You Need My Guy: How a DryWall Mishap Sparked a Social Hiring Site
Time to read: 2 minutes
November 14, 2012
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Joe Cassara (pictured right) hired a drywall contractor who had multiple references, all of which checked out. Still, he left Joe with some poorly hung drywall and tasked with finding another handyman to fix the job he just paid for. While Joe was looking for a new drywall guy, he was struck with an idea for a new business: socially powered hiring site You Need My Guy.
“Social sharing has caught up with most processes, like sharing music you listen to with your friends through Spotify. But, certain processes haven’t caught up with social, like finding people to do business with,” says Joe. After mulling over the idea for You Need My Guy, talking to his “ace of a wife” and their friends in his hometown of Rochester, NY, his idea became a reality. In 2011, Joe received $250,000 in development investment from NYC based angel investor Kay Web Angels.
Joe’s aim is to help users of the site tap the multiple social networks they use when searching for a new person to do business with. “We’re all proud of the people we hire,” says Joe, “I like to think of what I’m doing as organizing word of mouth.”
Service providers on You Need My Guy can promote their businesses as they can on any hiring site, but they can also use social connections to make new business deals. Within the first week of You Need My Guy’s launch, one of Joe’s beta testers landed a contract from another user based on a Facebook connection they had in common.
Users can only list one ‘Guy’ per category, so if you’re browsing your friend’s You Need My Guy profile looking for a new carpenter, you can easily find your friend’s top pick for the job. All of the “Guy”‘s information is on their profile and you can request a callback, text, or have their information texted to you via Twilio SMS..
Joe is building the You Need My Guy team, hiring brand evangelists all over the country, and working on new security features for users like two-factor authentication for your login. He’s also working with chambers of commerce to onboard their entire member communities. To check out You Need My Guy, visit their website here.
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