The web is loaded with sites offering listings and reviews for local services, with mainstays like Yelp and Craigslist leading the pack. But when it comes to actually executing a transaction with one of these service providers — establishing details like establishing a price and timing — most people still turn to their phone books to call the service. RedBeacon is a new service making its public debut today at TechCrunch50 that further streamlines this process by bringing the OpenTable model of online transactions to much broader spectrum of services.
Using the site will be easy for anyone who has used a local review service like Yelp. Simply type whatever service you’re looking for (be it plumber, gardener, or hair stylist), and the site will present a list of recommended service providers in your area. RedBeacon also employees natural language processing so it can figure out exactly what you’re looking for (for example, “Cupcake maker” would search for any bakers in the area). The site will then present a list of profiles for each match, featuring reviews and comments from other users, basic information like their hours, and star reviews imported from Yelp.
To figure out exactly how much a given service will cost, you first detail what you’re looking for and the site begins an auction among the matching providers, where each bids on how much their fee will be. Once you’ve picked a provider, you can schedule your time online, without having to ever pick up the phone.
The site also has a feature that allows you to quickly find workers for projects that don’t require any training. Say, for example, you needed someone to hand out 500 cupcakes at TechCrunch50. RedBeacon would let you post a job, and then would automatically ping RedBeacon members in your vicinity to see who was available. They could then respond with a price quote, as well as an ETA for when they’d be able to perform the task.
The site is launching today in a limited beta, inviting local services to fill in their profiles. And in two weeks, it will launch to the public, allowing anyone to start hiring local providers.
Q: How do you get over the chicken and the egg problem?
A: We’re launching two weeks early to invite providers to join before opening to the public. Also don’t need to necessarily have lots of providers, just need some in each category.
Q: How do you reduce friction
A: Can receive Email or text message notification. Just enter the time and hit submit. It’s also complete free for them to respond to jobs and create a profile.
Q: ServiceMagic seems to be the same idea.
A: Started in the mid 90’s, started by IAC. They charge service providers lots of money to sign up initially, and charge every time they receive a lead, even if they don’t win.
Q: Is there a class of job you anticipate being especially popular?
A: In the Bay Area, household services (handymen, maids, gardeners). But never know how people are going to use your products.
Q: Have you thought about focusing on specific verticals?
A: Yes. We’re reaching out to strategic verticals (less than five). But we’ll support virtually any occupation.
Video:
Fox Business News Part I
Fox Business News Part II
Pictures:
Other Coverage:
TC50: Need someone to mow your lawn? Redbeacon creates a market for local services. VentureBeat.
Redbeacon Launches At TechCrunch50 Reuters.
Mmm… cupcakes!
wondering when someone’s going to mention the obvious – prostitution?
try this: http://www.WhoCanDo.com.au – yummy!
The cupcakes were delicious. The service is nice IF a ton of service providers sign up, and the plan to call and reach out to providers is an excellent one. Good luck can’t wait til it goes national.
sites like this are stupid, small business owners are too busy running their businesses to waste time bidding on a $20 order.
Many small business owners will spend more time on a phone call for less money. This eliminates the need to call in and a company can quickly skim and put together orders for them.
I think it’s a brilliant idea.
The execution will be important. I think they’re going to have to pre-populate cities and hand-hold companies to start. Similar to what Foursquare has done with adding new cities.
Start out with bigger markets (SF, LA, NYC, etc) and slowly open it up to more people.
It’s a sound concept, but the two-sided market (chicken and egg problem) is a lot to overcome. Just opening the floodgates for 2 weeks and hoping small businesses sign up is not going to cut it. Sure, you may get service providers scattered across the country, but this will be of minimal utility to users. I’m not saying it’s not a worthwhile tool for small businesses, but it takes a massive sales effort to garner enough merchant participation. How many people do you think YellowPages employs? A newspaper? Small business sales are tough.
very well said.
A friend and I worked on an incredibly similar site a little over a year ago for about 4 months til we came up against this exact problem. Service providers didn’t want to sign up without users, and users weren’t going to come without any providers to take care of things.
Good luck guys.
Just like Workstir.com that launched at fbFund, without the social vetting.
Who actually does the due diligence on these “recommended service providers?”
Awesome concept – going to try out the service to see if I can find some local resources
this has been done about 20 times. google bizbuyer. impossible to close the loop on transactions.
Interesting site. They need to think realistically how many small business are going to self service. In our experience calling them to acquire them works pretty well to get them started. They should call them automatically ongoing as well so that users get a quick response from a wide variety of suppliers – see BookingAngel.com
these bio on these guys make them look like the smartest guys in the world – does anyone think they should move on and do something great?
I think this is a great service for all . What about Yahoo local branding this amongst their massive user base nationally? A business model we will certainly look into as we grow our brand. Due diligence for credibility will come from user ratings for the vendors.
YOU RE RIGHT.. no way to sign on….
my as$ bio and smartest guys on the block.. if they can’t even get the sign up process straight after an event like techcrunch… that just shows me that their bios is either fake… Or that they are just plain paper geniuses.
RED BEACON go home… do your homework…
Sorry to hear about your broken sign up experience, can you try it again? If it still doesn’t work, please email support@redbeacon.com and we’ll be happy to assist. Thanks again for trying our product!
There are so many of these services out there, it’s a wonder they’re all able to stay in business, especially with craigslist as some serious competition…I remember using a site called servicemagic (servicemagic.com) that does the same exact thing as red beacon, where’s the innovation??? I want to see some new and fresh ideas!
There is no way to sign on as a service provider!!
Well there is, but it’s broken it does not work. How lame is that after telling the world part of the presentation is to create awareness and grow providers…
Probably T50s biggest losers on Techcrunch50
wow still no way to sign up as a service provider.
You’d think as a company you’d have the brains to read Techcrunch comments and act upon it, or see how many service providers signed up and figuring that with 0 sign ups that there has to be something wrong… or 0 for chrome and firefox (I don’t use IE).
the idea might be ok, but with a team that doesnt recognize the basic processes and make sure those work an investment in this company is a tremendous risk.
Staring with a few vertical market is the best advice. It is difficult to fight the big boys going after the whole market.
Cool product. I’m curious how RedBeacon handles the financial aspect of the workflow. This might particulary be important if a service-provider requires a deposit. If I’m a service-provider and my bid to provide a service is accepted by a client, how does payment work? Is it all handled offline upon delivery of the product, or completion of the service? Is it handled online w/ a credit card payment? If it’s online, how are credit card transaction fees handled? Does the service-provider eat the 3-4% transaction fee? Is that fee passed along to the client? The cost of exchanging money electronically winds up being a non-negligible amount as the total transaction amount increases.
How can companies like RedBeacon go about minimizing the transaction fees associated with the electronic exchange of money?
I’ll be feeding their talentless Harvard/Google corpses to Mr. Wu’s pigs within 6 months. Should’ve stayed in the Google monopoly where you could hide your mediocrity.
I was able to sign up as a service provider without a glitch and the UI is very slick and intuitive.
I don’t think the chicken and egg problem is as big as people describe. There’s currently no other place that caters to “generalists”, and this could be a great resource for college students to earn some extra cash a few hours a week, on various small jobs. I also think that the convenience of scheduling the job online at a time of your convenience without picking up the phone would attract many busy people to use the site.
Amanda… you must be using IE… with chrome and firefox.. it doesn’t work.
Besides what sucks about this company is the pre orchestrated buzz campaign here, and on twitter… like a ton of people VOTING twitering they just voted for red beacon… even though half of the presentations of other candidates hasn’t happened yet. I mean pleeeeeeaaseeeee.
Red Bacon.
and now they WON… yeahhh right.
Hardly a new idea. We’ve been doing this in Australia for over 2 years now. Hope these guys have some serious funds and time to put into PPC advertising & publicity or they will die.
The only way to build a market-place is by generating consumer demand – the suppliers will follow if there are enough jobs to do. A 2 week period for business sign-ups won’t make much of a difference at all.
In theory, the winner pays a commission model is great, but in practice it doesn’t work. Whether intentionally or otherwise, customers don’t close off the loop and you spend all your time chasing up commissions.
How can this work? Home repairs cannot be estimated without a separate visit for the quote. I don’t see this as a threat to Angie’s List. Free is good, but there needs to be a step in the process for a real quote, not a guess.
There’s no doubt that Services Marketplaces are sweeping across the world as the consumers choice.
Since launching Service Central ( http://www.serv...ecentral.com.au ) in Australia in 2005 we’ve had over AUD$580,000,000 of work requests. Why? How? Its super easy and convenient. Just what today’s consumer expects.
Good luck Red Beacon. You’re tapping into a massive market, and if you get it right you’ll be the next billion dollar company!
take a look @ http://www.ojanta.nl and http://www.ojanta.com they they do the same
Good luck Guys!!