How a messy apartment made millions for young Dubliner

When Oisin Hanrahan couldn’t find a cleaner for his ‘messy’ Boston student apartment, little did he know that solving this problem would make him millions.  Oisin and his room-mate – fellow business student Umang Dua - were inspired to found Handy which sources  cleaners and repair people for clients in “under a minute”.  Oisin, who spoke recently at The Business Show Virtual Summit online, personally made several million dollars in the sale of Handy to a major multinational group two years ago and recently raised $110m for the company he still runs. It’s a far cry from one of his first jobs - scrubbing dishes at a hotel near where the 36-year-old was born and grew up in Rathcoole, Co. Dublin. 

Where did the inspiration for Handy come from? I met Umang Dua, my co-founder, while at business school in Boston. We struggled to find cleaners we could trust to tidy up our messy, college-style apartment, and spent an inordinate amount of time reading online reviews and negotiating over pricing. We recognised a lot of flaws in the market, and as consumers, we wanted those problems to be fixed. So we created Handy as an alternative, on-demand solution, allowing consumers to find a cleaning or repair professionals with ease. 

What was your first paid work? One of my first jobs was washing dishes in a hotel kitchen in Saggart during secondary school. It was tough, but it taught me the value of hard work early on, and I’m grateful for that. 

How did you get from that to a multi-million dollar business? Timing and perseverance are important. Each stage of my entrepreneurial journey— from washing dishes, founding a real estate company in Budapest, to working in venture capital in London— helped inform the way I approached building Handy. It all came down to being in the right market at the right time.

Is it still possible to raise that kind of money now?  When we were raising money, we emphasized the size of the opportunity—home services is a $400 billion category—and our team's ability to tackle that opportunity. For anyone raising capital, the market size is a really important topic. 

It's absolutely possible to raise that kind capital today. While the funding landscape has changed since we last raised, there is still plenty of capital available. Talented entrepreneurs can probably raise more than ever. 

Was it hard to raise funding as a young guy?  Sometimes youth helps! When you’re just starting out, all you hear day after day is “no.”

Is it easier  to do it in the US?

I had been founding companies in Europe since my teenage years, but there’s something about the entrepreneurial spirit of the U.S. startup ecosystem that I found to be energizing. 

How is business in the pandemic?  We’ve been very fortunate. When the pandemic hit the U.S. in March, we saw an initial slowdown in consumer demand. But since then, demand for services around the home has actually increased and remained higher.

It makes sense, right? The home has had to stand in for everything that people can't access: offices, gyms, schools, and countless other activities. Because of this, there are more broken toilets, dishwashers, ovens than ever before. All of this means that services like ours, which make it easy to book home repairs and improvements, are more in-demand than ever.

What’s the secret of post Covid-19 business success?

There has been a massive normalisation of online activities, including everything from grocery shopping to virtual meetings. Home services have been gradually coming online over the last decade, but consumers are now comfortable with making big-ticket purchases on their phones.

The second trend is that, as a result of the pandemic, people are moving out of cities and into more comfortable homes in suburban and rural areas. Focus and spending have shifted from activities outside of the home, to activities around the home. All of this ultimately equates to more demand for home services.

What advice would you have for ambitious tech companies in this environment?

The most ambitious tech companies have to be extra diligent about how they treat their teams right now. Everyone is under an incredible amount of stress. I've been lucky to get more time to spend with my 1 year-old daughter, but parents who are juggling full-time jobs while trying to take care of school-age kids face a pretty impossible situation. 

What does the future hold for Handy?

Since we sold the business to ANGI Homeservices two years ago, we've accelerated our mission to make it as easy as possible for people to take care of their homes. Part of that involves scale—simply making sure that we have enough pros, who cover enough services, across enough zip codes, so that customers can always find the service they need, when they need it.

We are also accelerating our partnerships with top retailers to give their customers access to the services they need to enjoy their purchases. We work with Walmart, Wayfair, Google Nest, 

Costco, and others to make their customers' lives easier. We'll be announcing many more partnerships in the coming months.

How does an Irish guy succeed in the US?

(It) would have been easier (without).. an impossible-to-pronounce Irish name! But I came here first for business school and then stayed because Handy made much more sense as a US-based company. For a business like Handy, access to the market size of the US, above all else, makes it an attractive location.

Oisin will addressthe 2nd editionof The Business Show summit called “Workforce Evolution”, focusing on the Future of Work, in early December 2020.