Porch, a portal that connects homeowners with home improvement professionals, has raised more than $65 million in a series B funding round that it will use for a growth push.
The Seattle-based firm says it will use some of the cash on a national rollout of “Porch Booking,” a service that lets users of the Porch App hire home improvement professionals at prenegotiated prices.
The latest funding round — led by Valor Equity Partners with participation from Lowe’s Companies Inc., Founders Fund, Battery Ventures and Panorama Point Partners — brings the total raised by the 2-year-old startup to $100 million.
Over the past 12 months, Porch said the network’s revenue and membership has grown tenfold, and the site now includes insights on over 130 million home improvement projects and a database of more than 3.2 million home professionals, including real estate agents.
Consumers can use Porch to find home improvement professionals in their area and see details about their past projects including their cost, what they did and the value of the homes worked on. Home professionals can pay to raise their visibility on the site.
Porch profile page for a roofer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Porch announced a partnership with the home improvement store Lowe’s in April, making the platform a referral resource for Lowe’s employees helping homeowners with remodeling projects. More than 250,000 employees at 1,700 Lowe’s stores nationwide have been trained on the Porch platform.
Porch also established a partnership with realtor.com last March that gives home shoppers access to Porch reports on the remodeling histories of homes they’re checking out on the portal.
Home improvement is a hot corner in online real estate.
In October, Porch competitor Houzz raised $165 million and launched an online store where users can choose from over 1 million products and materials.
Another startup, Pro.com, launched in May with $3.5 million in seed funding. It, too, aims to connect homeowners with service professionals. In July, it partnered with home improvement retailer Build.com to help consumers estimate the full cost of a home remodeling project.
