Lightbank backs OpenChime with $700K

Faith Merino · June 1, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/1b13

The Angie's List for everything connects consumers and service providers

OpenChime, an Angie’s List for everything, is now officially watch-worthy. Why? Because Lightbank says so. OpenChime announced today that Lightbank, the fund made famous for its founders’ early investment in Groupon (which you may have heard is doing pretty well for itself), has invested $700,000 in the Chicago-based startup.

Founded in 2010 by MIT graduates Erdem Kiciman and Kale McNaney, OpenChime is something of a lovechild between Angie’s List and Craigslist, allowing users to book services ranging from home repairs and yard work to personal trainers and taxidermists. Users can get quotes from over 1.8 million different service providers, and so far OpenChime has connected consumers with service providers in over 500 cities across several different countries.

Unlike Craigslist, there’s no real structure to the system. The consumer simply logs onto the site, submits a request, and gets a number of personal responses from local service providers who provide quotes that the consumer can choose from. Service providers are screened to a certain extent. CEO Erdem Kiciman explained the process to me like so:

“OpenChime is meant to exclude the random sketchy people or the unprofessional service providers you might find in other classified style listing services. Beyond that, our objective is to give the consumer as much information as we can find from around the web.  Each businesses quote is accompanied by their ratings and reviews from everywhere we can find. For example, if a business has a 2 star rating on yelp but they have the cheapest price, that might be just the value the user is looking for.  We don't presume to know what's best for each user - we let them decide.”

And unlike Angie’s List, service providers are not rated or reviewed, so users don’t get a comprehensive grading system to help them make their decision. Nor does the service cover the areas of health or medical services—though it hopes to at some point in the future. It also doesn’t cover adult services (I bet a lot of disappointed readers just clicked out of this article).

The service is currently free for both consumers and businesses.

“OpenChime has a great concept and has already been very successful at building a large network of local businesses around the country,” said Lightbank co-founder Brad Keywell in a statement. “Erdem and his team are providing an incredibly valuable service and Lightbank is excited to invest in this fast-growing company that is helping local businesses attract new customers."

Given Keywell and Lefkofsky’s golden ticket investment in Groupon, Lightbank-funded companies are certainly ones to watch. Recent investments include gtrot, Sprout Social, Betterfly, DoubleDutch, Where I’ve Been, and Qwiki, the service that’s turning information retrieval into a multimedia experience.

I recently chatted with Paul Lee, Lightbank’s newest Partner and its first outside hire, who told me that Lightbank is currently interested in technology that disrupts large, antiquated spaces. OpenChime definitely fits the bill here in its new take on traditional classified ads. Instead of service providers posting ads in the Pennysaver or the newspaper classifieds, consumers and service providers are connected through OpenChime, which acts as an intermediary.

Obviously, Craigslist has already done this, but there is no screening process. Meanwhile, Angie’s List is restricted to specific types of service providers and doesn’t offer the broad, consumer-initiated reach that OpenChime does. 

Other startups have cropped up to bridge the space between Craigslist and Angie's List, including one Boston-based startup called TaskRabbit, which is now expanding across the west coast. Another site, MyHammer, has entered the fray for handymen and home repair service providers. Can OpenChime make a name for itself in this growing space? 

Image source: OpenChime.com

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