Alex Depledge and Jules Coleman solve their own – and everybody else's – problems. The London–based pair made a name for themselves with home–cleaner-booking website Hassle.com; now they're making home extensions easier to build with their new venture, BuildPath. In both cases, Bradford-born Depledge and Dubliner Coleman say the spur to start a venture came from first–hand experience. "It's a good place to start with a business," explains Coleman, 31.
Their journey started in 2011, during a phone call in which Coleman bemoaned how hard it was to find a good piano teacher online. The two had long been toying with the idea of leaving their consultancy jobs and launching a startup. Suddenly, they saw an opportunity.
"We realised that local service people - babysitters, music teachers, driving instructors - found it hard to get to the market because they weren't tech-savvy and were using leaflets in coffee shops," says Depledge, 36. "If you needed to find someone, you had to rely on word of mouth."
With developer Tom Nimmo, the pair started Teddle, a platform connecting customers with 27 types of service providers in their area. They realised that a specialised service would work better, so, in 2013, they relaunched as Hassle.com, an online marketplace which introduces customers directly to referenced, vetted cleaners.
With branches in France and Ireland, Hassle.com turned tech-minded Coleman and straight-talking, politically outspoken DePledge into rising stars of Britain's startup scene. Then, in mid–2015, Rocket Internet-backed German cleaning startup Helpling made a bid for the company, eventually acquiring it in a €32 million (£27.5m) deal. "It was like giving away a child," Depledge recalls. "But it was the right thing to do."
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Now the pair are tackling another domestic annoyance. "Both of us were building extensions in our houses and it was a pain," Depledge says. “It was painful to figure out simple things like ‘How can I extend this house?’, ‘How much is it going to cost?’, ’What is it going to look like?'."
Launched in 2016, BuildPath provides the answers. It scours government datasets to assess automatically whether a new building design is viable and how much it would cost, then provides that information within 72 hours, alongside designs for development options, courtesy of architects Rich Morgan and Nicholas Stockley, the company's only full–time staff.
According to Depledge, BuildPath currently averages a customer a day and is already breaking even. Will the pair have another success, second time round? "There's nothing like running a business together to become best friends," Coleman says. "It would feel very weird to start something without Alex."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
