EasyPaint Wants To Take The Pain Out Of Getting A Room Painted

easypaint 2

If there’s one thing I dislike about owning a home, it’s when the time comes to paint a room. If I do it myself, I go crazy before the prep work is even done. So. Much. Masking. Tape. If I hire someone, I end up spending just as much time talking to friends/neighbors/the Internets trying to find a reputable local painter only to never be quite certain I made the right choice.

EasyPaint, a Disrupt SF 2015 Battlefield company, wants to make it, well, easy.

Though currently only available in the Washington, D.C., Metro area, using EasyPaint feels a bit like using Handy (or Homejoy, before it keeled over). It’s a formula the startup world knows and loves: take something frustrating and put it behind the click of a button or two.

A point-and-click interface helps you input the basic details about the job. You tell it what sort of room you’re looking to have painted, toss a few photos in, give them an approximation of the room size, then check any items that may make things more complicated — things like doors and windows.

A few hours later, they send you an estimate. Tap a date on the calendar, and your appointment is set — they’ll source the painters from a short list of crews they’ve already put to the test, and they’ll bring the paint.

EasyPaint handles the scheduling, communication, customer service, payment and sourcing of the paint and painters; in exchange, they make a 15 percent service fee on each transaction.

easypaint 1
One footnote: while their site currently pitches them as a service for homeowners, CEO Marty Cornish tells me they’ve really found their footing in the last few months as a B2B company; whereas a homeowner might need one or two rooms painted a year (if that), businesses (be it real estate agents or tech companies) need painters constantly — and they often find the process just as painful as I do. By focusing on these groups, they’re solving a pain point for a group that can bring in a pretty much endless stream of business.

EasyPaint was founded by Marty Cornish, Oliver Harriehausen and Denis Abrams — the last of which was the former CEO of Benjamin Moore, the paint company that was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway for a billion dollars in 2000. Their advisors, meanwhile, include Aaron Lee — CTO of Home Depot and Founder of TechCrunch50 winner RedBeacon.