Former small service business Zippity has undergone a pandemic transformation, launching its own field service app and bringing in new funding to fuel its expansion.
Earlier this month, Boston-based Zippity announced $3.3 million in seed funding led by York IE. Schooner Capital, BP Ventures, LaunchPad Venture Group and EmergingVC also participated in the round. Ed Warren, Zippity’s founder and CEO, said the funds will help expand its new software into the home service industry.
“We just have a unique background in the space having been a small service business ourselves at the beginning,” Warren said. “We really connected with blue-collar, working-class professionals in this space. And it really opened our eyes to how much that segment of the population gets overlooked … from a software company standpoint.”
Warren, an Air Force veteran and Dartmouth Tuck School of Business graduate, ran into one car problem after another before he decided to start the business. He founded Zippity in 2017 as a mobile car mechanic company tasked with delivering on-site car maintenance to businesses across New England.
“We would bring a trailer on to Fidelity’s headquarters — big corporations like that — and service the cars of the employees while they were at work,” Warren said.
Zippity also created a digital platform for employees to book services online, get photo or video updates and communicate with technicians.
Sign up for The Beat, BostInno’s free daily innovation newsletter from BostInno reporter Hannah Green.
Then, the pandemic stopped most people from going into the office.
“We had an opportunity to do a couple of minor pivots or we could do a major pivot, but we couldn’t just do nothing,” Warren said. “That’s kind of a classic military training thing. You keep making decisions. You can’t just wait for something to change.”
Warren and his team leaned into their digital offerings, using 2020 to build and test a new app based on their previous internal software. At the end of 2020, Zippity sold its car service business and formally launched the software platform in January 2021.
Business owners using Zippity’s app can schedule appointments, create service reports, message customers and manage their payments. The software takes into account driving time and routes when scheduling appointments. The app costs $99 a month with no long-term contract.
At first, the app built on Zippity’s connections in the car industry and served small business owners in the automotive mobile detailing and maintenance industries. Now, Warren said the company is making inroads to the home service industry, including power washers, carpet cleaner and plumbers. He said hundreds of businesses are on the platform.
Between Zippity’s two iterations as a car service and software company, it has brought in $12 million in funding.
“We essentially recapitalized the business with this last pivot as it’s an entirely new business at this point,” Warren said.
Over the next year, Warren said the company’s seed funding will be used to connect with operators in different industries and set up the company for a Series A round in late 2022.
Warren said the company’s pivot coincides with several trends caused by the pandemic. First, more people are working from home and tackling at-home maintenance and projects. Some of those who got laid off or quit jobs during the pandemic are launching their own small service businesses.
Zippity’s platform, he added, is the perfect tool for these entrepreneurs.
“They’re innovative. They’re scrappy,” Warren said. “They’re looking for new solutions and Zippity fits really nicely into that broader trend.”
