Khosla Ventures simply doubled down on this handyman-on-demand service for householders
If you own a home, you know that there is always something that needs fixing, installation, or general repair. Whether it's a faucet that's leaking, a new bed that needs to be assembled, or a Nest thermostat that needs to be installed, there's always something.
A startup wants to make this particular part of homeownership less painful by offering a dedicated handyman to take care of all the random tasks on your to-do list. It's an interesting model. Honey houses employs the tradesman as part of its staff as an employee to ensure that the work in your home is consistent. Homeowners pay Honey Homes a flat fee ($200 per month or $2,000 per year) for the convenience of an “end-to-end” membership-based service through the app.
The way it works is that members are assigned a dedicated handyman who comes by at least once a month to take care of home improvements and preventive maintenance. Because employees are employed, they also receive benefits, including parental leave and paid time off, a rarity in an industry that has historically relied on contractors.
Honey Homes launched with its first 10 beta customers in August 2021 and is currently available to single-family homeowners in all suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, but not in San Francisco itself. It recently began operations in Dallas.
Man-woman team Vishwas Prabhakara (Yelp's first general manager) and Avantika Prabhakara (former marketing director at Opendoor, Trulia and Zillow) joined forces with Katie Pham and Rory O'Connell in 2021 to create Honey Homes.
Over the past two years, Honey Homes has grown to over 500 members and says it has completed over 20,000 tasks for homeowners Vishwas. The company increased membership — and therefore revenue — eightfold in 2022, he added, and has already nearly doubled this year.
Since its inception, the company has raised a total of $12.1 million in funding, including most recently $9 million in a Series A led by Khosla Ventures. Khosla and Pear VC co-led Honey Homes' seed round in 2021. Other supporters are: Teambuilder Ventures and Moving Capital, as well as angel investors including DoorDash co-founders Tony Xu and Stanley Tang, Lyft co-founder Logan Green, Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu and Mercury co-founder Immad Akhund, among others.
Vishwas told TechCrunch that he has started working on the company in earnest after speaking to a number of homeowners and Conclusion: There would be enough people who would be interested in paying a generalist to come to their home once or twice a month to carry out ongoing maintenance or improvements.
“I asked her, 'Would this be interesting to you?' Would you pay for it?' And surprisingly for me the answer was a resounding yes,” he said. “We seemed to have struck a chord with homeowners.”
The Honey Homes app allows a homeowner to create a to-do list and schedule appointments. It also helps homeowners work with specialists when necessary.
But what if I were curious and crossed all the tasks off your to-do list? What then?
“The one thing that really opened my eyes is that when you offer this as a member service, you suddenly realize you want more,” Vishwas said. “And there are some people who just like the peace of mind.”
Honey Homes employs 45 people, including 25 craftsmen. Vishwas said the consistency of employees has helped strengthen the company's credibility.
“Of a From a homeowner’s perspective, you want someone you can build a relationship with and trust,” he told TechCrunch. “So it is extremely valuable for a homeowner to see the same person over and over again.”
The startup has also launched Honey Homes University, a training facility for people working in the field to develop their skills. Looking ahead, Honey Homes eventually plans to expand into urban centers, but for now is focused on serving suburban single-family homeowners, who tend to have greater maintenance and upkeep needs, according to Vishwas.
Khosla partner Evan Moore, who joined Honey Homes' board as part of its Series A funding round and is also a co-founder of DoorDash, said that as vice president of product at Opendoor, he saw that the company “could receive significantly better service, quality and prices from home service providers.”
But as an individual homeowner, “it is difficult to reliably get good work done at a reasonable cost.”
Moore wrote via email: “Many startups have tried to improve this customer experience and failed, but Honey Homes seems to have gotten it right.” Rarely does an idea work so well so quickly. I have been here since day one and have been fortunate to see the incredible response from customers.”
He believes Honey Homes is different from many other consumer home services startups that simply connect homeowners with potential providers or “act as a concierge.”
Moore added: “Honey Homes solves the entire problem of home improvement and maintenance, from idea to completion. By repeatedly delivering quality work, we build trust with our customers. They then reward us with more work over time.”
