The 50 startup presentations are over, the judges votes are in, Michael and Jason chewed over the top contenders, and the winner of this year’s TechCrunch50 is RedBeacon. The startup aims to help consumers find local service providers such as plumbers, bakers, and contractors. As we described in our initial write-up:
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.
The founders of RedBeacon—Ethan Anderson, Yaron Binur, and Aaron Lee—are former Google product managers and engineers.
This year’s TechCrunch50 was much closer than in previous years, with the quality level of the companies being high across the board. The three runners up for the top TechCrunch50 prize are Threadsy, AnyClip, and CitySourced.
The best presentation goes to iMo, and the best international goes to Trollim
Serious?
Looks like a great service. Congrats RedBeacon. But tell me, what was the criteria for selection?
That’s going to be key. If you’re looking measuring in the good proportions algorithm criteria & users criteria, please tell me.
Erick forgot to include link of tc post on redbeacon, here it is http://www.tech...ny-phone-calls/
They got more buzz and publicity whose value is lot more than the 50000$!
The site’s concept is really good. Having been wanting an authentic service like this for long. What is the criteria for selection?
I would consider our site, Workpost.com, to be a little bit more authentic. Instead of taking a dump of someone elses directory, we are building a directory of pros from the ground up. All listings are user generated and managed. Check us out at http://www.workpost.com!
my sentiments exactly. are we serious here? liquidity plans? can’t happen.
This is their liquidity event!
Don’t be Kanye West
Ey redbeacon, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but mint.com was one of the greatest TC50 winner of ALL TIME
Yo RedBeacon, im really happy for you and imma let you finish, but Threadsy had one of the best products of ALL-TIME!
That’s funny!
So…is it different than yellowpages? This seems kind of a lame win for all the hype…
Congratulations. Seems similar to Angie’s List or ServiceMagic, but haven’t checked out thoroughly.
They only won because they brought cupcakes.
how original
Congrats!!! You guys are picking up where the folks @ HeyCosmo Concierge left off.
So, why exactly did Arrington leave the stage?
did he?
Congratulations!
I’m not feeling anything special about the winner or the runners-up.
Big let down after Mint.com made its huge announcement.
Regards,
George
There was a handful of people bashing Mint / TC40 back then, too. It’s just the jealous haters.
http://www.tech...40-50000-award/
Congratulations to RedBeacon!
You got to admit. The cupcakes trick was memorable. I definitely remember that presentation . . . but not the company name.
I really wonder how these guys will overcome the chicken and egg problem. Because right now I doubt the service has enough mass to be useful. We’ll see in a year
http://www.traderbots.com
what was that cupcake trick exactly? any video capture of it?
it seems to me that the google pedigree played into the final decision. it is a nice site and a sound idea, but like the judges noticed, it has the chicken/egg issue to deal with.
i liked breakthrough.com the best. simple tech, but seems like a great big (but focused) idea for a great big market.
congrats to all selected companies…and to mike & jason for another excellent conference!
Innovative? Cutting edge? What?
Isn’t this just a complete knock-off of ServiceMagic and other local service matching sites that have been doing this for years already?
congradulations to RedBeacon. heres a tip
-get a domain that is easy to spell, vocalize and relates to product. most people cant spell redbeacon or know what it does just by hearing it.
most people would know how to spell ContractorLocator and know exactly what the channel does just by hearing or seeing it. i call this self propelled marketing.
- TC from what i understand bakers are product providers not service providers.
hey locator guy, haven’t seen you here for a while, where have you been?
funny you havn’t seen me, i’m in here mopping the tc startup floors everyday. my end of innovation predictions appear to be coming true.
-redbecon=servicemagic
-citysource= gps picture app linked to the city
-anyclip= video splice search engine
-imo=remote control for ipone
-trollim=employee monitor system
-threadsy=thread feed integrator
-1000 startups entered this contest and not a game changer in sight? maybe the game changer was never chosen and still remains in the heap of denied entrants. thats were im at now and from here i only get stronger as my platform appreciates off the charts. appears i may be the only serious game changer in existence. TC is proving that to me everyday. i love this place.
rofl potd.
wow, another online marketing whiz! Perhaps you should pitch Craigslist, Amazon, and Ebay on the virtues of Self Propelled Marketing and that you are available to help come up with more descriptive names because such is SO IMPORTANT to a site’s long term success. Obviously these sites should have been named “Classifieds.com”, “Books.com” and “Auctions.com” so that people would KNOW instantly what these sites were about.
When you are done renaming the three of the top five most successful commercial websites in the world, why not spread your wisdom to other consumer brands … to help them become more descriptive?
Too bad you weren’t in the room when Pokemon, PacMan, or Dr. Pepper were born! You could have helped rename these less than descriptive loser brands as well!
Seriously, when will Merry Marketeers like you get over this myth that a site/brand name needs to be descriptive? Why do you believe this to be so? There are countless examples of incredible brands that have nonsense names. One can’t get more non-descriptive than “CraigsList”.
Personally I’d suggest to these guys that they use their precious startup resources on building a great service first and foremost … but that’s just me.
“Red Beacon”
Yep, real hard to say and spell! Well, maybe if you’re a complete moron.
o’rite. but i really don’t see the connection between their name and their service.
the first time i heard the name i was thinking of “red hat” (another example of a pretty strange name)
The name got you confused because it sounds like red herring.
Hey amazon and zappos and newegg and… wait hopefully you got the point already. No? Ok no worries…
i hear ya. Verizon wireless drops “Chaperone” for “FamilyLocator” http://bit.ly/qYw6M
-the World Game Changer of Tomorrow is about who can make the most common sense of the internet and mobile as a whole………..setting a universal standard that supercedes cyberspace as we know it. can you hear me now?
Actually, different in at least one really important way. Service Magic charges you PER LEAD. Contractors I’ve spoken w/get screwed with this approach, as they are paying really good money for “leads” that never materialize into anything. IF the folks at RB can figure out how to only charge for actual jobs… I think many contractors might be interested.
BUT, 10% seems pretty steep. I mean, what’s the real cost of doing business RB? These small guys aren’t running huge profit margins, so if you’re taking 10%, they’re just going to increase their prices to cover it. And then, as the consumer, I’m going to be incented to find the contractor outside of RB to get a cheaper price.
So there’s still serious practicalities to work through, but I agree it is a great idea. Would love to see that 10% come down to something far more reasonable like 2%.
so it’s just a free angie’s list? sure you have to pay but they already have a ton of reviews and mindshare.
It’s not like Angie’s List. Angie’s List is just ratings and reviews from other users but you have to pay a subscription to see them. Redbeacon is free to use and seems like it intelligently matches you to the best service provider out there. You get price quotes from them and book ur appointment online. How is this like Angie’s List again?
How is this like Angie’s List? Angie’s List is a subscription based rating and review site. Redbeacon seems like it intelligently matches you to the best service provider. In the demo, they showed getting price quotes and scheduling the job online. I guess they have ratings and reviews but so does YouTube and I wouldn’t say Redbeacon is like YouTube…
looks like a cron job
I’m waiting for Paul Carr’s explanation.
Should be interesting.
At one point I thought Arrington was going to come out with a CrunchPad and give one to the winning company, marking its launch. But I guess not.
This comment was meant to be a reply to one of the posts above regarding Arrington not being on stage for the presentation of the winning company.
I live in Australia. Doesn’t seem to help me much!
I just got back from a 6 month trip to Australia (Perth). I loved it down there!
Hey Justin, check out http://www.quot...com.au/partners, those guys have been doing a very similar thing in Australia since 2006
try http://www.whocando.com.au – looks much better and it works!
Yes me too! I just signed up to discover that it has very clearly defined “service” types and only US based.
Probably nothing can, mate
It actually seems that the “Services Marketplace” space in Australia is much more mature that the USA. Whilst Red Beacon is just starting out, Australians have been pioneering this space for years.
Service Central ( http://www.serv...ecentral.com.au ) launched in 2005 and has generated $580,000,000 in job requests, and over 180,000 jobs for service providers.
Service Seeking (http://www.serv...eseeking.com.au ) launched a cop-cat site in 2007 and has gained some good traction with alliances with EBay and New Ltd.
Quotify (http://www.quotify.com.au) has been doing online lead generation for years, but hasn’t really gained much traction in the marketplace.
Others of interest in Australia include WhoCanDo, HomeFriday, Utool, and jobstodo. Seems like the USA has a lot of catching up to do.
That said Service Magic has been doing this for years, and Elance is a dot com survivor from way back. I guess the fact that Red Beacon has been able to present this as a new space is indicative of just how big this space is and just how successful the dominant player in this space will be in the years to come.
Great news
Awarded based on who needs the money most….
incorrect.
RedBeacon? Really? I didn’t remember the thing 5 minutes after they stepped off stage. Here are my Top Four:
1.AnyClip
2.Breakthrough
3.Udorse
4.City Sourced
Agreed…. useful service, but not a game changer.
Udorse was innovative. City Sourced had the “do better for your community” theme and AnyClip seems like it will be popular like animoto “just because it’s fun”
Think their definitely needs to be a “voter” award… cause if you looked at all the tweets, chats etc. you’d find a different list I think ! We’re not sophisticated entreprenuers turned VC’s, but we’re technologically oriented users that will end up using these apps.
Exactly! Or a Peoples Choice award…
You mean like the Microsoft Bizspark award?
No they are looking for something more along the lines of the not having paid attention award…
I watched every minute of it… even the slide shows during the breaks that played “we from the streets” music over pictures of nerds… The link for the Bizspark award was broken, and Though Mike repeatedly announced the correct link to go to, I refused to remember it, cuz fuck Microsoft.
RedBeacon — Ok, here’s another one I don’t get. Weren’t there dozens of companies during Web 1.0 that came and went providing such a service? A few even continue to hang around today, like Angie’s List. What makes this one any different or better than all those that came and went before?
/Ira
aghh – finally someone calling this. There were hundreds of these sites – bullhorn was one. I just dont see how this is any different.
I left the following comment on Monday, but I feel it bears repeating:
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.
You are correct like the panel said distribution will be the main hurdle. If you live in a big city this may catch on but I highly doubt anyone in a smaller city will ever get use. I hope they are able to get the word out, if so I think the idea has promise.
Congratulations to City Sourced! You guys rocked the party!
Points to consider,
1.) Ex Google Employees
2.) Presentation went over 3 minutes (limit was 6)
3.) Cupcake Bribery
4.) Decent product, not yet launched
They only won because they’re ex-Google employee’s. Typical.
there might be some truth in this statement
Congrats RedBeacon!
Big shout out to co-founder Ethan Anderson. He showed up at one of the last session of Founders Institute as a guest when @Arrington was speaking to the class and showed him a demo.
Great product + Great market + Great team + Great marketing + Non stop drive = future success.
Picking a company that shows the most promise for actual market success is what TC 50 is all about.
well why didn’t they pick bing then? they sure have the biggest potential for future market success.
How is this different from Yelp? Aside from the stupid name?
That’s it, next year I’m going to TechCrunch and inventing a giant webpage of knowledge that ANYONE can edit. I’ll call it “YellowCrowdsourcingPEDIAr.” NO ONE STEAL MY IDEA.
Get lost, I’m already working on it
Udorse is interesting but has the potential to lead to mass unauthentic plz someone just pay my bills noise.
Anyclip is ok but until it knows all of everything video on the planet its limited. Its API could be leveraged though and that could be attractive technology to someone else out there.
Citysourced is cool but not really super new. But it hits that big ooo social services i wanna be a part of the planet team.
Redbeacon is ok but slow city to city roll out will kill it, heck hook up with crowdflower and get those turks working on building out the vendor infrastructure. Redbeacon is kinda interesting in that its not specific to a set vendor gig, so i could just use it like a greedy mturk setup (which i think someone made a site like that previously) where you can post a job like “moon my sister when she gets on the bus 9am at this location, take a photo as proof” and the job goes out there, people bid on it, complete it etc.
Redbeacon also doesnt seem too concerned about the experience end of biz if the vendor drops the ball on the gig etc, sure its a blackeye for that vendor but also could quickly erode trust in the app that provided that vendor.
And theres nothing stopping Angie’s List from just turning on this ability/offer in all its territory and rolling out a like product. The 50k to them seems like a weak handshake of hurry the frak up before everyone gets wind of it. Weird TC50, very strange.
haha – great response
They won because of the people – (don’t know them personally) but they have “big names”. I feel that if they have sold only cupcake on the internet, and said it is a widget, they would have won.
I guess the team here is everything because the company itself sounds like other companies out there and like Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, said they are not world changer… (he said that on all the companies that presented first day)
Cupcake = Marissa Mayer. Track down the conspiracy.
funny how the 3rd founder wanted to be back with another startup.. lol.. what was he thinking ?
techcrunch fails again with their lame pick. RedBeacon? I mean really??? really?? I can name 10 others more deserving
Angieslist.com is better and craigslist even more
so TC put up all this circus so that another of Craigslist’s vertical tries to make it???!
Come on!
So, basically Google buys them out, they all goback to their old cubicles but with shit loads a cash, the site gets nowhere and i keep on visiting Craigslist whenever i need a new plumber
Craig you’re still the king of all start ups
F
Hard to see the innovation here. It is a good concept but other new services are doing far more what redbeacon. For example, bookingangle and http://questbid.com are more interesting. They actually call providers based on the text request entered. A lot more intriguing.
Yeah ServiceMagic.com does the same thing…it’s amazing how many sites offer the same service, and yet RedBeacon still won the cash, it’s hard to see any innovation in this area, it’s been done way too many times.
BTW, http://QuestBid.com really solves the chick and egg problem. Providers do not need to sign up to receive inquiry. They have fully automated phone call mechanism.
Scratching my head so hard over RedBeacon choice that the scalp might start to bleed! How is RedBeacon a solution at all?!
Doesn’t address at all the core challenge of hiring vendors: the need for a 3rd party to evaluate and vouch for them. A shortage of supply of vendors isn’t the problem; any Yellowpages, Google, or Craigslist search will yield tons of options.
How is an RFP process for bids by the vendors themselves going to reliably vouch for who’s dependable, who won’t cheat you, who’s done a good job in the past, etc. Yelp, Angie’s List, WOM are all more complete solutions because external judgments based on past performance.
Er, TechCrunch, you just picked a dud as your winner: a mere directory of unreliable self-listings.
They admitted the biggest market is for “household services.” They will not be able to capture this market because once a connection is made, the middleman gets cutout. There is some value-add in aggregating price quotes from vendors for professional services, but this requires vendors to signup and is a more limited market.
Hi Danny,
People have been trying to make this assumption about Services Marketplaces for years. What you’re saying makes perfect logical sense. However, the reality of the fluid dynamic nature of local services is that people keep on coming back again and again.
We’ve been running Service Central ( http://www.serv...ecentral.com.au ) for 4 years now and received over 180,000 job requests from consumers. The biggest source of work is repeat usage. Consumers that love the service and have grown to trust us over time.
Some of the reasons why consumers continue to use the services marketplace after a “connection has been made” include:
1. Frequency of work …. in reality, how often do you actually use a plumber?
2. Availability … what is the likelihood of the plumber you used last time being available when and where you want them?
3. Convenience … its much easier to make a single job request with a Services Marketplace and know that a quality local business that is available when and where you want them is going to call you to do the job.
The list goes on, but I won’t bore you with details.
Cheers
D.
Just another service provider platform. But important is how they gonna execute and not what it is. There are 100 such service platforms(web) in India but 1 or 2 doing well.
Its all about execution.
Is that true?
An hour and a half before the end of the voting, Yaron Binur asked from an Israeli blogger to help win by using the Israeli votes. (RedBeacon was behind by 7 votes). 15 minutes after the blogger twit on that RedBeacon became the winner…
The story is here (in Hebrew): http://www.thec...tc50_update3-2/
Intuit (www.intuit.com) which just announced buying Mint.com had launched and killed a similar service about 4 years ago. It was called Zippingo.com. There was not enough traction for the service to monetize and they believe in killing a product quickly if it doesnt do well.
I am wondering then if RedBeacon has any differentiator from Zippingo or for that matter any of the 20 other players in the market today!
you know guys it strikes me as odd that a ton of people twittered they just voted for red beacon even though the presentations weren’t over. That just smells weird. The same way if you look at the TC comments.. they are just a notch too positive then what normal coverage would be…
SOMETHING IS FISHY HERE
Local lead gen is a old idea from the late 90’s and servicemagic is the king in this space. Old school execution is the key here, for example signing up service providers is very lowtech and they will need a big callcenter sales team. Getting traffic is mainly a SEM/SEO game!.
Bottomline is i really doubt they are going to make it, lets see
Let’s hope they inspire Yelp to pick up their game.
50k is nothing compare to boost they will receive after tech50. Thanks techcrunch for helping startups.
Remind me what world changer business Mr. Heish started? oh, it was a shoes store.
If you watched Tony’s interview he stated it has nothing to do with selling shoes. He changed the way customer service is delivering value to customers. He doesn’t care what he sells, evidenced by their foray into electronics, apparel, etc. It’s all about the WOW. (and no, I don’t work for Zappos).
Congratulations to RedBeacon!
In Europe MyHammer is offering something liken a reverse auction plattform for plumbers et al. – and it’s doing pretty well.
I think the chance to get a service by a recommended company immedieatly could be the killer feature.
In one year we will know what start-up will have survived and upstarted.
Do you remember the winners of last year ? Name 4 besides Yammer.
Any of the 5 winners have a real business model or are they all hoping on advertising?
Or is the goal to get acquired soon?
Still can’t get over this pick.
Anyways the other opportunity here is that redbeacon/servicemagic/craigslist/angieslist firm should try and tell vendors why lost- was it rep, was it price, was it language in the profile, gimme a reason why i lost so i can improve.
Plus while yer at it, pulling in yelp info is nice and all but why not scrape all of the other RT services out there to add more clarity/noise to the party. Break out that semantic search engine and find relevant tweets aided by locational goodness to boot.
RedBeacon feels like 1999 all over again.
Very surprised that u-dorse didn’t show up in the final six or win. it seemed like investors were swarming those guys as compared to redbeacon table nextdoor
Weird year at TechCrunch.
Well done to them. I’d love to know from whoever had the final decision why these edged it over the others? You didn’t really mention it anywhere in the post. I would’ve gone with Anyclip or Citysourced as I think they have a higher chance of traction and overall success.
Overall the level was increased among the top few companies but nothing really comes close to Mint. I don’t think they’ll ever be a better company presenting at TC50. I’m not sure how some of the companies got through.
These sorts of businesses are already around in many local areas, we’ve had one where I live for years.
There is no competitive advantage, no unique technology, no barriers to entry, very hard time capturing a mass market, very difficult to scale….
I have no particular axe to grind re TC50, but choosing this as a winning business seems daft. One wonders what the selection criteria were.
Congratulations to all winning teams!