Today, consumers can get just about anything on demand through a smartphone app and a few taps of the finger. Movies, food, and car rides are available to people in minutes so that they’re able to keep their busy schedules. Now, Homee is adding home services to the list of on-demand goods.
Homee (pronounced “homie”) is an app that connects homeowners in immediate need of a handyman, HVAC tech, plumber, or electrician within minutes. Homeowners open the Homee app and tell it what kind of service they require. Homee then scans the surrounding area to find a pro available for the work. The pricing for the job is shown to the homeowner before they agree to the job. Once the homeowner chooses a pro, that pro will be on site in 30 minutes or less. Homeowners can access services 24/7, but pros are able to control when they’re online and visible to homeowners.
“There was a monster market need [for an app like this],” Dave Theus, co-founder and CTO of Homee, tells REMODELING. Theus and his co-founder, Doug Schaedler, decided to create the app because they both had needed pros at inopportune times. Theus, a self-proclaimed DIYer, was remodeling his master bathroom at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night when he accidentally cracked a copper pipe. Schaedler had an incident where his home’s AC went out and he was furiously calling pros to see if/when they were available to come fix it. After sharing their stories, they discussed what they wanted from their app and researched options that were already on the market. They agreed they could do better.
“The on-demand market was something others had been successful at, so we weren’t treading into brand-new territory,” Theus says. “We [knew we] could take the on-demand philosophy to a market like this.”
Theus and Schaedler built the app’s software from the ground up and officially launched Homee in August. The duo got pros to sign up for the app through Craigslist, radio ads, and having their Homee representatives speak with pros. They also asked Homee pros to recommend other companies.
Not all pros make the cut. When a pro registers for Homee, the company conducts an extensive background check. If the pro passes, Homee’s market manager meets with the pro. Then, a Homee representative accompanies the pro to their first Homee job, watches how to pro works, makes sure the pro knows how the app works for both pros and homeowners, and reviews the pro’s work. If that all goes well, then the pro is added to the network.
Coupled with the vetting process is a “trusted rating process” in which the homeowners rate the pros and pros rate the homeowners. Theus says that pros want to know if a customer is particularly hard to satisfy before they go into the job. Similarly, Theus wants to make sure homeowners are getting the absolute best contractors to work on their home.
“We have no three [out of five] stars on our network,” Theus explains, saying each pro has either a four- or five-star rating. “If a provider gets a three star, we go meet with them, we find out what went wrong, and most of the time, we deactivate them from the network. We don’t want anybody doing work that’s not quality.”
Homee takes its job very seriously and is dedicated to providing great service, but does so with a cheeky approach. A quick glance through its website will find fun little phrases like, “[Your pro] will show up quicker than you can Google search Cat Dances,” and “This is the reason thumbs were invented.” Its commercial features a funny-yet-relatable instance of DIY gone wrong. Theus and Schaedler have found that using humor on the website and in their advertising has made it easier for potential customers to remember Homee.
“Everybody has a home experience of something went wrong, or they had a bad contractor or they tried to do something themselves,” Theus says. “I think everyone can relate to that, so it sticks in their minds and they remember us.”
Homee is free for pros and is available from the iOS app store and the Google Play store. Homee is currently available in Tampa (its launch location), Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, and Orlando, Fla. It’s also available in Cincinnati, Ohio. Theus says the company has an aggressive growth plan lined up for 2017 and that the company plans to add markets such as New York City, Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, and San Antonio this year.
The founders have been very satisfied with the app’s success. Theus estimates Homee has 3,000 consumers and 1,200 vetted providers in its current markets. As the company has expanded, Theus says, they add about 100 pros each month to Homee’s service network. They’ve even added some pros in areas where Homee isn’t available yet.
“We have providers that have been background checked and are sitting online waiting for us to open in their market,” Theus says. “We have one from Wisconsin and we have guys in Texas and Georgia ready to go. So, without even doing any marketing, we have providers signing up.”
