The big dog in contractor-matching so far has been Servicemagic. What few people realize is that Servicemagic is a Barry Diller company: just another brick in the wall of his conglomerate, IAC (LendingTree, Ticketmaster, etc.). How can Servicemagic adequately "serve" the interests of both homeowners and contractors, when everything (on the contractor side) must pass through a paywall?
The Web is littered with the corpses of failed "find a contractor" services, mainly because of lack of adequate funding to go all the way. But recently, we ran into one company that may present a serious challenge to Servicemagic.
fixR.com was founded with the idea of bringing contractor-matching back to its grassroots--a free and open marketplace of people connecting with other people. We interviewed fixR.com CEO Andres Torrubia about his company, about the frustrations of matching projects with professionals, and about the future of his company.
What was your initial motivation to create fixR.com?
Both Arvin [Abarca]--the other co-founder--and I were perplexed by the fact that nobody had leveraged the web potential to create a marketplace in the home improvement market.In our opinion, if there was a market that could benefit from an open, transparent competitive bidding model, this was it. We thought that there is a definitive opportunity and win-win situation if we could align the contractor and homeowner’s interest in the most effective and efficient way... and along came fixR.
What kind of background do you have that qualifies you run this kind of site? Do you come from a home improvement background (contractor; trades, etc.) or a tech background? Or something else?
We are both successful entrepreneurs: our expertise is in matching offer and demand online. Arvin started an international leading job board and I co-founded an ecommerce website which we sold to a public company.With fixR it is the first time we take home improvement from a hobby to the center of our careers.
It’s true that Service Providers (i.e., the contractors and trades) have a motivation for using Fixr.com. After all, it is free, whereas other services charge for leads. But how might the Service Buyer benefit over established services like Servicemagic?
Choice, cost savings, and transparency. Everybody sees everybody's bids, so ripoffs taking advantage of the buyer’s lack of knowledge are pretty much over.At fixR, when a professional bids for a job, we alert all other professionals so that they can adjust their bids to win the job. fixR is not a low-bidding site (e.g. reverse auction), because the homeowner can choose the best contractor depending on quality, reputation and price. That being said, we strongly think that open bidding helps both the homeowner get a good deal, and the contractor to remain competitive.
In addition, fixR offers another advantage often overlooked: convenience for the homeowner. When a homeowner lists a job at fixR, the job information is public for contractors to bid on. Take for example this painting request that has received more than 5 estimates in 24 hours. Obviously, we advise homeowners to specify projects as thoroughly as possible to help contractors make accurate estimates. If a contractor needs further information to submit an estimate we also provide an open question & answers board.
