SkillSlate

Have you ever had trouble finding a mover, handyman, dog walker, or any other service provider? If you search on Google, you’ll end up with a lot of big (expensive) companies. If you go to Craigslist, you’ll find plenty of inexpensive service providers, but you won’t know who’s good and who isn’t. SkillSlate is going to change that. By allowing service providers to easily create an online business presence, and by aggregating thousands of providers in each vertical, we leverage the collective power of individuals to rank highly in search, bringing more exposure and business to the ‘little guy.’ 

SkillSlate helps consumers find the best individual service providers by allowing them to search and refineme thousands of business profile pages complete with pictures, prices and reviews. These one-person businesses often provide great service at highly competitive prices, but, until SkillSlate, have been hard to find online.

Example service provider profile: http://www.skillslate.com/stevehall

Bartek Ringwelski – Co-Founder & CEO

•  Formerly: Investment Professional, Canaan Partners 
•  Formerly: UBS Investment Bank Tech Group
  
•  Columbia University, 2005 – Economics

Brian Rothenberg – Head of Product & Search

• Formerly: Head of SEO and Product Manager, Yahoo! Local Marketplaces & Commerce division
• USC 2005 and MBA candidate at NYU Stern

Lawrence Wang – Head of Technology

• Formerly: Lead Developer at Panther Express
• Formerly: DoubleClick
• Columbia University, 2005 – Computer Science

Full Team Information: http://www.skillslate.com/about

Investors and Board: http://www.skillslate.com/advisors

SkillSlate is free for consumers, and employs a freemium model for service providers (a basic business profile is always free).  SkillSlate will primarily generate revenues from a mix of the following:

• Sponsored vertical search: optional featured placements for service providers within their local category search results.  Can charge via subscription model (ie: $50/mo), cost per lead, CPC, or CPA.
• Ancillary products/services: even one-person businesses should have many of the same tools that larger companies do - credit card processing, insurance, business incorporation, etc.  SkillSlate will sell/re-sell or enter affiliate relationships with the appropriate providers, and in doing so will help micro-businesses become more legitimate and grow their business.
• Certification/verfication: add tools to help service providers verify their identity and increase trust such as background checks and other certifications.  SkillSlate can negotiate bulk rates with data vendors, and charge service providers for these checks that will add verification icons to their profiles. 
• Local advertising: upon reaching scale, there are a multitude of contextually relevant local advertising opportunities - target by geo-location and/or service category.