After he graduated from Nichols School in Buffalo, Clarke Thrasher spent a year at the Loomis-Chaffee Preparatory School in Connecticut.
It was there he rubbed elbows with young men and women who were already preparing to make an impact on the world. He realized he wasn’t too young to push forward with his own ambitions.
Now a 20-year-old student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Thrasher is the co-founder of Helpt, a web-based marketplace that connects small business contractors and handymen to potential customers. The business was co-founded by University at Buffalo student Matthew Kavanaugh.
The Buffalo startup seeks to succeed where Angie’s List and Task Rabbit fail customers, by providing criminal background checks and a validation process for people using the platform. The two are seeking angel funding to support a summer launch of the service.
“There is no industry leader yet for on-demand service, for people who need help right away,” he said. “We want to change the world of service.”
Thrasher remembers the drives from his native West Falls to Nichols with his dad, a Hunt Commercial Real Estate broker of the same name, talking about business on the cellphone. You could call it a crash course in deal-making in Buffalo, and now the son is planning to make an impact on his hometown as well.
"I have aspirations to build and operate companies and solve environmental, social and economic challenges,” he said. “I just want to create companies, man, and put Buffalo on the map.”
