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An on-demand-lawn-care startup a day keeps the FOMO away.
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Startup of the Year: Daily Dealflow
Startup of the Year discovers and supports the most promising and innovative startups from around the world through #DailyDealflow, our Podcast & more.
Save the Date:
Oct. 14 -16 | Memphis, TN
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Block Lawncare
Block is a tech company with a two-sided, on-demand lawn care app that gives you more time for the things that matter.
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On the consumer side, we offer immediate pricing, á-la-carte, schedule services, in-app payments, and mower ratings and reviews.
On the mower side, we provide individuals a low-friction way to make money mowing lawns without the administrative burden of acquiring customers, collecting payments or handling support claims.
Additionally, Block gives a portion of our revenue back to underserved areas of the community in order to revitalize low-income areas. Each time a customer gets their lawn tended to by Block, we set aside a small portion to give back. Our goal is to restore value and dignity to your local “block”.
Within the next year, we will release Block Pro to third-party lawn care companies. This subscription based software will help existing companies streamline operations while providing additional leads from the pool of existing Block customers. This expands our service offerings to users as we become both Provider and Platform. Companies will pay a monthly fee based on the feature set they require and their volume of business.
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What Problem Are They Solving?
With Block, we are simultaneously solving three problems for three different groups.
1. For the consumer, we are solving the antiquated process of outsourcing lawn care. Right now, consumers must personally find and vet individuals or companies to mow their yard. Once they do this, they are generally asked to get into a contract or a rigid agreement that makes them pay for more services than they want with little to no flexibility for when their property gets serviced. Then, customers are expected to pay over the phone at best and by leaving a check or cash under the doormat at worst. Beyond that, the current labor force in our industry is not known for clear communication which is why we built in in-app messaging for mowers to be able to communicate with customers while keeping the customer’s contact information safe.
We validated all of these pain points through a customer discover survey and built features into our app to solve each one. Now, from the time of downloading the app to the time our customers request service is less than five minutes.
2. For our mowers, we are solving the issue of time inflexibility associated with mowing for money. All of our mowers have other jobs and were wanting an easy source of supplemental income. Our mowers are unable to commit to a traditional lawn crew because that would require a rigid schedule. They are also unable to grow past a certain number of clients on their own due to the administrative load and commitment to service clients. As a W-2 employee with Block, we are able to give our mowers extreme flexibility by letting them choose how much they work week to week pending their availability. In addition, we eliminate the administration of a typical lawn company allowing them to focus solely on mowing and maintaining their equipment.
3. For the landscaping industry, we are helping address the major lack of qualified labor, an issue the industry has faced for over three decades. We do this by bringing a brand new demographic of labor into the industry (more insight on this below).
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What's Innovative About Their Solution?
Staffing is most lawn care companies’ biggest pain point and they often resort to hiring seasonal H2B workers or illegal immigrants. By building Uber-like flexible scheduling into our Mower app, we’re able to circumvent that issue and hire non-traditional employees from an untapped labor pool like those mentioned above.
The people in this labor pool are looking for an easy source of supplemental income and have the lawn equipment necessary, but are not looking to start a business or deal with the administrative burdens such as customer acquisition or bookkeeping.
As we release Block Pro to companies of all sizes, we will become both a provider and a platform which is not being done by any of our competitors. This strategy gives us the ability to reach the entire $100B market allowing us to make money whether a customer pays Block to mow their yard or another company that is powered by Block Pro. By leveraging Block Pro partners for regulated services (such as tree trimming, spraying pesticides, landscaping installs, etc.), we are also able to offer Block customers a broader range of services without the burden of industry licensing. This allows the on-demand service of Block to stay simple and streamlined allowing us to scale much faster to new markets.
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📍 Location
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
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⚙️ Product Stage
Beta—Public
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🏭 Industries
Home Services, Lifestyle, Sharing Economy
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🤑 Fundraising Status
Considering raising
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💸 Total Funding
To Date
$0-100k
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Big Wins
Block has great early traction and will continue to grow quickly.
- Less than 2 months in and with minimal marketing, we’ve had over 1.5K downloads, over 950 customers on-boarded, and over 125 jobs.
- We have dozens of 5-star reviews, averaging a 4.8-star rating in the Apple App Store.
- We are #1 in the app store for “on demand lawn care."
- We are #3 in the Google Play Store in the “House and Home” category for new apps in the United States.
- Multiple news outlets have picked up our soft launch press release.
- Our mowers are reporting that they are having a great time working with us and are really enjoying the easy-to-navigate Block Mower app. We have multiple people in our pipeline that will be coming on board within the next few weeks to prepare for the busy season.
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Contact the Founder:
Matthew Armstrong
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Further Your Passion For Startups
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2019 Startup Outlook Report
SVB is pleased to present the 10th edition of our annual Startup Outlook Report, focusing on the innovation economies of the US, the UK, China and Canada. Read the report here.
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