The Guelph-based company bidmii is keeping its operations local as it progresses in unifying the home renovation industry while eliminating the hassle.
The company announced on Wednesday it has received $1 million in pre-seed funding, headed by Scott McGillivray, a host for HGTV, Canadian entrepreneur and University of Guelph alumns.
“We did some outreach and when we met the team from the McGillivray Group it just really clicked, and we just felt perfect,” said Jon Christensen, CEO of bidmii. “We also love the fact Scott kind of came up in Guelph and it’s where he got his start with the rental properties, so it had this hometown feel which was really nice.”
Staying true to their Guelph roots, bidmii opted to open their newest office in Guelph instead of moving to Waterloo which is the home of Ontario’s booming tech industry.
Opening the brick and mortar office on Oct. 1, the company said the hometown pride and opening a location in Guelph was more important to the company as opposed to moving out of town to be in the tech zone.
“Marketplaces have already transformed so many of the industries in our day-to-day lives, from food delivery to transportation, and vacation rentals,” said McGillivray in a press release. The home renovation industry generates $80 billion dollars annually in Canada alone. “It’s easy to see the huge potential that bidmii has to better connect and ease the pain points for both homeowners and contractors. This industry is vastly underserved and it’s time for its own face-lift.”
Pre-seed funding also came from, among others, Tom Newton, the vice-president of engineering at Shopify and Andre Belisle, dealer-owner of JL’s Home Hardware Building Centre in Guelph.
“The bidmii team has developed a compelling solution with a scalable tech stack to improve the renovation experience for homeowners while eliminating unnecessary expenses for contractors,” Tom Newton in a press release. “With their aggressive development pipeline, there is a clear path for bidmii to become the de facto lead generator and payment processor for renovation contractors.”
The new funding announcement brings the company’s total funding to $1.5 million dollars.
Christensen said the funding will be used as a three-pronged approach, with each one helping the company expand and generate a better user experience.
The funding will be used to build the company and hire additional staff, developing features to further curate the user experience on the platform and to continue to scale the platform across Ontario.
Connecting homeowners with reliable and trusted contractors to complete their projects, bidmii allows for contractors to easily connect with qualified homeowners allowing them to focus on getting the job done.
Earlier this year, bidmii announced a partnership with local start-up Rent Panda, which connected landlords with contractors to ensure a speedy repair when property maintenance issues arise.
