Starting a company in one region is stressful enough, but startup Birdwatch bet on two regions. The founders say this decision has led to the company’s rapid growth.
The home maintenance startup quickly launched in both the Washington DC area and Philadelphia, grew to a team of nearly 30 people, and raised a $3 million seed round in late 2023. Co-founders Stephanie Toler and Chris Rosenbaum learned from that experience that their challenge was: Startup addresses are not specific to any particular market and have broad value.
“Yes, we need to show growth and traction today,” Rosenbaum said, but added that he also needs to experiment to find the right path. “One of the benefits of living in two different cities is that you can accelerate your learning,” he told Technical.ly.
Birdwatch is a technology platform that connects homeowners with maintenance and repair professionals. The co-founders wanted to create an at-home task service that was more reliable than review sites like Angie’s List and favored technicians more than home repair markets like Handy.
The startup is also working to deepen its engagement with the communities it serves. According to Rosenbaum, the company is classified as a public benefit corporation that donates 1% of its net proceeds to BirdSeed, a foundation that provides down payment subsidies to first-time homebuyers of color.
Double the market, double the learning opportunities
Despite the growing operational challenges, Rosenbaum said he doesn’t intend to build the company in just one city. Being in two places has given us a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t in the big picture.
“If you just build a business in Washington, D.C., it’s hard to say, ‘Is this because of the unique environment of Washington, D.C., or is this a bigger need that we’re actually addressing?'” says Rosenbaum.
The 28-employee company only operated in D.C. for the first six to nine months to get its footing, then soft-launched in Philadelphia after raising a pre-seed round. Toler said the DMV has a larger market at the moment, but she believes that’s because it launched first in the region.
Rosenbaum said the company tested partnerships with rental properties and condos in its early days in Philadelphia, but found a niche in single-family homes in the city and suburbs.
“These are the properties that are in the greatest need because there are a lot of other properties that are broken or malfunctioning or need maintenance,” he said.
He said there’s less of a need to take care of people’s homes while they’re traveling because people stay there less often in Philadelphia. Although traffic conditions are poor in the Washington, D.C., area, Toler said the high density provides some mobility for technicians.
According to Toler, both the DMV and Philadelphia have strong potential to scale and grow.
When thinking about future markets, cities in different environments will always have different needs, but most of what homeowners are looking for is pretty similar, Rosenbaum said.
Still, two-thirds of its workforce is overseas, as only field staff need to be on-site in each market.
Suitable for not only rental but also homeownership
The startup first launched in DC in January 2022, and the team branched out from a rental property management company called Nest DC that existed for about 15 years. Birdwatch launched in Philadelphia about a year later and raised a $3 million seed round in late 2023 to better understand the broader market opportunity.
At Nest, we’ve seen landlords and homeowners asking if the company’s maintenance team can help fix their homes. Co-founder Toler, along with the rest of his team, saw an opportunity there.
Toller said he met the company’s other co-founder, Ryan Troll, because he was a Nest customer.
After signing up for the Birdwatch app, customers can schedule a home walkthrough where an operations manager will visit to record information about the home and create a list of maintenance tasks. Customers can use the platform to update to-do lists, schedule repair visits, and request emergency video call visits.
“Serving people in their homes is a fundamentally different experience,” Rosenbaum said. “It has a high level of hospitality and we all thought it was a unique opportunity in the market.”
A pilot was created by Nest’s parent company, Flock, and eventually Birdwatch’s co-founders launched the startup as its own entity. The company started in DC because the Nest team had relationships with existing vendors, making it easier to launch the company. They tested the idea with 30 early customers.
Birdwatch currently serves approximately 500 customers in two markets. Of our team of 28, only about a third of our employees are local to each market, and most of them are technical professionals.
Making home repair technology more humane
Co-founder Toler explained that BirdWatch’s technology is intended to support homeowners, not provide a blanket answer. It’s not like you can redecorate your bathroom with an app, she says.
To understand that human side, each client has a dedicated home manager who coordinates fixes and work to better work with the homeowner.
“This is more than just a technology platform company,” Toler said. “We’re really trying to build technology that supports the human side of work.”
