International Courant
Earlier than beginning a billion-dollar firm, Angie Hicks needed to overcome one in every of her largest fears: speaking to strangers.
Hicks – one of many two co-founders of Angi, previously often called Angie’s Checklist – calls herself an introvert.
But she can be the namesake behind Angi, a preferred on-line dwelling companies information with tens of millions of subscribers. At the moment the corporate is price $1.2 billion.
Hicks is Angi’s Chief Buyer Officer, a task she has held since 2017. However when the corporate launched in 1995, she wore many hats, typically actually strolling door to door to accumulate Angi’s first clients. It was a tough process for somebody who shunned interactions with strangers.
“I am very shy,” Hicks, 51, tells CNBC Make It. “Going door to door like that was my worst nightmare.”
Earn $20,000 as a Startup Founder
Turning into an entrepreneur wasn’t Hicks’ first alternative for a profession or a realized childhood dream. Earlier than beginning Angi, she was on her approach to changing into a guide.
Weeks earlier than graduating from DePauw College, she obtained a suggestion from a boutique consulting agency in Washington, DC with a beginning wage of $40,000.
However then her former boss, Invoice Oesterle, known as with one other proposal. Hicks had met Oesterle, a enterprise capitalist, throughout an internship at CID Companions, an Indianapolis-based non-public fairness agency.
Oesterle was dwelling in Columbus, Ohio, and was making an attempt to revive an previous home, a mission that may have been a lot simpler when he lived in Indianapolis, because of an organization known as Unified Neighbors, which helped individuals discover dependable contractors and different dwelling service suppliers.
Columbus had no related service, however Oesterle thought it may very well be precious there.
So he raised a 12 months’s price of seed cash — about $50,000 — and requested Hicks if she would transfer to Columbus and assist him co-found the startup, then known as Columbus Neighbors.
Angi co-founders Angie Hicks and Invoice Oesterle
Photograph: Angi
He supplied Hicks a $20,000 annual wage to assist run the corporate — half of what she would have earned as a guide.
“I hated it,” Hicks admits. “I am an introvert and have at all times seen an entrepreneur as charismatic and outgoing… I instructed Invoice, ‘That is not me.'”
However Oesterle did not surrender. “He stated, ‘If it does not work out, the worst that may occur is you have got an important essay for your enterprise faculty software,’” Hicks provides.
Uncertain what to do, Hicks consulted her grandfather, who finally satisfied her to affix the startup.
His recommendation was easy: “What is the distinction between being 22 and in search of a job, and being 23 and in search of a job?”
That remark resonated with Hicks. “It helped me understand that if I wished to take a threat, this was the time to do it — once I was younger and had so few duties,” she says.
An ‘inconsequential determination’ that paid off
The morning after she graduated, Hicks moved to Columbus and commenced figuring out of a 300-square-foot workplace down the road from the studio residence she rented.
Oesterle had a full-time job within the monetary world, which meant she typically labored alone.
“The opposite individuals within the workplace constructing thought my dad and mom had rented the house for me to do homework since I used to be so younger,” says Hicks, laughing. “The one window regarded out onto a concrete block wall.”
Members have been gradual to affix, however Hicks rushed to get the phrase out, from borrowing Oesterle’s neighbor’s Christmas card mailing checklist to marching in native parades to advertise the fledgling firm.
Whereas Angi’s medium has modified through the years – it began as a dial-up service and a month-to-month e-newsletter earlier than shifting on-line – the core enterprise mannequin has remained the identical.
Zoom in iconArrows pointing outwards
Angie’s Checklist shall be renamed Angi in 2021.
Supply: Angi
Angi connects householders with native service professionals for a wide range of duties resembling dwelling repairs, cleansing and renovations. Customers can browse service suppliers, learn critiques, request quotes and ebook appointments instantly by means of the platform.
As an introvert, Hicks says socializing and selling the enterprise did not come naturally. However she developed methods to change into a extra assured chief, resembling practising her script earlier than a tricky presentation or gross sales pitch and setting small, reasonable objectives to rejoice.
“If I offered one membership a day, I used to be very completely happy,” she says. “I additionally realized to sort out essentially the most tough duties first and save the enjoyable duties for later within the day, which helped me keep motivated and change into extra productive.”
Hicks’ perseverance paid off: inside a 12 months, membership grew to about 1,000, sufficient to show the idea’s potential to traders.
In 1996, the corporate modified its title to Angie’s Checklist after clients started to personally affiliate Hicks with the suggestions.
“On the time it simply appeared like a type of insignificant selections you make whenever you’re 22,” says Hicks of the title change.
The corporate, which went public in 2011, has persistently raised greater than a billion {dollars} since 2018.
Elham Ataeiazar
Constructing a billion greenback model
In 1998, Oesterle stop his job to work full-time at Hicks, and that very same 12 months the corporate moved its headquarters to Indianapolis, Indiana. Angi now has places of work in Indianapolis, New York Metropolis and Denver, Colorado. Oesterle, the longtime CEO, left the corporate in 2015. He died in 2023 on the age of 57.
Since 2016, Angie’s Checklist’s primary service has been free for everybody to make use of. The platform generates its income primarily from contractors, who pay to promote on Angi, and from paid memberships, which give reductions on extra companies for an annual payment.
The corporate, which went public in 2011, has persistently raised greater than a billion {dollars} since 2018.
And in 2021, Angie’s Checklist grew to become Angi. At the moment, Angi is a dominant participant within the $90 billion US dwelling companies market. In 2023 alone, Angi obtained greater than 23 million service requests from householders and generated roughly $1.3 billion in income.
For the total story on how Hicks helped flip Angie’s Checklist right into a billion-dollar firm, watch the most recent episode of CNBC Make It is Founder Impact.
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The 51-year-old introvert overcame her ‘worst nightmare’ to construct her $1.2 billion enterprise
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