Angie’s List, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor– there is a variety of platforms available to customers using the home improvement industry. However, it can be difficult to find quality contractors that execute effectively.

Kyle Linden, President and Co-founder of PostMyProject, aims to help solve this issue, making customer service his number one priority.

“The marketplace right now is sort of messed up,” said Linden. “There’s so many different types of projects and it’s hard to get connected with quality work.”

Founded in September of last year, PostMyProject is an online platform that makes navigating the service industry easier for both customers and service providers. Using an online auction-style format, PostMyProject ensures that projects have the most accurate information, saving both customers and service providers time and money.

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“We’re kind of taking the best things from our competition and combining those features with an ebay-style platform,” said Linden. “Customers can post their project online and get estimates for their projects based on a bidding structure.”

Linden explained that the key difference between them and their competition is that other platforms are solely for lead generation, and that PostMyProject’s platform helps provide transparency to each project.

“We want to give contractors an opportunity to really see the project so that they can decide if it’s something that they’re interested in,” said Linden. “There’s no more calling up contractors and waiting for a response because they’ve already indicated that they are interested in the project by bidding on it.”

How it works

Currently any customer can post a project for free; however, the service providers pay a small fee to get a background check by PostMyProject.

Once a project is posted, the service providers receive a notification and are able to explore the project. If they decide to place a bid, they pay a fee of 1 percent of the bid, up to $10.

For example, if someone is thinking about replacing a window and the contractor says that he can do it for $500, the contractor would pay $5 to place the $500 bid on the project.

Once the project is complete, both the contractor and the customer also have the opportunity to rank each other, so future customers can look at the work and make a better decision on who they want to hire or work for.

Linden hopes to add a video element to the platform as well.

“The video and photography component just tells so much more,” said Linden. “About half of the customers that use the platform use the photography functionality right now.”

Starting too big

When asked about the biggest lesson the business has learned as a startup, Linden said he had probably spent too much money designing his initial website.

“I could have created a better minimum viable product,” said Linden. “I added a lot of different functionalities that people just aren’t using regularly.”

Linden said that if he could do it over, he would have started with the bare minimum, worked his way to the finished product, and kept customer feedback in mind each step of the way.

Saving time and money

Even though there are about  250 active users of the site, only about 30 percent of the projects have been executed. Linden sees this as an advantage.

“It’s not necessarily a high quantity of finished projects, but at least these customers are getting transparent prices on their projects and finding out if it’s something they really want to committ to,” said Linden. “The platform also saves the contractors time and money from going out and consulting with the customers.”

What’s next for PostMyProject

Once the website is more configured to what Linden wants it to be, Linden said the business may branch out into offering services outside of home improvement.

“We eventually want to get into offering services like web design and photography, but right now we are just focusing on the Omaha contracting industry because that’s where my expertise lies,” said Linden.

The business is also currently working with daycloudstudios.com to raise money on Kickstarter to fund an app for PostMyProject.

“Right now the website is mobile-friendly, but we want to make an app to make the platform more accessible,” said Linden.

Linden said that once the business gets the website to where it needs to be, he plans on scaling the business beyond Omaha.  

“We want to serve Omaha the best we can and then scale the project to the Midwest, then maybe nationally or even globally,” said Linden. “We would think about franchising, just so we could have more boots on the ground in order to have the best customer service for both the customers and the service providers.”