Minnesota Cup Finalists Set to Release Free Referral Platform for Friends and Neighbors

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: 

Dan Linstroth

Dan@BeHeroic.com

When hiring a professional for a home improvement project, most homeowners first turn to friends and neighbors for recommendations.  According to Nielsen, 92 percent of people trust personal referrals from within their own trusted community, more than any other for of advertising including online consumer review sites.

Heroic, a new Minneapolis-based startup, aims to capture the power of the friend referral and modernize the process of hiring home service providers with a new online word-of-mouth platform.

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“We heard the same response over and over again in our research,” says Justin Barrett, co-founder and CEO of Heroic.  “There is a lot of apprehension when hiring someone to come into the home and a personal referral from a trusted friend alleviates a lot of that anxiety.”

Barrett and three friends, all from the Twin Cities, saw the need and formed Heroic to help facilitate the natural word-of-mouth conversations that have been taking place for centuries.  Work is currently underway to sign-up eager homeowners who are interested in service referrals and a public release of the new site is slated for early 2013.  Additionally, the team is working on a mobile application to be ready later in 2013.

The process of hiring a home service provider can be complicated and many companies have been trying to identify a solution for a long time.  So, what makes Heroic different?

“First and foremost, it is free to use,” said Barrett. “Second, the referrals are personal, not from strangers or unknown brands, but from  friends, neighbors and colleagues.  A recommendation from a trusted friend validates the service provider and makes the buyer feel more confident in their purchase.  It’s never a guarantee, but a much safer bet.”

Site users first create custom lists of their favorite local home service providers ranging from house cleaners to interior designers, collecting all of a homeowner’s providers in one place, ready for hire.  They can then invite friends directly from the site via email contacts or Facebook connections to join them and share referrals.

“The organization of favorite providers is valuable, but the sharing component is what gets us excited,” said Dan Linstroth, Heroic co-founder.  “We have many friends buying their first house. Hopefully sharing referrals as they hire people will make the process more enjoyable and less stressful.”.

As service providers are added to Heroic, they can remain on the site for free and take advantage of the boost in referral business, a big part of any service providers marketing efforts.

This will hopefully increase the referral business for the best professionals and give providers an added incentive to perform  excellent service and ask for the referral on Heroic.

To sign up for the the upcoming release, please visit http://www.beheroic.com/. For additional information, please contact Dan Linstroth at 612-408-1828.

“As the local housing market begins to pick-up, so will home improvement projects,” said Barrett..  “In an industry clouded with skepticism, doing the proper research before hiring professionals is an essential part of the process.  Heroic could prove to be the right solution.”