Seattle is experiencing an unprecedented sellers market. The region has its lowest inventory of homes for sale in history and last year 18.5 percent of homes sold above asking price, according to a recent Redfin report. Real estate-related startups like Redfin, Zillow, and Porch are thriving in the Emerald City as a result.
Now, another Seattle startup wants to get in on this lucrative industry. Fasterbids leverages its pricing data to streamline the often arduous process of quoting products for home improvement.
“We started Fasterbids in June 2014 to apply modern technology to bidding and purchasing materials, cutting the time salesmen spend looking up pricing by 90 percent,” said CEO Jason Lindquist, a 25-year veteran of the remodeling industry.
Here’s how Fasterbids works:
Fasterbids originally launched in Bellingham but relocated to join Seattle’s startup ecosystem, where it was accepted into the 9Mile Labs’ spring cohort.
We caught up with Lindquist for this installment of Startup Spotlight, a regular GeekWire feature.
Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: “We store massive amounts of pricing data for home remodel and building products, then give professionals access to it through fast, intuitive web apps.”
Inspiration hit us when: “I was an outside salesman in vinyl windows for the last 15 years. It was really hard to get new customers to quote my product because each brand that they quoted took another half hour of the salesmen’s day to price. Everyday I told myself, ‘if I only had a Priceline.com for vinyl windows, my life would be so much easier’ — so I decided to build one. When I showed it to some builders, they immediately asked for other products, and I realized I was on to something big.”
VC, Angel or Bootstrap: “For us, boostrapping was a necessity while we proved we had a market. Our company is the type that could really benefit from an angel who knows the building and hardware industry. Domain knowledge is the key to our success and I think it is important for an investor to understand what is going on with our customers.”
Our ‘secret sauce’ is: “We have a great combination of deep domain knowledge, and a technical team that captures that knowledge and turns it into code. The products we quote are products that have a ton of strange little quirks, things you’d only know if you’d worked with the product in the field everyday.”
The smartest move we’ve made so far: “We relocated to Seattle and joined the 9Mile Labs Accelerator. We started in Bellingham and there just isn’t a strong enough ecosystem in that area to thrive as a tech startup. It’s really hard to do something like this without people who have been through it, and are going through it, to talk to. In 9Mile, we’ve got eight other teams all on their own roller coaster ride just like us. It creates some real camaraderie. The program has also gotten us in conversations with people who we’d never be able to get access to on our own.”
The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: “We listened to the naysayers. We had validation from our customer interviews and demos that showed how builders and remodelers really wanted our product, but some of our early investor conversations were really negative. We were told we ‘weren’t the kind of company that gets into an accelerator,’ and we believed it. We also had a hard time finding investors who understood the problem. It basically breaks into two types of people: those who have remodeled or built a house recently and completely understand the problem, and those that haven’t.”
Would you rather have Gates, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: “I mean, given what we do, Bezos is the natural choice. Out of those three he has done the best job of seeing where the world was going and positioning their business to thrive from that change.”
Our favorite team-building activity is: “Ping pong. Everyone in the 9Mile cohort takes their pong very seriously. We’ve picked up custom paddles bearing names like the ‘Killer Spin 200,’ it’s become a sort of an arms race. It’s a great way to take ten minutes, decompress, and get the blood pumping a little bit.”
The biggest thing we look for when hiring is: “We’re small, and the type of employees we like to hire are the ones we call ‘Swiss army knives,’ or maybe MacGuyvers is a better term. They’re people who come in to do one job, but are able to quickly learn and pickup something new. A startup is an adventure, and you constantly find yourself in situations where you need someone with a skill you don’t have.”
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: “If you aren’t in a place that has a real startup ecosystem, get to one. Giraffes can’t survive on frozen tundra, and your business can’t survive if you aren’t in a climate that provides it the nourishment to grow.”
Editor’s note: GeekWire is featuring companies participating in the 9Mile Labs incubator in the lead up to the Milestone9 Graduation Day and pitch event on May 14.
