Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 96 posts

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

#81
post #62
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We pay them to complete jobs rather than charging them money to be on the our service. We monetize through a marketplace take rate.

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

#82
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that the type of contractor who is already unreliable will be do better having to log into an app to do things, than literally answer a call or text from their phone!?

We need to unpack what makes someone “unreliable” because we’ve found every single contractor runs late, ghosts some leads, misses some scopes, etc. The root cause is that it’s a complex job to manage and they may not excel at those small business tasks, despite having excellent craftsmanship. We simplify their job. Normally they would have to field leads, visit homes to scope jobs, find suppliers who can deliver the…

[deleted]

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

#83
There’s so many variable costs associated with contractors.

Things like: - Variable space + material price and quality - Contractors that subcontract out - People lying about their qualifications - Working multiple jobs at once - Breaking things in your house, discovering other problems, follow ups with broken stuff and I could go on.

We bought an absolute lemon of a house and have had everything fixed and while I would love a fixed price service, I just don’t see how it’s possible without at the very least a professional assessing the project virtually ahead of time.

I would love to be wrong and I would pay hundreds per month just for a dedicated solution with fixed rate pricing. I hope you succeed.

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

#84
post #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.

I home owners insurance that wasn’t a terrible waste of money would be good. Maybe allow for homeowner ratings on services rendered.

Currently home warranties are bad because they provide the worst, cheapest repairs possible; slowly; and reject many things. I would like to have a real home warranty, but tried three companies and they were not good. My favorite was they just couldn’t repair my hvac and said I had to keep paying $75 to send out different repairmen to try to fix it.

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

#85
post #84
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I home owners insurance that wasn’t a terrible waste of money would be good. Maybe allow for homeowner ratings on services rendered. Currently home warranties are bad because they provide the worst, cheapest repairs possible; slowly; and reject many things. I would like to have a real home warranty, but tried three companies and they were not good. My favorite was they just couldn’t repair my hvac and said I had to k…

I’m not talking about warranty but insurance on structural issues/fire etc…

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

#86

Guys, here is the issue for this to work. Its HARD to outsource this to other companies to show up because they are all so busy, they are losing their employees and they won't give the service needed. The repair team needs to be all in house.

I'm afraid you're right, if the mission is client satisfaction.

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

#87
post #34

I will use this when you go live in the Bay Area. Side note: I would also pay for a "Landlord as a Service". I want to treat a company like my landlord, even though I own my house. "Hi Bill, my roof is leaking" and they say "Someone will be there next week" and then send me a bill.

Oh god yes please invent Laas

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

#89

Let me add a bit of advice to any homeowners out there: learn to do the job yourself! I bought my house 5 years ago and I went from zero knowledge to remodeling the entire thing mostly on my own. Not only does it save you the hassle of having to deal with contractors, but in the cases when you need one, you'll be a lot more prepared to gauge the quote and timing.

You can't learn it all. Some things are better left to professionals. I once had a leaking bathtub. I watched some youtube videos and was able to fix the problem (replacing a gasket). However, one time my HVAC stopped working in the middle of winter and I wouldn't know what to do there. Had to call in pros. few days ago, I had a yellow jacket nest in one of the ceilings (yep!!). I wouldn't want to fix that myself.

> one time my HVAC stopped working in the middle of winter and I wouldn't know what to do there.

I thought so too, until a HVAC outfit ghosted me one too many times. All I had was a screwdriver and multimeter in hand. I was able to figure out that the power transformer was taking in 110v but putting out 0v into the board. So I googled the part number, picked it up at Home Depot and just un-mounted it and swapped the new one in attaching the wires in the same way. Easy peasy! It really was a lot easier than I thought. Just remember to take pictures of the wiring before.

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

#90

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 the right take. Home projects are not like, say, Uber where the primary quality criterion is essentially getting a person to point B in a reasonable time frame, so easily measurable.

Brokering this kind of work is much tougher, with far more variables for quality/success and more room for subjectivity along with some lag time between the work and ability to fully measure quality. I suspect the founders here will find that the very reasons it's a problem for customers are the reasons it will be a problem for them. There is no shortage of bad contractors willing to charge for their work, and the good ones don't need to share their cut to get work.

So, they've absolutely identified a significant homeowner challenge, but their solution seems a bit naive. As another example, auditing photos for quality is unreliable and doesn't scale with project complexity. Yet, if you start to go further in auditing (e.g. on-site auditors) or otherwise guaranteeing and allocating work, then you've essentially re-invented subcontracting (perhaps even more akin to employment). I think they are also vastly underestimating their exposure in guaranteeing this type of work, especially for a small firm. Just arbitrating disputes alone can be a massive resource drain, and that doesn't include the actual remedy (and who pays for that remedy?).

And, of course, the Home Depots and Lowe's of the world already do something similar, with variable results. Hard to see where the real value-added differentiator is here, outside of the lack of brick and mortar.

I do hope they have an epiphany on their journey that leads them to a solution.

Post reply on HN