777 Angie Hicks: Co-Founder of Angi (Angie’s List)

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Kira Golden Show.

0:45Kara Goldin:Today, I'm so excited for our next guest. We have Angie Hicks, who is the incredible co-founder of Angie, which is, as many people know, is Angie's List, as well known as Angie's List, a home services brand that has helped over 150 million people maintain, improve, and love their homes. And Angie and her co-founder launched Angie's List in 1995 as a recent college grad going door-to-door to sign up members. And over the past 30 years, she's built one of the most trusted and recognizable names in the home services space, taking the company from startup to IPO through a major acquisition and later rebranding it to Angie.

1:36And along the way, she's led the company through reinvention after reinvention,

1:42Kara Goldin:all while staying close to consumers and using their feedback to shape the brand's future. I cannot wait to hear the secrets that she has behind building this incredible legacy brand in a fast-moving world of brands out there and why she believes the future of home and work is all about Angie's List and trust and doing things differently and all of that. So welcome, Angie. So nice to meet you. You as well, Cara. Thanks for having me. What a great, great idea that you had in, I guess, right before 1995, before you decided to launch. But for those who are not familiar with Angie and Angie's List, maybe they've been hiding under a rock over the many, many years that you started ago.

2:37Kara Goldin:But what is the brand Angie known for? And how would you describe it to people? Right. We help homeowners find quality pros to do work around their home. So whether they're looking to hire a remodeler, a roofer, a landscaper, an electrician, even a handy person, they can come to Angie and find companies that have been rated well and are skilled in that area to take those projects off their to-do list. because, you know, for a lot of homeowners, they may have a few dream projects they do in their lifetime. They might build that new deck or remodel their kitchen. I just did my kitchen a few years ago and I love it.

3:17But a lot of times home improvement stuff is just the everyday mundane things that happen. It's just like the furnace goes out or you've got a leaky faucet and getting those things off of your list is really important. It's really important for making your day go smoothly. So we want to help get the right crow out there in order to get that job done well and get you back on your normal tasks for the day.

3:40Kara Goldin:I love it. So take us back to the beginning. What sparked the idea? And I mean, you were just graduated from college. What made you believe there was a business in home services? Yeah. So it actually was my co-founder's experience. Bill was, had lived in Indianapolis and renovated a house there. It was his very first house. And he found this little business through a coworker that was a newsletter that kept track of which pros were great in kind of a few neighborhoods in Indianapolis. And he was like, oh, this makes home ownership. It's just so easy. I just go there, get a good name. It works out.

4:20Life is good. And then he moved to Ohio a few years later and he loves old houses. So he bought another old house, but then discovered that there was nothing like Unified Neighbors, that little business that was in Indianapolis. In fact, there was nothing like it anywhere in the country. And he had a couple of bad experiences with contractors he hired, and he convinced me that we should try to start our own version of Unified Neighbors in Columbus. Bill and I met when I was an intern for him in college. So he worked at a venture capital firm in Indianapolis, and I interned with him. And so when I was getting ready to graduate, he was giving me suggestions and ideas and then he threw in this, why don't you come and we'll start a business together?

5:04And, you know, your parents are going to hate the idea and, you know, I can't guarantee it's going to be successful, but the worst thing that happens is you have a good essay for business school. There you go.

5:16Kara Goldin:And so, so interesting, but such great advice. I mean, if you don't try, you won't know, right? That's right. I mean, it's like sometimes people ask the question of like, you know, is it better to start? When's the best time to start a business? There's no great time to start a business. You know, it's like when I look back on my career, I mean, I didn't know anything about business when I started a business. You know, so it was like the ignorance is bliss kind of theory. But I also had nothing to lose. I was 22. I mean, there's just not there's not a lot of downside at 22. I'm not responsible for a lot of things and stuff like that.

5:53obviously, as you get more seasoned in your career, you're going to have a lot more experience and knowledge and probably won't be experiencing everything in your business as a first like I did.

6:03Kara Goldin:So 1995, I happen to know very well that we weren't dealing with kind of the speed of you wouldn't be able to do, for example, a podcast or the data. It was very, very different. I worked for a company called America Online back in 1995. Our first email address was an AOL email address. So, yes. There you go. And I ran the shopping channel on America Online and was there for seven years. Yeah. So, grew it to, but again, back in those days, it was dial up. You weren't able to really have images. like I mean the Angie's List must have looked very very different. The Angie's List was a call-in service.

6:56You would just call in and talk to me. I would tell you the names of a plumber or electrician. I had a little simple database that I kept and then we had a newsletter that we published each month that had content around home improvement, had some coupons from highly rated pros but it was really a call-in service because at that point there wasn't you know it was probably it was two or three years after we started before we put up our first website.

7:20Kara Goldin:So, so interesting. So what was the biggest turning point maybe in that first year that really made you realize that this was not just one of Bill's crazy ideas, but one that, right, you were going to be able to actually create a company out of it? Yeah. I mean, you know, we did have the luxury of being able to see the, you know, the Unified Neighbors was a business in Indy. So we knew it could turn into a successful business. That business had been around since the 70s. And it was a little, you know, small business in Indianapolis that supported, you know, a team of four people. But honestly, our biggest challenge when we first started was sales.

8:06Unified Neighbors was built up via door to door in the 70s. you know so there was we had a blueprint for a lot of things we didn't have a blueprint for selling and our original thought was like hey we're just going to send Angie door to door which was like the worst idea ever I mean you know we were measuring sales in one or two a day and that's a$19 a year membership we weren't there was no big moment there you know so it was really for us once we decided to take some money invest in some local marketing so that we could flip that from you know kind of this on the feet on the street sales effort to you know people calling in so we took out a little two by three ad in the local newspaper uh that was like said tired of lousy service and call us and you can get the name of good plumbers or whatever uh you know that uh that little ad that little creative carried us for many years in fact we ran that exact little ad in the New York Times when we opened there.

9:05Kara Goldin:Wow, that's amazing. So, so incredible. So, did you focus just on Ohio or Columbus initially? And how long did that? Yeah, so our belief back then was like, local's local. You need to know Columbus. Like, you need to be there. You need to be a part of the community in order to understand it. So, when we first started opening markets, we actually opened physical markets in each city that we went to. So we went Columbus, then we bought the Indianapolis business a year later. Then we opened in Cleveland. And then from there, we actually had investors that lived in Charlotte and Boston. So I actually kind of jumped around a little bit.

9:46Kara Goldin:And at what point did you really feel like you were national? Yeah, I mean, it actually came to a point, it all revolved around our marketing. In our business, you know, The consumers, they stuck around. The pros, they'd stick around. So we were really driving this recurring revenue business, but it was the initial marketing expense that was the largest portion of our income statement. And so we were building it out on local marketing. This was before a lot of digital advertising was available and things like that. It was like we were buying ads in newspapers, radio ads, things like that. NPR was one of our biggest sources for ads.

10:28and I'm trying to think it was probably in like 2005, I think it was, I was getting ready to buy NPR and I think 30 markets. And I'm talking to Bill about it and we kind of went back and forth. I was like, it's like a million bucks. And he's like, you know, maybe we should try to see what that looks like nationally. So I go and I talk to NPR nationally. I come back. I'm like, well, good news. I mean, we can get it for 700 ,000 nationally. And he's like, I bet you get a lot more cities. And I'm like, well, yeah, we get 700. So that was the turning point for us. Once we could, you know, shift from being a local marketer to being able to really leverage our marketing, we went from being in 30 cities to 100 to 100 cities in about 18 months.

11:09So that was that was our big our big shift.

11:13Kara Goldin:But you didn't do that until 10 years. 10 years. I mean, 10 years in. And we were like, I tell people all the time, this was a slow grow business. I mean, the business was what, you know, we didn't go public till 2011. You know, so we were a 16 year old, you know, company that went public. What is the number one thing that people are looking for when they come to Beyond Help? What specific is it? Home improvement? Is it plumbing? is that what is that thing that everybody, maybe it's like the darling of your business that everybody seems to want? Yeah, I mean, the top few tasks are kind of oftentimes they're kind of evergreen, you know, so plumbing, you know, roofing, electrical, handy people, things like that.

12:07Those tend to be always kind of in that top list. But we have 500 different tasks. So, we can help you with anything that you can imagine when it comes to your home. And in fact, recently this year, we just launched over the summer an AI helper because I think one of the biggest challenges for homeowners is they're not always sure what they need. And so, you know, if you kind of say like, it's one thing if you come and say, I need a plumber. You're like, great, I can give you plumbers. But, you know, now we let people explain their problem. And our AI helper will go through based on kind of content and all the years of data that we have and be like, okay, let me ask you a few more questions related to what you gave me.

12:49And then once we get through that, then we can match to the right task. And that's really improved the experience for people that are using it. And I think that's one of the biggest things because, you know, people love their houses. I mean, you know, we love our houses. It's usually one of our biggest investments. We raise, you know, we live there, we raise our families there. There's lots of, you know, our life kind of centers around home. So when you're, so you want to make the right decision. You want to hire the right people to come in and take care of it. And so I, a lot of times we'll call it, these are high cost of failure hires, but we may not be experienced in it.

13:26Right. I'm like, I'm even in the industry and I have never been on a roof and I don't plan to because I'm afraid of heights. But, you know, I've put roofs on houses before and I have to trust that I'm getting a good pro that's going to do, you know, stand by their work and do a good job. So that's what we're providing is that support and kind of making sure that A, get the right type of pro, B, the pro does good work and, you know, it has a lasting impact for the homeowner.

13:56Kara Goldin:So revenue model. So how has that, what is it and how has that evolved, I guess, over time? How did it start? What does it look like today? Yeah, I mean, so when we first started, I mean, it was it was a you know, we we patterned the business after like a magazine subscription. So homeowners would buy us, you know, buy a membership to Angie's List. And, you know, pros that are that are rated well could advertise with us. But if their rating fell, then we'd pull their advertising. Over time, that consumer revenue line has shrunk quite a bit because we opened up the ability to check Angie for free.

14:38There's additional benefits for people who also want a membership as well. But the basic product, the content is free today. And then pros pay for either a subscription or the leads that they are matched with today.

14:54Kara Goldin:So what have been some of the biggest challenges that you've faced, I guess, over the last 30 years in growing the business? You have not only started the business and were very young, not with a ton of experience, and you grew it into a national brand, but also you went public. I mean, you've done a lot of things that many people will never do. So I'd love to hear maybe what was the most challenging and why was it so challenging for you? Yeah, I mean, I think that's interesting because I get this question a decent amount. Sometimes it's like, was it challenging because you were young? Was it challenging because you were a woman?

15:42And in some ways, like especially kind of before we went public, when we were starting to raise venture capital money, It was kind of proving that you could build a tech business in the Midwest. You know, we had people that wanted to invest in the business and were like, we will only invest in this business if you move to one of the coasts because we don't think there's enough smart talent in the Midwest. And, you know, luckily we were fortunate enough to be able to say no and be able to use that as a bit of a rally cry to go prove people wrong. But I think that's, you know, sometimes when, you know, people aren't pulling for you, it kind of pulls the team together in a really positive way.

16:26You know, so that was the case. I mean, you know, when I think about the business and how it's evolved, I mean, we've been through 30 years. I mean, we went from, you know, before the Internet to the Internet. It was like, how's the Internet going to play a role in this business and how do we tackle that change to, you know, we were we were the last in our space. to go free for homeowners. So there was also this question of like, you know, how do we, how do we make that transition from a revenue standpoint, which was a big process we went through. So it's continually continues to evolve, but I always come back to the fact that what we do has fundamentally not changed.

17:04How we do it, how we deliver it, things like that have changed, but kind of what's important. And you, you know, you hit on it in the intro. It's like, Trust is super important when you want to go and spend thousands of dollars. If I get a recommendation for going out to dinner and I have a bad dinner, I'm like, eh, it's fine. I didn't enjoy it. I'll get over it. Or I didn't like that movie or whatever. But when you're, you know, you're putting a new roof on and you're spending thousands of dollars to do that, that's a decision that really matters. And having that having, you know, that trust for where the source that you go to to find those pros is super important.

17:40Yeah, definitely.

17:43Kara Goldin:So the company is named after you. You just went through a branding, but how did you decide to do that? And would you recommend it to other people who are maybe thinking about, oh, I should name it after myself versus not doing that? Just a name. just a name yeah exactly i'm like right so so when we first started we did not name it after me we actually started as columbus neighbors we copied unified neighbors and called it columbus because we're in columbus ohio columbus neighbors and after about a year uh people were just getting the name wrong and they thought our newsletter was the list and they were just like well i guess it's not doesn't have what i need this month maybe it'll be helpful next month not realizing they could call in and get recommendations.

18:34And so we decided to change it. We debated like three names. And Bill threw it at the last point. He was like, we should call Angie's list because, you know, she answers the phone and that story works. So like even if she leaves, it'll still work. And, you know, and you know what? I was 23. We had probably 500 members at the time. Like this is I often say there were inconsequential decisions that turned out to be pretty big ones. In retrospect, that was probably one of them. The second one was being willing to be in the TV creative when the marketing team came and asked about it. So. I think I think it can be very powerful.

19:18I think you have to do it very authentically. and so you know as i kind of worked through this process i mean i've always told my my team it's like well you're gonna have to operate kind of in the world that i operate in like if if you know if we're writing a column that i'm authoring guess what i live in this world too and i get questions about what i write like everything has to align um and you know and and i think that's super important. It's like it is what it is. Right. So that was my big ask for them was like, you know, you can't put something out there that isn't who they see in the grocery store on Saturday.

19:57Kara Goldin:Yeah, that's that's so, so true. And I think that's how it worked, I guess, over those years is just that kind of element. But I do believe like, you know, people like people. And I think this is they like people more than they potentially like brands. And I think in our particular business where it's high trust, I think that has served us well because it's like, oh, you know, Angie's like my neighbor. Like people thought I lived in each of the cities. If you would have, you know, in the early days, you're like, yeah, she lives in Kansas City or she lives here. You know, that's an element of, you know, kind of just the brand persona that we built around.

20:40But I think it's important to think about. So I think that's a question I don't take lightly in retrospect. And I think people need to think about how they are going to live that out and be able to be that person 24-7.

20:56Kara Goldin:So you've talked to hundreds, thousands of consumers over the years. What are you hearing today that has maybe really shifted in terms of homeownership, but also maybe even like location, to your point, about building a company? so I'd be so curious to hear kind of like what do you see as what's happening for 2026 around this consumer that you're working with yeah I think you know one of the biggest things probably is just the cost these days I think you can't have a conversation you know you know we're all focused on how we're spending and how we're spending around the homes no different I mean I I think, you know, we're at our highest average ever for first time homeowner age.

21:51You know, so it's a different person coming in and kind of being that first homeowner. I tell people all the time there is probably no such thing anymore as the starter home because the silent generation, the baby boomers are not giving up their smaller homes. And, you know, you're likely not going to flip a house. So when you're going and buying, you need to think about what do I need this house to be for me in five, seven years, because I might not flip it in two or three years. Like we might, we might've thought about, you know, 10, 20 years ago. You know, also homeowners just need to be thinking about, I think it's, it's just a competitive market when they do go out and buy where they potentially, you know, maybe they're not getting their dream house, but they have to think about how their dream house is going to become, their house is going to become their dream house.

22:37So what improvements are they going to do? Things like that, that will, that will make that house just so they have it where they want it. So that element, I think, is continual, but people still are spending. It's not a question of do they spend on their house or not. It's oftentimes how they spend. You know, so maybe they're not doing the dream kitchen this year. They might be doing more maintenance type things because they want to make sure they're not surprised by some unexpected bill. You know, we're still going to take care of our homes. we just might be thinking about it differently.

23:09Kara Goldin:So, so interesting. So in terms of tariffs, we've heard about those over the last year. And I would imagine, especially some of the services that people are getting, that's going to change versus so and who do they call? Maybe some of them come back to you, right? And how do you deal with that? Because you're a known brand, right? And this is somebody that consumers got that contact through you. But price is something that is kind of out of people's control to some extent. Yeah. And I would encourage people as they're thinking about hiring is, you know, to make sure they're going into it informed.

23:56I mean, you know, we have cost guides that can help people kind of navigate like, hmm, I don't know how much, you know, a typical bathroom remodel might be. at least get me in the ballpark. And then I really encourage them to get, you know, two or three estimates, especially on larger projects, just so that they can understand the expenses. And, and I think the fundamental most important thing when you're deciding which contractor to hire is, is how well you communicate, how well you kind of go back and forth, because, you know, like, you should be able to have a frank conversation. It's like, okay, if tariffs are impacting this particular input to this project, what are my alternatives?