TOPLINE PRO, "THE AI POWERED SHOPIFY FOR HOME SERVICES," ANNOUNCES $5M IN SEED FUNDING; GENERATIVE AI-DRIVEN PLATFORM GIVES RENEWED STRENGTH TO A CRITICAL U.S. INDUSTRY LEFT BEHIND

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Topline Pro (formerly ProPhone), a new Generative AI platform enabling home services professionals to scale their businesses online, today announced $5M in seed funding led by Bonfire Ventures (Jim Andelman), TMV (Soraya Darabi), BBG Ventures (Susan Lyne), and notable angel investors including Squire Co-Founder Songe LaRon, following participation in the Y Combinator Winter 2021 batch. 

Topline Pro is built for home services professionals to get discovered, build trust, and generate repeat customers. The intuitive, AI-driven interface rapidly and affordably creates a custom, SEO-optimized website to showcase their businesses; notably, the platform enables pros to have a website designed and launched in the same day—a significant acceleration from the average 30+ days spent by traditional marketing agencies. 

Once a pro's site is live, Topline Pro's AI helps them maintain a thriving online presence by generating additional content, syncing content to and from local listings, and putting social media communications on autopilot. The product further enables the pro to get paid through said website, seamlessly collect online reviews, manage local listings, schedule bookings and develop meaningful customer relationships. Topline leverages generative AI across its features to enable the business owner to improve the homeowner experience. This includes a better discovery to booking experience – therefore allowing the "pro" to do what they do best: honing their craft while working in the field. 

Co-Founders Nick Ornitz, CEO, and Shannon Kay, CPO, met and became instant friends at Harvard Business School. While there and at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they built a platform that virtually connected homeowners and plumbers (like telemedicine for home repairs) in more than 30 states. Through working on the virtual marketplace, they noticed an increasing rate of new solopreneurs and home service providers with many of the more than 4 million new businesses started in 2020 being solopreneur service businesses. Further, they recognized how COVID-19 transformed the way homeowners interacted with service providers online and observed that tech solutions had long overlooked these small businesses.

Motivated to make a difference, Nick and Shannon dropped out of business school to help serve a critical but long overlooked segment of the U.S. economy: the five million small business owners in the home services industry—landscaping to painting, cleaning to general contracting, and more.

Nick and Shannon's initial vision had evolved to become a first-of-its-kind platform, enabling those professionals to build uniquely branded online businesses, on their own terms. They are connected to the problem Topline Pro is solving from a mixture of experiencing it first hand while growing the virtual service marketplace and through family and close friends running small service based businesses.

Until the creation of Topline Pro, there have been few accessible opportunities for small home services businesses to grow beyond word-of-mouth referrals. Existing resources include marketing agencies and lead generation marketplaces, which either exceed the pro's budget or limit their ownership of their customer data. DIY website builders are often too time-intensive for busy owner-operators and do not offer a full suite of tools enabling pros to be discovered, trusted and booked repeatedly. By giving pros full ownership of the data they collect and the customer relationships they build, Topline Pro is empowering small home services businesses to scale with the platform and create a direct, proprietary flywheel of recurring customers. 

"Technology companies have overlooked solutions for small home service owner-operators, and we at Bonfire see this as a missed multi-billion dollar opportunity. Topline Pro brings Generative AI, automation and a world class team to empower millions of business owners to succeed in growing revenue potential while maximizing direct business" said Jim Andelman, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Bonfire Ventures. 

Topline Pro will use their recent funding to further expand Generative AI capabilities across the existing suite of tools, build out additional product offerings and develop strategic brand partnerships. 

To date, the platform has generated over $25M in job requests across more than a thousand businesses that are monthly subscribers in nearly all 50 states.

Topline Pro is a platform that empowers service based small businesses to get discovered, build trust, and get booked, repeatedly. Topline Pro utilizes generative AI to automate the creation of a SEO optimized website and ongoing online engagement along with tools that streamline operations from booking to payment. Topline Pro enables the business owner to own the relationship with their customers and grow their business while focusing on what they do best, exceptional service in the field. Topline Pro has generated over $25M in job requests across more than a thousand businesses that are monthly subscribers in nearly all 50 states.

To learn more please visit ToplinePro.com.

SOURCE Topline Pro