PlatoDIY: Plato connects you with experts to solve tasks via video!

@christopher_lee4 Hey Chris! Glad to hear it! Hopefully we can spur a really interesting discussion around our service offering on ProductHunt. I've had some success in the past doing this. (We're not opposed to trying out Scoops either!) The more feedback and information that we can gather up, the better we're going to be able to position ourselves and make informed decisions about how we continue with our go-to-market strategy and even I the short-term, how we might pivot the offering based on those responses. One of the overarching reasons for Plato is to enable or really build a market around what we're calling "virtual contractors," or "virtual handymen." I'm not sure if you own a home or know someone that owns one. The biggest problems that people have with contractors is reliability and the quality of their workmanship. While you might find someone who has stellar reviews and an impeccable track record in terms of their quality of work, getting them to your house is another story. This isn't the case everywhere, but I can tell you with certainty, that it plagues a good deal of people, in every city or town within very state here in the U.S. (I worked with thousands of contractors across the U.S. in previous start-up. So, I'm talking from experience here. We had plenty of funding and money to pay the contractors, sometimes they just wouldn't show up to to the jobs we hired them to do. Such is life!) We want to enable contractors to earn money with their knowledge and expertise - virtually. Through video calls and/or chat. It's not necessarily going to replace their income, but provide them with another stream to earn, from anywhere - in the world - on a remote basis! (Side note: Our team is comprised of remote work professionals - all having close to a decade of experience each - working remote full time! We're huge proponents of this type of work! We're really putting an emphasis on it, in the handyman space, because we don't think anyone has done that good of a job in the market!) The second piece for why we're building Plato - is becuase talking with a professional live - is a little bit different than watching a YouTube video or following a set of instructions online. A simple example that I'll give to you is this: You have an electric or gas stove in your house and need to replace the grommet/seal that keeps the heat in the oven. You can take the serial number and model number and search online. You may or may not find the information quickly. What you find may or may not solve your problem - in simple terms. You could have an appliance repairman on a video call, quickly, who you could show your stove to over the phone, who could expertly speak about your appliance, and talk to you about it and what you're going to need to do, in order to repair it. Our idea is that the professional will be able to create a step by step plan along with the set of tools and materials that you'd need to be able to go ahead and fix the stove yourself. It eliminates the need for a technician to come to your house number one, and number two it saves you the cost of what it would actually take for that professional to come to your house and fix it for you. (This is going to spark a huge debate for sure - about taking money away from contractors, but we don't see it that way. There are still going to be people who would rather pay someone to do the work for them for a variety of reasons - including that it wouldn't be worth their time to do it themselves, they don't have the time themselves, or they aren't capable of doing the project on their own.) Our service is being built for the DIY'er. A segment of the population that cares about how they spend their money, has the time to do a project on their own, and even wants to learn how to do tasks like the one I mentioned on their own. We think that we're carving out a very specific and unique niche for a segment of the population with our service. We're not for someone who just wants to go get a set of instructions and do it on their own. (I.E. YouTube Videos, DIY Websites with Instructions.) We're offering a service that literally teaches someone with a virtual contractor LIVE - on a mobile device, tablet, or computer how to complete a task that their setting out to accomplish.

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GuardRails

Maker

We're actually looking for some feedback on the offering - we're literally at the intersection of an Alpha/Beta offering for the service we're proposing. Any initial feedback (good or bad) is more than welcome!

7yr ago

Vento

@imdavidpeterson Love the concept. How would you compete with Youtube DIY videos that are free? Also, hope I'm not being intrusive, but I have a market research service where for $12 you can ask 100 people a question then follow-up based on how they answered and even interview them! https://scoops.io/ Just thought it may help, seeing as you're looking for feedback :) Anyway If you want to give it a shot I'll pass you $12 in free credits. You can just sign up on the site and let me know which email you used over Intercom. Best of luck otherwise!