It’s nice to see Rodney here.  The last time I saw him it was around the year 2000 and he was kicking me out of his office after I and a couple of goons that I worked with at Homestore.com tried to bully him into giving us a huge percentage of his company for the privilege of putting his brand on our site.  The goons are now in jail on various SEC violations and Rodney seems to be doing fine.

6 Keys to Success in Local Services:

  1. Build supply before demand
  2. Choose the right vertical focus/right branding
  3. Execute as a service business, not a dot com (too true)
  4. Control customer acquisition costs – apply real business metrics
  5. Utilize technologies that make sense now – not in 3, 5 or 10 years
  6. Focus on yourself, not the competition (the best advice ever)

Snapshot of ServiceMagic:

  1. Largest home services marketplace online
  2. 55K+ prescreened contractors
  3. Over 10MM homeowners making requests to date
  4. Represent an estimated $10 billion in consumer spending annually.  4MM requests/yr
  5. 550K customer-verified reviews

They bought a majority stake in Koening, a European lead gen co.

They just acquired ZipExpress – a consumer electronics installation service within big box retailers like Target

They have an equity interest in BuildProof – online escrowing of funds between contractor and homeowner.

Most businesses will seek out three things:

  1. Turnkey marketing solutions – just deliver me leads
  2. Performance based spend – only pay for leads/jobs delivered
  3. A trusted way to set my business apart – ratings & screenings

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One Response Comment

  • Stever  November 20, 2008 at 5:20 pm

    Nice 6 points there. Love that last one.