A Charlotte startup expands its home-services marketplace to Raleigh
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StreetFair, a Charlotte startup running a home services marketplace for neighborhoods, is expanding its services to the Triangle — the company's third market after Charlotte and Dallas.
Why it matters: StreetFair aims to help homeowners discover and vet potential service providers, from gutter cleaning to tree removal. It's now available in North Raleigh, Morrisville, Cary, Apex and Holly Springs, StreetFair CEO Teddy Fitzgibbons told Axios.
- It ultimately hopes to expand to the rest of Raleigh, Wake County and potentially Clayton by the end of March.
How it works: StreetFair connects homeowners and providers by formalizing many of the word-of-mouth recommendations that happen in yards or on listservs or Facebook groups.
- "Homeowners tend to already want to use [the companies] their neighbors are using," Fitzgibbons said.
The StreetFair platform allows for neighbors to recommend providers, and it highlights how many times a business has performed services in a neighborhood, making it both a search and reviewing tool.
- For example, if you were looking for a leaf cleaning provider on the platform, StreetFair would show you how many times a specific company has worked in your area and what your neighbors rated it.
- StreetFair also notifies you ahead of time what work is scheduled in your neighborhood in the coming week. This gives neighbors the opportunity to book the same services. But more importantly, Fitzgibbons said, it allows companies to provide group discounts by more efficiently routing their work.
Zoom in: Founded in 2021, StreetFair has 42,000 users and 1,300 service providers using its platform across Charlotte and Dallas.
- The startup raised $6.8 million from investors, including Craft Ventures, in 2023, according to PitchBook.
- StreetFair only makes money by taking a cut of any work booked on the platform, but it is free to use for the companies and individuals.
What they're saying: Fitzgibbons said he wanted to expand StreetFair to the Raleigh market because he believes it has a lot of similarities to the Charlotte area and one of the startup's founding engineers lives in Raleigh.
- When it first launched, StreetFair had its first success in fast-growing areas like Huntersville, just north of Charlotte. "Suburbs are the sweet spot," he said.
- He believes it can replicate a lot of that success in the fast-growing subdivisions in Wake County by focusing at first on the areas around Interstate 540.