Lawn Buddy revolutionizing lawncare

Sometimes the grass is greener, and other times, it’s overgrown. Wichita-based Lawn Buddy can help with the latter. Steven Werner grew up on a small ranch in Wyoming, enlisted in the Marine Corp as a junior in high school, toured in Afghanistan, and found his way back to Wyoming in 2013. Throughout his military career,…

Steven Werner, Lawn Buddy Founder

Sometimes the grass is greener, and other times, it’s overgrown.

Wichita-based Lawn Buddy can help with the latter.

Steven Werner grew up on a small ranch in Wyoming, enlisted in the Marine Corp as a junior in high school, toured in Afghanistan, and found his way back to Wyoming in 2013.

Throughout his military career, Steven gained a wealth of experience managing projects. He left the military and went to work in a mine as a project manager for a structural engineering company. He met his wife, an electrical engineer, on the job site.

Steven’s wife quickly landed a job with Koch Industries, and the two decided to make the move from Wyoming to Wichita. Steven returned to school while continuing his full-time job. He came home one day feeling defeated by an overgrown front lawn that he didn’t have time to cut. He looked the grass and wished for a simpler way to find a reputable lawn care services on demand. Unable to find an easy solution, he decided to create one himself in 2015.

Steven initially found that lawn care companies’ processes were archaic – bids and books were handwritten and manually managed, thrown in the back of a truck, and getting lost in the shuffle. He wanted to turn lawn care companies into tech-powered companies with mobile applications and a dashboard to manage the entire business.

Lawn Buddy has built an all-in-one solution for Lawn Care Providers that combines a customer-facing on-demand application with a full SaaS backend platform. Since its founding, Lawn Buddy has on-boarded over 3,000 Lawn Care Providers and 7,000 Lawn Owners, tripling initial projections.

Five months ago, Lawn Buddy launched Lawn Buddy Pro, its back-office and marketing software for Lawn Care Providers. Lawn Buddy has seen 5x increase in growth with this new technology, increasing revenue by 215%, and expanding into 49 States. Homeowners can connect to these lawn care companies to book services with the mobile app.

“We often refer to our platform’s capabilities as the ‘Robin Hood’ effect, which simply means that we have taken the gig economy and flipped it on its head,” said Steven. “Instead of a large technology company outsourcing to providers to complete tasks, we equip the providers with our technology. By doing so, we have been able to contribute to the growth of over 3,000 ‘tech’ lawn / landscaping companies across the United States.”

Lawn Care Companies can select from Lawn Buddy Lite with no-monthly subscription or Lawn Buddy Pro. The company also offers a white-label enterprise solution that enables users to manage daily tasks, crews, invoices, and payments, as well as run marketing campaigns.

“We operate with a small but fantastic team, and we’re all based in Wichita. The support we’ve received in Wichita has been overwhelming,” said Steven. Our business community wants to see us succeed, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without their support and help from the connections to resources that here in Wichita and beyond. What we have been able to accomplish in a relatively short time is a testament to the supportive Wichita community. We couldn’t be happier to build our company here.”

Lawn Buddy also launched a streamlined insurance application in partnership with IMA Select LLC. The insurance option enables Lawn Buddy’s customers to protect their assets as independent contractors. Service providers can select coverage from IMA Select’s carrier partners, and IMA Select will provide confirmation of insurance within one business day of the request.

“When Lawn Buddy and IMA Select started working together, it was clear from the beginning we had an opportunity to do something innovative,” said IMA Select President Brian Sandy in a press release. “This is an example of how we provide clear protections in the form of insurance, and we know our work with Lawn Buddy will translate to other companies that require expedited insurance for their teams of third-party contractors.”

Visit www.lawnbuddy.com to learn more about this company.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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