First launched on the iPhone in 2015, Mr Tradie makes it easy for Australians to find tradespeople in their area. Rather than tradies simply undercutting each other to offer the lowest price, Mr Tradie also includes an Uber-style ratings system so users can take into account customer satisfaction. Customers can rate tradies but not vice versa, although that feature might be added down the track.
Competing services tend to charge tradespeople a fee every time they provide a quote, regardless of whether or not they win the work, while Mr Tradie charges tradespeople a flat fee of $10 per month or $100 per year. It's a model that works better for both tradespeople and end customers, says founder Ishan Dan.
"When you rely on a cheapest quote system the good tradies tend to get beaten by the cut-price tradies who aren't necessarily qualified — which drives the good tradies away and can leave the end customer with a shoddy job," he says. "It becomes a race to the bottom on price which punishes the good tradies by forcing them to cut their prices to survive."
"Mr Tradie lists a customer feedback score, a bit like Uber, which means tradespeople are relying more on their reputation to win work than on offering dirt-cheap prices — if tradies continue to get bad feedback scores I kick them off the system."
The idea for Mr Tradie was born from Dan's conversation at the pub with several tradespeople friends who were struggling to find customers but were relying on word of mouth and referral networks rather than marketing and establishing an online presence.
Dan has no background in app development, he's a stockbroker by trade who works for a financial planning company but he studied both computing and finance at university. The hardest part of bringing the Mr Tradie idea to life was building the app, he says, with disputes over the first version of the iPhone app almost going to court.
The search for a replacement developer forced Dan to heed his own advice for hiring tradespeople; don't shop on price alone. He weighed up seven developers before going with Melbourne-based AppsCore.
"I started talking to a budget offshore developer who was pushing a cookie cutter design — it wasn't a tailored app, they just wanted to churn something out," he says. "At the other end of the scale a few of the developers I approached wanted to charge me $2000 just to listen to my idea, before they even did anything."
"In the end I went with the developer who loved my idea, listened to what I wanted and understood my vision but still had good ideas to contribute."
Altogether Dan and his investor have spent around $70,000 on app development, which includes two versions of the iPhone app as well as an Android version. His advice for people wanting to bring their app ideas to life is to invest lots of time and effort in the planning stage rather than making changes later which can cost thousands of extra dollars and delay the project by months.
"When you're talking to an app developer there can be a massive language barrier and it's hard to get your ideas across but if you make changes later it costs money, which I wasn't aware of when I started out," he says. "Second time around I had to draw a flow diagram of the entire app, explaining every page, so they could really appreciate what I wanted and then turn it into code."
"There are a ton of tradie apps out there which haven't taken off and when you install them you can see why, because they're so clunky. That's the difference between paying good money for decent workmanship and going down the budget path, you really do get what you pay for in the app world."
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