Durrant and Bertrang, Photo courtesy of LawnGuru
The app Uber helped revolutionize the way people travel, and LawnGuru hopes to do the same to the landscaping business.
Launched on May 11 of this year by MSU alumnus Skye Durrant and Brandon Bertrang, LawnGuru focuses on providing a new way to order lawn care services. What makes it similar to Uber is that LawnGuru is an app that allows customers to sign up to get their lawn cut and also offers different functions that improve customer’s lawn care experience.
“We began cutting lawns together in high school,” Durrant said. “We’ve been in this industry for over ten years now and what we realized over the course of ten years is that customers have started to expect a level of service that a lot of providers in the lawn and landscape industry aren’t really able to deliver.”
Some of the frustrations customers face include a lack of flexibility when it comes to scheduling, as well as landscaping companies unable to give accurate price estimates. The LawnGuru app circumvents both of these problems.
“The biggest thing that we hear from customers is that right now the existing model is based off of signing a contract where you are fit into a schedule that is normally weekly, but you know the 'one size fits all' method doesn’t really fit for a lot of customers. Not everyone’s lawn grows (at) the same rate,” Durrant said. “So an on-demand method gives control over when they have their lawn cut, so that if they need to spread things out a little bit, get an extra cut here and there, (or) if they’re having a party and want to freshen up (their lawn).”
“Before, as far as pricing goes, there wasn’t really a clear indicator of how much you would pay for your lawn. If you were able to get a hold of a service provider they would come out and say, 'Oh, this is going to be $30' and you wouldn’t really have anything to base that price on,” Durrant said. “Within the app we have a tool that marks and measures your actual service area and the price is a direct metric of that service area.”
Like Uber, LawnGuru has different landscaping companies sign up to be service providers with them. All service providers that sign up go through rigorous background checks, as well as having to meet requirements like having a business license and making sure they use professional-grade equipment.
Bertrang is the CEO of LawnGuru and also a graduate of MSU. The finance degree he earned at MSU has helped him while running LawnGuru.
“It taught me general business practices and corporate valuation,” Bertrang said. “We are about to enter a round of fundraising, so a big part of that is financial modeling and assessing a company’s value.”
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