questions.