Raleigh startup Pack Purchase raises $1 million

A Raleigh startup that aims to provide consumers an easy way to purchase and schedule routine home maintenance services via the Internet has raised $1 million in new funding.

The company, Pack Purchase, officially launched its web-based service for Triangle consumers Tuesday in conjunction with its funding announcement.

“We’re out to bring incredible simplification to an incredibly complicated problem that is, for most people, one of the biggest burdens and headaches in their lives,” said CEO Hunt Davis. “We do all the work for the homeowner.”

Founded last year by Tyler Graybeal, who previously owned and ran a pressure washing business, Pack already has served thousands of local customers through a beta test that it ran in select areas in the fall and spring. Davis, a former investment banker, joined the company in January after his friend, Graybeal, approached him about investing in the business.

Pack is using its funding to expand its service throughout the Triangle market – Wake, Durham and Orange counties – as well as to new markets later this year, Hunt said.

The new funding, a follow-up to $410,000 the company raised last fall, was was led by IDEA Fund Partners of Durham and Cofounders Capital of Cary. It’s the third investment by Cofounders Capital, led by successful serial entrepreneur David Gardner, since it closed on $10 million in funding in June.

Pack Purchase represents “a new model,” said IDEA Fund’s Lister Delgado. “It solves the problems for both ends” – that is, consumers and service providers – “in a very elegant way.”

Service providers who work with Pack, Delgado said, can attract new customers without the hassle of going to a home to price jobs.

Triangle consumers who go to the company’s website, can plug in their address and quickly – and, in some cases, instantly – get a quote for services such as weekly lawn maintenance, pressure washing their house or gutter cleaning. Consumers also can schedule the work on the site.

Pack uses publicly available real estate data plus proprietary software to provide a quote – one quote per service from a handpicked service provider. The company also provides a 100 percent guarantee.

“We are only using top-notch vendors,” Hunt said. “But ... when there is a botched job, we step in and handle it.”

Pack, which employs eight full-time workers and five contractors, has a goal of raising an additional $500,000 in its current round of funding, pushing the total to $1.5 million. Hunt said that talks with other investors are “well underway” and that he anticipates wrapping up the funding in a matter of weeks.

This story was originally published August 11, 2015 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Raleigh startup Pack Purchase raises $1 million."