Lawn care providers can pick and choose what jobs they want to do through Lawn Love.Photo: Lawn Love
Lawn Love doesn’t like being lumped in with the “Uber of lawn care” crowd because according to its CEO, it is far more than that sort of system.
While it does have an app that homeowners can use to get a quote in two minutes, customers can also request services on their website or over the phone.
“They can still call us,” said Jeremy Yamaguchi, founder and CEO of Lawn Love. “They (customers) aren’t monolithic. Some people do want to talk to a person. They can fully self-serve but they can also talk to us.”
After entering their address, the backend immediately starts mapping and plotting their property, while they finish up by selecting their services, when they’d like the contractor to come by and how frequently.
“We have a very custom algorithm for quoting,” Yamaguchi said. “Using satellite mapping and through a mix of seven different variables, it spits out an estimate that is far more accurate than others, there’s much more precision.”
Using his background in software and engineering, Yamaguchi built Lawn Love’s backend in 2013 and launched the company in 2014. He says he started Lawn Love because he knew he could bring software and technology to the lawn care industry in a way that it hadn’t been seen.
“If you want to hire a lawn care professional, you have to call the lawn care company, wait for them to call you back, wait for them to check out your property all just to get a quote,” he said. “Then once you hire them the quality can be great or can degrade over time and then they have to start the process all over.”
With Lawn Love, this is simply a much more streamlined buying experience.
“We would not have a business if this wasn’t valuable for the lawn pros, they are fantastic 20-year veterans who are incredibly experienced,” Yamaguchi said. “We can bring them a pipeline of customers and we have expertise in large scale customer support, freeing the pros up to mow more lawns, letting them do what they do best.”
While most of the 1,500 lawn care providers who use Lawn Love get 25 to 45 percent of their business from the company, some have on-boarded their entire customer base through Lawn Love so the company handles all of the billing and lawn care companies are paid two days after the job.
Lawn Love is present in 39 states currently and is launching on five to 10 markets a month, compared to competitors who tend to add five to 10 new markets in a year. The full list of the cities it serves can be seen here.
Mowing is obviously the most popular service that Lawn Love offers, but it also prides itself on being a one-stop shop for customers for all of their garden needs.
Lawn care providers can requote jobs if the customer had inaccuracies.Photo: Lawn Love
Another element that Yamaguchi says sets Lawn Love apart from others who claim to offer similar services is selection of lawn care providers, only accepting five percent of all applicants.
Lawn care providers are required to have the necessary equipment and at least one year of providing professional services.
“We have a rigorous screening process,” Yamaguchi said. “We ask questions around each of the services they say they can provide, such as lawn aeration. We then do a quick phone screening to get a better qualitative sense of who they are, their experience, and if we think they’d be a good fit for the platform. Finally, we I-9 verify them and setup direct deposit to their bank account. If everything looks great, we give them a link to download the app and they can start claiming jobs immediately.”
Customers can book one-off mowings or schedule the frequency. When a homeowner requests a job, lawn care providers will be notified and they can decide whether or not to take it, but the jobs are first come first serve.
“What gets me most excited about Lawn Love, is that not only are we bringing lawn pros a huge pipeline of new customers, we’re also in effect democratizing technology.” Yamaguchi said. “We’ve built the best-in-class field service software out there, and have given it away to our lawn pros for free. This allows small, independent lawn companies to take advantage of the kind of software leverage that was previously only available to huge institutional players like TruGreen, and that’s incredibly exciting to me.”
