LawnStarter Inc. co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Ryan Farley remembers his scrappy startup days. He and co-founders Steve Corcoran and Jonas Weigert had founded the on-demand mowing and lawn services business in 2013 and moved from Virginia to Austin the next year to join the Techstars Austin accelerator program.
At the time, "Uber for X" was all the rage. Just about every promising on-demand service was booming, thanks in part to the wild success of on-demand ridesharing. And LawnStarter wasn't the only startup hoping to become a category leader.
But just as LawnStarter got accepted into the prestigious Techstars program, one of its main competitors, Lawn Love, was entering an even more exclusive program at Y Combinator.
"They raised twice as much at twice the valuation," Farley recalled. "And they also expanded to cities faster that we did. We kind of had the mindset that we wanted to focus on a few cities. They just kind of went national way faster than us."
The competition had LawnStarter worried.
"I literally remember not being able to sleep after their launch, pacing around the office all night wondering if we’d be able to compete," Farley said.
A year later, LawnStarter started pulling ahead, at least in terms of funding, when it secured a $6 million series A round led by San Francisco-based Binary Capital. The founders never looked back, and have accumulated $27 million in venture funding from backers including Lerer Hippeau, Edison Partners, Bull Creek Capital, Gary Vaynerchuk, Cotter Cunningham, Rony Kahan and Varsha Rao.
Fast forward to today, and LawnStarter is acquiring San Diego-based Lawn Love Inc. for an undisclosed amount in a cash-and-stock deal. The two companies will continue to operate under their brand names, with Corcoran becoming CEO of the merged companies and Austin remaining the headquarters. Lawn Love, which raised a total of $6.7 million from backers including Bullpen Capital, Y Combinator, Alexis Ohanian, Joe Montana and Barbara Corcoran, will continue to operate out of its San Diego office.
Both companies have a nationwide footprint, covering pretty much all major metro areas, and Farley said the combination creates the biggest on-demand mowing and outdoor services startup of its kind in the U.S. Farley declined to share revenue figures or discuss whether the company is profitable.
“This deal effectively teleports both Lawn Love and LawnStarter years into the future,” Lawn Love founder and CEO Jeremy Yamaguchi said in a statement. “It’s a dramatic acceleration toward our goal of empowering small business owners by providing the technology and tools to help them grow their businesses, compete with the big guys and ultimately thrive.”
Both companies act as marketplaces where consumers can use an app or website to order lawn mowing, landscaping, tree care, pest control land other services that are carried out by professional lawn care companies that have been vetted. LawnStarter has used aerial images, publicly available property data and customer input to automatically generate quotes for lawn mowing, as well as flower bed services.
While LawnStarter says it is the biggest player of its kind, Farley said it captures probably less than 1% of overall spending in lawn services. It competes for internet traffic with big players including HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Yelp and Angi.
"So what we're really competing with is kind of like the status quo," he said. "The old way of doing things."
Currently, LawnStarter has 329 employees, and Lawn Love has 73. The companies aren't planning any reductions as a result of the acquisition. Farley said the company will expand its engineering staff to help with integration of Lawn Love's platform and build new features.
LawnStarter doesn't have a specific plan to raise more funding. But, Farley noted, the company is eying other startups it might acquire, and it might consider new funding if it finds a need for it. In the past, venture money helped it edge out the competition.
"Having that amount of capital allowed us to take a bunch of really big swings and test a lot of things," he said. "A lot of them didn't work, and then a few things did end up working out. And it allowed us to really hire an engineering team to build out all the automation."
Farley said the company isn't focused on an exit right now.
"Everything's on the table," he said. "But one thing that's super important to us is that we want to control our own destiny. We don't want to rely on the next round of funding coming. We don't want to bank it all on going public or having a certain acquisition. We want to be able to control our own destiny."
