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Flat

Your pets get more care than your home at times, it's about time your home gets a CheckUp.

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Brent Hasse
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    Real Estate/Construction
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    Rest of the US
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  • Project Description

    Our pets see the vet each year, your car gets its oil changed, but why isn’t our largest asset, our home, looked after proactively? The new homeowner generation does not know their home needs proactive maintenance. If they do...they don't know what to do. If they do...they don't want to do it themselves. Even once they identify an issue, they don’t know who to call. Customer Problem: The proactive home maintenance process is broken (or non-existent) resulting in unnecessary, expensive repairs, and headaches. Homeowners do not know or do not want to perform proactive maintenance on their homes. When they do, finding someone to perform the work is difficult. That is where Flat comes in. Flat is a proactive home maintenance and management service that helps flatten the cost curve, educate, and make the process of home ownership easy. Through our twice a year Home Checkups we document over 50 inspection points throughout your home. We use that data to establish a baseline to build upon and retain the value of your home. If any repairs are needed now or in the future a Home Capital Planner is provided with suggested repairs broken out into 3 categories based on urgency. When you are ready to move forward with a repair, it is as easy as clicking a button and scheduling the repair date and time. We aggregate data publicly available and from our own quotes to prepare a flat, fixed rate price for most repairs. Our service costs $399 annually for each of our customers.
    Flat

  • Why is the timing right for your idea?

    The pandemic has led to a younger generation becoming first time homeowners, the same generation who has not gravitated towards the trades, resulting in lack of knowledge around working with your hands. Amazon, Uber Eats, Postmates, etc. have created a generation who would rather spend slightly more to remove the burden of doing the act themselves. Combine these two and we are nearing an inflection point. For our partners there is a lack of access to data inside your home that will result in a reduced risk for these insurance, mortgage, or other lending partners. There are many companies who have made it very easy to find a home, find financing, and close on homes, however, very few who help you proactively maintain it.

  • What is your competitive advantage?

    My background is in building management services, along with owning & operating multiple rental properties. For the last 10 years I’ve been learning from some of the leaders in Chicago real estate from both the commercial and residential markets. There is an art of how to treat customers, how to treat vendors, and how to manage blue collar workers. Managing a $25M business with 70+ employees in one of the highest stress environments in the world has prepared me for this step. The current PropTech space is filled with financial companies, lead generation companies, or home repair/maintenance companies who put it on the homeowner to perform the work. We would be one of the first companies to combine the technology and concierge service.

  • What will you do with $10,000?

    Flat is 100% bootstrapped from me so far. I am currently using a WordPress website I built with the help of YouTube and blog posts, a 3rd party app (Fulcrum) as my data collection tool, Google Sheets and Docs to create the Home Checkup Reports. The biggest drain on my time and scalability is the time it takes to create the custom Home Checkup Reports. This money will be used for a UX designer and developer to create an API from Fulcrum to a customer report, that allows me to create a user friendly report semi-automatically with pricing pulling from our database, link to schedule repair services, and showing maintenance tasks completed while onsite with corresponding pictures/video. I will also use AirTable, etc. to scale.