John Machacek, Chief Innovation Officer for the Greater Fargo Moorhead Economic Development Corporation, has worked with countless startups throughout our community over the years. He knows their ups, and their downs, but most of all, he knows the questions to ask them. Here are John Machacek’s 10 questions for Eric Miller, Founder and CEO, Dwel.
1. Will you please tell me your Dwel elevator pitch?
Dwel’s mission is to help busy professionals complete their routine home maintenance. We do this by creating a customized home care plan to keep your home and its systems in the best shape.
2. To elaborate a bit further, in your current iteration, what do you envision a typical customer relationship or process looks like?
As a Home Inspector by trade, I continued to notice the same routine maintenance not being completed on homes. Over time, this can affect a home and its systems, and cost the homeowner a substantial amount of money. With that, Dwel was born and we took on the mission to help busy professionals complete their routine home maintenance.
We do this by having a Dwel Pro complete a home assessment. That assessment is then used to create a customized home care plan, and this plan incorporates at least two service visits per year by our team. During these visits, the Dwel Pro will complete the tasks within the homeowner’s care plan, which would include things like changing filters, checking pumps, general repairs, etc. A homeowner also can add other tasks to the service visit such as assembling furniture, hanging pictures, etc.
3. From working with you, I’m aware that this is a slight pivot, or maybe a bit of a temporary pause on what your original intentions were. Will you please share a little about that?
Yeah, so originally, we focused on building a consumer software that allowed homeowners the ability to create their own home maintenance lists. As we beta-tested this software, we gathered a lot of great feedback that our beta testers wanted a more hands on approach. We took this information and worked with Shams Jiwani, a local product and strategy leader. He really helped me navigate our pivot and refine our idea to better serve the customer and gain traction.
With the pivot, we decided to first take a more local approach and are focusing on the service side of the business. We still have our long-term goal of developing software that can scale nationally but know that we need to better understand customer and provider needs, in order to then build the scaling part of our business.
4. Pivots and continual evolution are normal for software and tech. But often, just starting and executing can be a problem for some, as they hesitate on their idea. With you creating a beta version early on and evolving from there, will you please share any thoughts on starting and executing?
Starting is certainly the hardest part. I think that it’s both easier and harder than ever to get started due to the number of resources we now have access to. It’s easy to get lost in the scope creep, thinking that you need to have sophisticated systems and marketing to make a viable business. Honestly, the best place to start is pen and paper. For example, we had spent a decent amount of time discussing adding a payment processing system to our software. When in reality, with the number of customers we had, we could’ve easily just sent out a basic invoice via email and then added it in later on.
The customers dictate what you need to build and finding ways to get constant feedback is important. Watching how customers are using your product or service gives you information on what your next feature or process update needs to be.
Another awesome part of the local entrepreneur ecosystem is all the great organizations that are here and want to help you get started and succeed. We had the opportunity to participate in the gBETA cohort through gener8tor. This was a pivotal program that really helped us understand where we wanted our business to go. There are so many more groups and programs I could mention that have been super helpful.
5. As you just mentioned participating in the gBETA startup program, you’ve also been part of Innovate ND. What are some of the positive impacts of being accepted into those two programs?
Yeah, the gBETA program through gener8tor was very impactful on our business. Through the program, I was able to learn all about how the venture capital world works. At the same time, you’re plugged into a massive network of companies and professionals that are all looking to help each other succeed. They have a wealth of knowledge and perspective from every industry. The program really helped us understand where we wanted our company to go and how to set ourselves up for success from a funding and capital perspective.
With Innovate ND, what we found to be beneficial was one of the requirements for the program is to complete customer interviews. I think this is always something that’s hard for startups to do for various reasons. First, no one loves to potentially get feedback that may not validate their idea. Second, is that you wear so many hats it can be easy to toss taking the time to talk to customers to the side. Having to get feedback helps you learn quickly what the customers think and want.
Lastly, when thinking of programs like these, a big impact of these programs is just getting plugged into the local entrepreneur ecosystem. We have something special here in Fargo. This ecosystem wants you to succeed, but it can’t help you do that unless you put in the effort to hop into it.
6. With you being a nontechnical founder, what are some ways you got around that when working on the tech product?
Some may think it’s crazy to be a nontechnical founder of a tech company and there are days they may be right, haha. Coming back to the local ecosystem, we are fortunate to have the Emerging Digital Academy (EDA) here in Fargo. The EDA was a big reason why we were able to get started. I don’t have the technical skills, but I was able to bring my ideas to them with pen and paper. We were able to partner with the EDA and have their students use our idea for their capstone project. This gave the students the ability to work on a real-world idea and it gave us a tangible starting block. Part of our partnership was working with Blaine Booher at the EDA to help establish their co-op program. Through that, we were able to hire the first two co-op students to continue to develop our idea.
Blaine was also a great resource to connect me to other local founders and CTOs who have taken the time out of their busy schedules to give advice, talk through ideas, and connect me to other individuals who’ve helped us get to today.
7. In the time I’ve known you, you were accepted into this year’s Entrepreneur District cohort. How has that been going?
As you can tell, the theme has been that we’ve really leveraged the local ecosystem. Part of that is The Entrepreneur District, which is a program through Dakota Business Lending. It’s a 12-month cohort where each business owner, or resident as we’re called, gets a desk at the DBL office.
All the District residents are from different industries, and it provides for a lot of different perspectives. Being able to work with other small business owners who are in their startup phase has made the program beneficial and gives me the drive to keep moving forward.
Each week, we have a table talk where one of the residents leads a conversation on a business topic. We are also paired with a mentor in the community and establish monthly goals for our business.
8. With about a year into this, and things you have learned and worked on since then, what are some hopes and goals for Dwel over the next year?
With pressing pause on the software development and pivoting to the service side, my hope is that in the next year, we can build a customer base that gives us the opportunity to relaunch our development. I also have the goal to expand outside of the FM area and start to grow our business on a national scale.
9. So, while that question was about a time machine to the future, if you could go back in time to Eric from several years ago, what hindsight advice would you give yourself?
Just start. Start small, start basic, but just start. If you’re willing to listen, you’re going to be able to create a business that people want.
10. To wrap it up, what can we do as a community to help you and Dwel succeed?
Connect with us. Whether that is following us on social media, grabbing a coffee to introduce yourself, becoming a customer or giving us feedback on our idea. Let’s connect. Help us spread the word that there’s a new business in town trying to do something different in-home maintenance.
You can reach me on LinkedIn or via email at [email protected].
About John
John Machacek has been helping local startups with the Greater Fargo Moorhead Economic Development Corporation since prior to his position with the GFMEDC. Before joining the team, Machacek was the VP of Finance & Operations at United Way of Cass-Clay and a business banker at U.S Bank.
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