Angie’s List: another way to do reviews
Angie’s List raises another $7 million
Online review site Angie’s List’s pocketbook just keeps on growing. Last month, we reported that the company had raised $18 million. Now comes another $7 million this month from Prism Mezzanine Fund. The money is $6 million in subordinated debt funding, as well as $1 million in equity investment.
And let’s not forget the whopping $35 million injected into the company in April from Battery Ventures. Add it all up and that’s $60 million this year, $73 million since it was founded in 1995. The site has 750,000 subscribers.
The full release is here.
International expansion planned by Angie’s List, Servicemagic
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (at the BIA Kelsey Interactive Local Media conference): Look for expansion into Canada and the U.K. next year by Angie’s List, a subscription-based site that focuses on home improvement providers. Competitor Servicemagic, a free competitor, has moved into France and is targeting Germany as its next international expansion country.
Angie’s List founder Angie Hicks today said that the company will use some of its $18 million in new funding (announced this week) to open two offices in Canada and probably one in the U.K. next year. She didn’t say where they would be.
Angie’s List has a very unusual Webby business model, because it charges for access to its listings. It also publishes a print magazine in each of the 120 U.S. markets where it operates, and it sells advertising to contractors and home-service providers that are rated highly by consumers.
Despite the economy, Hicks said Angie’s List is having its best year in advertising revenue, and October was its best month — because contractors who were highly rated used to be very busy, but are now finding that they need to increase their marketing to stay busy.
Rodney Rice, cochairman of Servicemagic, said his expansion plans were boosted by the international merger-and-acquisitions arm of IAC/InterActiveCorp, its parent company, which helped identify an acquisition target in France and complete the purchase.
Angie’s List raises $18 million
Who says you can’t raise money these days. Lighthouse Capital Partners has put $18 million into home improvement and contractor online listings and review service Angie’s List. That’s after $35 million that Battery Ventures put I earlier this year in April. All told, the company has raised $65 million in the 13 years since it launched.
Angie’s List says it will use the funds to add new categories and to go international. The site added health care providers in March.
The site chargers users a membership fee to access listings. We wrote about Angie’s List previously here. Competition includes two IAC sites: Service Magic and Insider Pages.
Angie’s List has 750,000 members in 124 major cities across the United States.
Workstir aims to create a more trustyworthy Craigslist
You found a handyman on Craigslist who sounds great on paper. But how do you know he’s any good? A new startup, Workstir, hopes to take some of the guesswork out of the search process.
The site, a kind of Craigslist/Yelp/EBay hybrid, lets you post your ”looking for” requests to a forum where service providers can contact you directly through e-mail. Each service provider has its own Workstir profile with pictures, interests, and most importantly, reviews from other Workstir users who have dealt with the provider in the past. Service providers can receive mobile alerts so they can quickly respond.
Workstir is essentially a free version of the already popular Angie’s List which charges $5.25/month to consumers to browse. Service providers can list for free but only after they’re recommended first by a member. Angie’s List has some impressive numbers: 750,000 members submitting 40,000 reviews a month. There’s also a “penalty box,” a kind of wall of shame where bad companies go to die.
Workstir as a free Angie’s List is a good idea, but as with any new site, the proof will be in the number of reviews that appear on the site.
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