Investing in the “Easy Button” for Your Home

I’m excited to announce our investment in Birdwatch, a homeowner services startup. Social Leverage led the Company’s $3.2 million seed round, with participation from Starting Line, Berger Investments, FJ Labs, Path VC, and others. I’ll be taking a board seat.

Chris Rosenbaum, along with his co-founders, Stephanie Toler and Ryan Troll, recognized through past experiences that marketplaces and review sites cannot control in-home service quality. Local service providers have been commoditized and are ill-equipped in customer service. The industry primarily caters to episodic needs such as single, big projects or low-skill, hourly gig work. This leads to painful customer experiences when finding providers, assessing skill, scheduling, scoping, dealing with no-shows or late appointments, pricing surprises, quality control issues, and more.

So what’s the opportunity? It’s to avoid outsourcing the most crucial driver of customer value. In-home services hinge on the actual customer experience in the home, not just within an app. Birdwatch hires, trains and empowers their own service techs so that they can delight their customers with every visit. Whether it's repairs, enhancements, safety checks, or year-round proactive maintenance programs, Birdwatch enables customers to put their homes on autopilot. Service ease and reliability end up being the cornerstones of the customer relationship.

This funding will facilitate the expansion of Birdwatch's technology platform, aiming to be the 'easy button for your home,' and support staffing increases to keep pace with member growth. The company launched in January 2022 and currently operates in D.C. and Philadelphia. 

It’s a product I wish existed as I would definitely be a user and ardent supporter. But just as importantly, Chris has assembled a purpose-built team that is mission-driven to bring this product to market in an intelligent fashion with customer satisfaction as their north star. I’m just excited to be a part of their journey.

If you happen to be in either Philadelphia or DC and own your home, I’d love for you to try the service for yourself. The team has generously created a “leverage” coupon for the Social Leverage community which offers 25% off of the membership price for a year (a saving of $237 during the year). Check it out (apply the coupon on the payment page) and let me know what you think; we’d love any and all feedback - and hopefully to turn you into an ardent supporter and promoter of Birdwatch!