Business & Tech

Former College Roomies Start New Online Business

Hackensack native behind new tech start-up.

The transition from college life to the real world helped two former roommates dream up an idea for a small business they think will help both businesses and consumers in the local area.

Scott Consentino, a former Hackensack resident and Hackensack High School graduate, and Michael Lieberman lived together while studying at Boston University. After graduating in 2001, the two stayed friends, keeping each other in the loop on personal, and purchasing, decisions they were making.

When Consentino got married and bought his first home in Mahwah last year, the two began dreaming up a new business model.

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“There were just so many projects I needed to hire people for at the house,” Consentino said. “It was pretty overwhelming.”

Around the same time, Lieberman, who lives in Hoboken, proposed to his girlfriend. He too said the hiring process for all aspects of the wedding was a growing, and daunting, task.

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“You literally can spend all day on the phone cold calling places, getting estimates, doing research and trying to compare different companies,” he said. “It’s endless.”

From their frustration, SpendBetter, Inc. was born. The two longtime friends developed an online platform that connects local customers with service professionals who bid to be hired.

Spendbetter.com allows consumers to post details about services they need. They can choose from over 100 categories, ranging from home repair and event planning to tutoring and dog-walking. Using drop-down menus, the consumers upload details about what they are looking for, state their budget, and can upload photos and additional information.

The details of the job are then emailed to every relevant service provider within a 25-mile radius who has registered with the site. Service providers can assess a job, and contact the consumer to make an offer for the job.

All communication is done through an internal email service built into the website, so customers' personal info is not shared with the businesses. Once a bid is chosen, it is up to the person and the business to exchange contact information and set up the logistics of the job.

“You control your own information,” Consention said. “That’s something that is really important to us.”

Consentino called the phonebook method of hiring service professionals “outdated. This saves you time and money – you can compare bids, and users who have indicated on the site that they have accepted a bid from a company can then leave a review of that company. You can gather information much more effectively and much more quickly than you would cold calling a couple of businesses.”

The two say the site saves more time than similar platforms, like Angie’s List, where user still need to call each service professional to explain the details of the job individually to them.

“We also focus on local connections. So, for service professionals, they are learning about what’s going on in the community, and getting a shot at jobs they may have never known about,” Lieberman said.

Though the two hope to charge a flat rate to businesses who sign up to use the site one day, for now it is free for everyone – those looking to hire and those looking to be hired.

“We don’t want to start charging until everyone in the community is involved,” Lieberman said. It will remain free for customers, they said.

The site, which the partners say took six-months “to build from scratch,” accepts posts from anywhere, but is currently focused on businesses and users in North Jersey and the tri-state area. Eventually, they hope to expand, becoming a national platform that can connect people on a local level.

Since launching in April, the two say SpendBetter.com is going well. “People and businesses are signing on,” Lieberman said. “Now, it’s just a matter of getting the word out, because I think both sides are finding it really useful once they sign on.”

The two are still living busy lives. Each has a day job - Lieberman is a financial analyst and Consentino works in medical sales. Lieberman is planning his wedding, and Consentino is still working on his Mahwah home.

“We talked every night anyway,” Lieberman said. “Now, we just talk about this. It’s great because we’ve been friends for so long that we can be brutally honest with each other, and that’s what a start-up business needs.”

Get more information about SpendBetter here.

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SpendBetter, Inc. recently started blogging for Patch. Read the company’s first post, on tips when hiring a contractor, .

 


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