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Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

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61–70 of 96 posts

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#61

Why start with water heaters?

No connection, but a theoretical customer. Water heaters are a periodic replacement item where the scope of the job is (relatively) fixed. Periodic means enough search volume/demand. Fixed scope means it’s possible to estimate without a site visit. I can do a water heater in copper in a little over an hour and a half on-site. I might spend more time figuring out which water heater will fit and be best for me and goin…

Longest part is waiting for the old one to drain.

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#62
post #21

How do you plan on getting professionals on your platform, I feel you'll have issues there

Great question! We're early, but so far, we're adding pros mostly through referrals and cold calls. Our pitch is rather than charge for leads, we directly give our pros jobs, and deal with all customer acquisition, customer service and payment. That means they can spend 0% of their time on sales & job scoping, and only need to accept the jobs when they can fit them into their schedule. So far it seems to be resonatin…

What do you charge them?

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#63

As a homeowner for 8+ years, this is a HUGE problem. Like really huge. Companies like thumbtack, home advisor, angie's list, craigslist etc are mostly not useful (I have tried them all). I hope you guys succeed. The issue is however not just about price or cost. It is mostly about finding reliable, knowledge and honest contractors which for some reason is not that easy. The great contractors are usually very busy alr…

The market is efficient. Good contractors have good clients and work on good jobs. They have B2B business relationships. It is a two sided market for lemons. The contractors are mostly contacted by lemon customers. Mostly lemon contractors are likely to respond. What makes homeowners lemon customers besides price sensitivity and non-repeating projects is inexperience. Construction scheduling is in NP. Professionals s…

Interesting... HomeBreeze has quickly become an important B2B relationship for the home pros we work with. Although a lot of what you're describing is for construction, which we don't serve, your comment makes me think that we could be giving homeowners access to great contractors who they wouldn't be able to otherwise access.

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#65
post #60

I just recently expressed this pain for the first time, so excited to see your service. Some pain points: 1) Scheduling required filling in the same qualification form multiple times, and texting/calling with a rather disorganized office. The better reputed the service company, the bigger mess their schedule is. You're solving this. 2) I didn't have a quote until the people came out to visit. You're solving this. 3)…

Hey, Vineet here, one of the HomeBreeze cofounders. Really appreciate you sharing this. We've seen a lot of #1, #2, and #4. We haven't seen too much with landlords yet and would love to learn more...What kind of unit do you rent (single family, large managed apartment, from a big company or single owner, etc.) And what repair issue did you have?

I'd be down to trade emails to chat live too, if you're open to it - myhomebreeze at gmail

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#66

What is in it for contractors? Or to put it another way, what evidence do you have that the market is inefficient? Or to put it another another way, how will you overcome the fundamental economic rational actor motivation? Qualified tradespeople will prioritize: repeat customers such as real estate companies and landlords; large jobs over small; and high paying work over guaranteed affordable prices. The best tradesp…

>The home repair market is a market for lemons

I thought a good idea would be home owner insurance that provides vetted contractors. So vertical integration.

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#67

A problem in the home services space is large, new work/replace jobs usually supersede smaller repair jobs. For example, "fix my deck stairs" is going to probably be much lower on a list of jobs from "build me a new deck". I assume this is because the build a deck job is much more predictable and profitable. How will your service operate for repair work that is unpredictable? "enforce strict quality standards" - This…

"Fix my deck stairs" is basically a handyman job. So you'd look for someone like that. My local ACE hardware provides that service.

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#68

I’m a home owner and this was by far the largest shock to owning a home. Good contractors are not busy looking for work, they are busy with a backlog. It was only after building personal relationships with the contractors that I could get reliable service. Wishing you all the best for this to succeed, but from my perspective you should be trying to free up contractors to focus on work as much as you are trying to con…

Totally agree that we need to make top contractors happy. We're building a way for them to not have to deal with the "running a small business" tasks that can eat up a huge chunk of their time and that many (most?) don't enjoy. It frees them up to spend more time doing their trade and, hopefully, earn more.

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#69
post #50

Literally thought about this two hours ago as a huge market with huge potential. Look at what Compass did for realtors/home buyers/sellers and then apply something similar to electricians, plumbers etc etc. Big big big money. Congrats! And good luck!

Thanks! Reach out if you ever want to work on this or just geek out on the category - myhomebreeze at gmail

Re: Launch HN: HomeBreeze (YC W21) – Easy booking of home repairs

#70

As a homeowner for 8+ years, this is a HUGE problem. Like really huge. Companies like thumbtack, home advisor, angie's list, craigslist etc are mostly not useful (I have tried them all). I hope you guys succeed. The issue is however not just about price or cost. It is mostly about finding reliable, knowledge and honest contractors which for some reason is not that easy. The great contractors are usually very busy alr…

The market is efficient. Good contractors have good clients and work on good jobs. They have B2B business relationships. It is a two sided market for lemons. The contractors are mostly contacted by lemon customers. Mostly lemon contractors are likely to respond. What makes homeowners lemon customers besides price sensitivity and non-repeating projects is inexperience. Construction scheduling is in NP. Professionals s…

This is basically a better version of what I came here to say. I worked in a family construction business, and my perspective / experiencr is that good, established contractors do no advertising and have years of backlog (at least for custom homes or major renovations). I like how you define two markets, that's how I have seen it. There are people that are looking for quality and have the experience to know what to look for and what to pay in terms of money and patience, and there are those that watched a show about how to negotiate with your contractor and get three quotes, etc. Ironically, you usually pay less with a good contractor because you're paying for work and not marketing.

I've seen different variations on the "connect you with a contractor" business model, and to me they don't work because good contractors are not a commodity. There is definitely a class of contractor that will go for this, but they are always the worst ones because if they were better they would be loaded up with work without having to pay in to a service that takes a cut from them.

For very routine jobs, this kind of service is provable fine. Like ordering McDonald's from uber eats. And this appears to be what they are initially targeting.

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