This startup is making building contractors more efficient on their jobsites.
Push a button on your phone, a new box of nails arrives.
My father-in-law was a contractor, building homes in the Bay Area. So my wife grew-up as “errand girl” for his various jobsites. I’m not a contractor, but I am a notorious weekend warrior, building and fixing things nearly every weekend. And any project of mine ends up being 5–6 trips to Home Depot.
So when the founders of Stay Put pitched me on their startup as being “Like DoorDash for hardware and supplies”, I was immediately sold.
For building contractors, their time is valuable and any unexpected trip to pick something up costs them real money and takes time away from what they need to be focused on: managing projects and making clients happy. So the essential value proposition of Stay Put is easy to understand: contractors need to focus on building great things, not driving to Home Depot and Lowes.
On-demand delivery services for consumers have proliferated all over the world in recent years —in the US it’s Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates. In Latin America it’s Rappi, and in Europe it’s Getir and Deliveroo. Most of these are very horizontal platforms that will bring you everything from a sandwich to a tube of toothpaste. Consumers have fell in love with on-demand delivery.
But I think the next wave of opportunity may be for more vertically-focused on-demand delivery services, harnessing the fact that the concept has now become well-accepted but the horizontal platforms aren’t optimized for the specific needs on any one sector. Try sending a DoorDash driver in his Prius to get a full sheet of 3/4" plywood for you. That ain’t gonna work.
The co-founders of Stay Put (Greg, who is a successful contractor, and Yena, who is a user experience expert) are uniquely qualified to understand the needs and expectations of building contractors and deliver a solution that meets those needs. Stay Put is launching their beta on May 9th, and I expect them to do very well.
I know I’ll be signing up!
Stay Put will be doing a presentation at Demo Day for the 4thly Startup Accelerator on April 7th. You can request an invitation here.
