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.