When Matt Daigle learned there wasn’t a tool to help home renovators find the most environmentally friendly products on the market, he decided to build one himself. Thus Rise was launched.
Daigle and his three co-founders are creating an online platform to inform renovators about the best materials. They recently took Fredericton’s Rise through the Propel ICT Launch program at Planet Hatch in their hometown.
They are preparing to release their minimum viable product, something tentatively scheduled for late November. They hope it will undergo a full commercial launch next year in two cities that are hotbeds of sustainable construction practices: Vancouver and San Francisco.
It plans to retain its headquarters in New Brunswick, and most of its early customers are in Atlantic Canada, but Daigle said there is a bigger market in the West Coast cities.
“I consider that now we have the training wheels off and we’re going full throttle,” said Daigle in an interview Tuesday.
“We’re planning for the launch of our MVP and looking at a seed round (of funding).”
He declined to say how much money the company is hoping to raise in its first round, but he did say he has spoken to several potential investors.
Read about Ella, another NB Propel Grad
Rise is an online dashboard that helps homeowners, contractors and retailers work together to find materials and products that can benefit the environment and reduce costs. The company envisages a product that can inform users about the best products available and have a social component connecting the various parties.
In time, it hopes to include such features as listing incentives available in a user’s city to encourage use of green materials. The team also plans to eventually offer a subscription-based premium product for contractors to develop recurring revenue in the company.
Daigle has spent the last six years in the tech industry, working for such companies as Salesforce Radian6 and Saint John’s Mariner. He spent his weekends renovating houses and wanted to know more about green alternatives, but he couldn’t find the information.
“I started looking into the green building material market. It is a pretty big market, and it is growing. You either have to become an expert on this stuff or rely on your contractor. I didn’t like either of those options, so that led to the creation of Rise.”
Now that it has completed the Propel Launch program, designed to help early-stage companies validate their product, the Rise team is looking for further mentorship opportunities. They have applied for a CleanTech accelerator in Boston, and they are also in talks with the Pond-Deshpande Centre at the University of New Brunswick about joining its B4Change accelerator, which helps companies dedicated to social and environmental change.
Rise eventually hopes to receive a B-Corp designation, awarded to companies with a strong social agenda.
Daigle said the company would be interested in proceeding into Propel’s more advanced Build program next year, but it may be difficult if it is trying to launch its program on the West Coast.
