Home improvement marketplace Porch on Wednesday snagged a $20.6 million Series C equity funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to $119.9 million since 2013.
Moderne Ventures and HVAC distributor Watsco led the funding round, and Porch CEO Matt Ehrlichmann told tech website GeekWire the $20.6 million will be used to fund operations and move the marketplace closer to profitability.
Porch is a home improvement marketplace that connects homeowners with professionals to complete simple household repair and maintenance tasks, including TV mounting, assembling furniture, repairing faucets and toilets, and completing deck repairs. All requests are done through the Porch app where homeowners can book, schedule and pay for projects.
For more complex projects, homeowners are able to find licensed professionals through Porch’s Pro Network. Porch vets each professional listed on the site and offers Property Protection that gives homeowners $1,000 to offset any loss due to faulty work.
As noted by GeekWire, this is Porch’s first funding round since 2015, when the company raised $65 million in Series B funding.
From 2016 to 2018, Porch took what CEO Matt Ehrlichmann called a “pause” after inking several major deals with companies such as eBay and Lowe’s and rapidly doubling its headcount to more than 400 employees.
Matt Ehrlichmann
“We gained a tremendous amount of attention, were in the press and on TV frequently, developed important and deep relationships with great companies such as Lowe’s, and revenue grew rapidly,” Ehrlichmann explained in a 2018 blog post. “Yet, as we rounded the corner of 2015 with more than 400 employees, I saw holes in the core economics of our business model.”
“If left unaddressed, it was clear that these issues would ultimately prevent us from scaling the company and achieving our vision,” he added.
As a result, Porch cut its headcount by 20 percent and backed away from making public announcements or participating in conferences. Ehrlichmann even stopped posting on social media, a move that stoked rumors of an impending shutdown.
However, Ehrlichmann said the two-year break was essential for the company’s survival, and they’ve since been able to scale their team back up to 450 employees.
Since its resurgence in 2018, Porch has created a partnership with Facebook to help users find handymen through a Porch integration with Facebook Marketplace. In 2019, Porch announced a partnership with Keller Williams to provide agents with a Porch Repair Estimate Report via KW’s Command CRM.
Porch has also acquired home repair and moving services startups, including Serviz, Kandela, HireAHelper.
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