Suggested by 
Ryan Buckley
over 1 year ago
Note: this idea is more "climate-adjacent" than directly climate.
Contractor and permit data is collected at the county level. As far as I can tell, no one is able to capture this info across counties. Most general contractors do work across multiple counties.
For most households, hiring a GC for a bathroom remodel, green home renovation, or expansion is fraught with risk. Yelp and Angi reviews can be manipulated. Word of mouth takes a lot of work.
We should be able to use existing data to objectively evaluate contractors.
Data can answer questions like these:
The #climate play: filter on heat pump water heater and HVAC jobs to score green home contractors.
Counties are migrating from paper to online systems in droves now, opening up the opportunity to scrape across counties.
https://www.accela.com/ is one of the leaders and they're based in San Ramon.
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
CEO @ Shovels
I hired a Upworker to help me with the scraping and we have a start on getting all the permits in Contra Costa County, where I live. My realtor friends are very into this idea. My plan is to get the data and spin up a website in the next month or so showing only Contra Costa County data.
I have my VA checking all 58 counties in CA to find which ones use the same online permiting software (Accela) that we're scraping now. We'll get those next, then build more spiders for the other online permit companies serving other counties.
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
Might be useful for you to chat at some point with the QuitCarbon team. @Cooper Marcus
CEO @ Shovels
Ah, I know Cooper well! We crossed paths while he led Scout at Xenon Partners and we reconnected through the Work on Climate Slack community.
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
Small world!
Partner and Chief Design Officer @ Platform Venture Studio
say wattt? I’m in Lafayette. CCC representin! Howdy neighbor 👋
CEO @ Shovels
Ha! I'm in Lafayette too. Saranap to be exact (recently annexed the Lafayette name, but we're unincorporated).
CEO @ Shovels
I agree, it's more like, "I want to find all the good contractors who do work in my neighborhood."
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
It seems to me that "Aggregated contractor database" is a solution, not the unmet need.
The unmet need would be your "hiring a GC for a bathroom remodel, green home renovation, or expansion is fraught with risk".