DoneRight: Pay For Performance for Service Professionals

It appears that Shameless Self-Promotion Week has become Shameless Self-Promotion Month. Not that I am promoting any more companies than I had originally planned. I am still only talking about those businesses in which I have invested on behalf of August Capital. But, it turns out, it takes more time than I had anticipated to sing the praises of such a fantastic group of companies.

Just this past Friday, Craig Syverson and I recorded the latest installment of VentureCast at University Cafe in downtown Palo Alto. I had recently been discussing with a friend the fact that University Cafe has very much become a part of the startup economy again. Folks like Rajeev Motwani and Ron Conway spend a fair bit of time meeting with companies at University Cafe. Practically any time you're there you can look around a see deals getting done. In fact, shortly before Craig and I started recording VentureCast, the guys at the table next to ours were banging out the details of some sort of financing. Unfortunately, they had finished their negotiations before we started recording, or we might have captured the blow by blow on tape.

A couple years ago I was meeting with an executive from one of my portfolio companies at University Cafe. While we were talking, Rajeev wandered by and told me to come say "hi" before I headed out. Rajeev was talking with a smart group of guys about their new company in the local advertising space. Those folks were the founding team from DoneRight (at the time called Perform Local). I was intrigued by their business, impressed with the team, and a short time later I ended up funding their company.

The CEO of DoneRight was -- and is -- Paul Ryan. Paul is a phenomenal technologist. He had most recently been the CTO at Overture and, thus, had been part of the team that had pioneered the very concept of pay for performance. The idea at DoneRight was to create a pay for performance local advertising network that would allow local service providers to purchase valuable leads through DoneRight. By aggregating demand through on and off-line lead generation techniques, service providers could use DoneRight as their marketing arm, paying only for the leads they received. On behalf of the consumer, DoneRight would screen service providers for professional licenses, BBB complaints and the like, and only accept professionals onto the service that DoneRight was comfortable guarantying. Given this data-intensive, data-driven service, there was no one better to build DoneRight than Paul.

Because local services are . . . well . . . local, DoneRight has been rolling out their network on a city by city basis. With each new city, DoneRight gains more insight into how best to provide consumers with the information they need to make informed buying decisions, while providing service professionals with the channel they need to scale their businesses. The service launched in San Diego, and has rolled out to Denver, Chicago, Houston and Dallas over the course of this year. In 2008, DoneRight will expand considerably, using what they've learned in their first five metropolitan areas to optimize the DoneRight experience on a nationwide basis. To date, over 1,000 home improvement professionals have entered into prepaid performance agreements with DoneRight. While other online services have failed to gain meaningful sales traction with local businesses, DoneRight has been able to sign up its first thousand paying customers in record time, because it is providing real, measurable results for its business customers -- In the short time that it has been doing business in these few metropolitan areas, DoneRight has processed nearly 500,000 consumer requests for referral to a DoneRight certified service professional. And that number will scale dramatically as DoneRight expands nationwide.

DoneRight is another business in which I invested because of my love of data. Ultimately, the lead generation business is a numbers game. How much does it cost to acquire a lead? What will a service provider pay for it? Does it scale? Those were the questions that needed answering. And given Paul Ryan's background, I invested, confident that Paul would be able to produce the necessary infrastructure to answer those questions and create a scalable business. And he has. Better yet, as Paul and the company learn more about lead generation on a local level, they are able to apply that knowledge to each of their metropolitan areas, making each city more efficient and the overall business decidedly more profitable. If you live in San Diego, Denver, Chicago, Houston or Dallas and are looking for a guaranteed service professional, DoneRight.com is the place to go. And if you are living elsewhere, stay tuned. DoneRight will be coming to your neighborhood soon.

Comments

[Anthony Riordan]

September the Nations first Performance contractors gathering. Papers being accepted to present your model.

Conference Message - How can we change Labor to bring back American Work?

How can we stop Union and Hourly setbacks from controlling the work force and education?

Should States claim performance workers without utilizing performance standards and concepts?

Can training new labor forces through temp agencies change business leaders belief on worker pay systems?

I am amazed I found someone using performance contracting because I am in a battle in the state of Maine for stealing what I have know as Pay for Performance contracting since 1989. SESCO Inc., sold conserved energy back to utility companies based on pay for performance contracting beginning in 1987 and by 1993 we were the largest residential performance contractor in the US. We also were given contracts with the polish government to teach pay for performance energy conservation methods and savings guarentees.

I operated a national training center training sub contractors, Insulation contractors, weatherization specialists and quality control from around the US on changing there work force from hourly, salary and bonus to pay for performance structure. Everyone traveled to our national training center in NJ. In 1997 - 2000 SESCO and Qaulity Conservation Services took on the nations largest Low income projects in the US winning the bids on California's low income energy service contracts. These 80 million dollar per year residential home projects were reduced to less than 40 million per year by doing these projects on pay for performance basis, only being paid for actual energy saved, being paid bonuses on Quality, customer service and longevity of Savings.

I give you this bit of info because I have been writing to papers, to web sites and to many other organizations with how Performance contracting and performance workers could change how business is done in almost every type of business. From marketing to actual sales in resuraunts, retail, production facilities etc. My feeling at the moment is that if temp agencies are set up utilizing performance contracting or performance worker concepts we could reverse the pulling out of business to other country's.

Who are these Doneright people and when did they start using performance contracting? I would love to get there assistance especially because the State of Maine is trying to claim they are doing performance contracting with state run conservation efforts and the program has no performance methodology that I am used to in the performance industry. Using bonuses only is not what it is about, it is about a complete work ethic from the office people to changing the efforts of the distributors.

I have a company named RESCUENERGY and I am looking at the moment to start marketing my performance concepts to other business here in Maine. I would like to know more about your concept and how you do your business models. The 150 or so performance workers that I have been associated with now have operations in Texas, NY City, NJ, Los Angeles. I ran offices in Salem Or., Washington state, San Diego, San Francisco, NY, NJ and Maine.

I can be contacted at rescuenergy@msn.com

I published (pay for performance contracting for Low income customers) it was published in the ACEEE Policy Manual in 1993. This can be found on the ACEEE web site and with your current concept and the contractor and management that have trained as actual pay for performance contractors you should find our interests similar. We were paid for energy savings only if they persisted. We had a complete pay for performance system from management to the warehouse to marketing. The team efforts also allowed us to complete more work with better quality and customer service than any other energy contractor. The ability for us to complete cost effective guarenteed results put many non profit and union companies on the war path in California and NY. The changes a work force like performance working can create can change industry's, change labor forces by paying people what they are worth, getting more work done at less cost with better quality and products that reflect our company were designed for the customer that still today are not sold retail because we designed them putting them at a higher quality rate and non cosmetic allowing more comprehensive installations. Anyway I would like to learn more about your company. I am now in Maine, recovering from Cancer and starting up a new wing of performance contractors. I ran into the state of Maine who are using the performance name with no true performance incentives or opportunities.

Regards,

Anthony F Riordan Jr.

New Organization to be finalized this September - Name subject to change

American Performance Workers Union (APWU)

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