Introducing New Brunswick Startup: Shed
With Propel ICT’s Demo Day coming up on June 21 in Halifax, we’re chatting with all of the New Brunswick companies who will be pitching at the Neptune Theatre.
Today we meet Sean Griffith, CEO and CoFounder of Moncton/Halifax-based Shed.
1) What’s your pitch?
What would you do with an extra 80 hours this year? People are busier than ever today, making your time more valuable. But the tasks we have to do aren’t going away. And the way we find people to get these tasks done hasn’t evolved. Think mowing your lawn, fixing a leaky tap or painting that bedroom you’ve been putting off. Shed is changing the way that people complete their tasks by giving them instant access to hire, schedule and pay trusted professionals, giving you your time back. In the process we help service providers grow and run their business more efficiently. Shed is the trusted on-demand household service provider.
2) What’s your story?
I moved into my first home about 3 years ago and, like many homeowners, almost immediately needed work done. A leaky kitchen sink, a waterline for the new fridge, and a bent oil pipe. Not to mention the 6 feet of snow at the end of the driveway (and we didn’t own a shovel yet). We had an impossible time trying to find providers who could come out in a reasonable amount of time and who were qualified. The way we had to connect with these people was antiquated. Using the yellow pages or kijiji was time consuming and unreliable. Let alone the fact that many of these businesses still operate using cash.
And we knew that providers were also frustrated as we started to talk with them. Customers were operating in a digital, online world but they had a hard time navigating this space. They were also plagued by down time with no way to fill it or completing too many administrative tasks where they could be out earning revenue from customers.
My co-founder and CTO, Joe Simms, was in a similar situation with trying to have odd jobs done and struggling to find qualified pros. We knew there had to be a better way to get these jobs done. So, we decided to do something about it. We began discussing what a solution would like and altering some initial validation, got to work.
We launched our beta project, Plow Me Out as an on-demand snow removal service this past winter in Moncton, Halifax, and Saint John as a test to see if customers would use an on-demand system. Our vision was always larger than snow removal, and our customers began asking whether we would be offering similar services come the summer, so we set to work transforming the system into Shed. We launched initially with a focus on landscaping but have already begun adding more services including handyman, painting with some upcoming cleaning services. Our goal is to be the trusted marketplace for on-demand services.
We’ve been fortunate over the last 7 months to be a part of the Vennture Garage program in Moncton and also the Launch program through Propel ICT out of Halifax.
3) What’s next for you?
We are focused on building relationships with our customers and service provider partners, continuing to add services and expanding to new markets. Our goal is to be in a new market in Western Canada by the end of July. We have built the system to scale easily to new services, so we are adding dynamically as customers dictate what they need done. This is great because it allows us to act as a sort of ‘concierge service’ while we are still in our test markets, and we can determine exactly what people are looking for.