Suggested by 
Ryan Buckley
over 3 years ago
Note: this is take #2 on https://os.platformstud.io/guild/unmet_needs/aggregated-contractor-database-by-ryan-buckley
The contractor discovery and evaluation process is still broken. That’s why your neighbors have so many horror stories about construction jobs gone wrong.
Shovels harvests and analyzes millions of permit and inspection records to discover great contractors.
We sell data to builders and the companies who finance them.
Full deck is here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TxTtbOHlwKl61Ytj10Af8X5b-zS5CxKfHBuwacK_S6w/edit#slide=id.p
Permitting jurisdictions are moving their processing online at a rapid pace. This public data is now available for scraping. Meanwhile, the need for more affordable housing and green building contractors has never been greater. The industry needs help.
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
CEO @ Shovels
First customer! $250/mo to serve contractor data for all of the bay area. They're a new green home building service.
CEO @ Shovels
Here's a better problem statement:
--
There's an agency problem in the trades. In my economics classes we called it "information asymmetry," a term popularized by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz who proved that this asymmetry leads to inefficient markets.
However, you don't need an economics degree to know that hiring a home contractor is fraught with risk. Just talk to anyone who's done it. More often than not, and far more frequently than any other hiring decision I can think of, it's a bad experience.
The problem is contractors have far more knowledge of their skill level and fit for the job than the people who hire and finance them.
CEO @ Shovels
Sorry for not getting this right... again.
Problem statement:
Choosing a general contractor (GC) is the most important decision a builder will make for a real estate development project. Most contractors are chosen by word-of-mouth because there’s no comprehensive list of active contractors and no quantitative means to evaluate their performance in a particular geography. As a result, builders are not able to discover and evaluate the best GCs for their real estate development projects.
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
Also, feel free to submit your deck to me at https://os.platformstud.io/decksend/inbox/jb
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
@Ryan Buckley - as written, this seems to be a description of your solution, versus of the unmet need. Would you mind separating out the two? You can hit "Propose a Solution" to add your proposed solution once the Unmet Need is described.