It’s a big week for Johnson City-based Perserbid with Knoxville event this weekend
By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA
This is a big week for the team at Johnson City-based Perserbid Inc.
The company, founded by Edwin Williams and profiled in this April article on teknovation.biz, had its official launch party last Sunday afternoon at Garland Farm Estates in its hometown and will be introducing itself to Knoxvillians starting this Friday at the “Fall Home, Design and Remodeling Show” at the Convention Center.
The latter is the perfect venue for the start-up that provides a web-based platform that connects homeowners needing work performed with contractors interested in bidding on the project.
“We’re in the business of eliminating frustration between contractors and homeowners,” Robert Pryately, Perserbid’s Chief Financial Officer, says. He recently joined the executive team after connecting with Williams in a kickball league and spending nearly a year doing due diligence on the start-up.
“This is our first major contact with the Knoxville market,” Williams said of the weekend show. “We will have a booth and will be marketing to homeowners and contractors to get them to sign-up.”
Sunday’s event in Johnson City was highlighted by the rollout of an almost brand new website. Only the landing page remained largely untouched, Williams said. The user interface is completely different.
“We’ve been in beta testing ahead of the Sunday launch,” he added. The testing involved representatives of Perserbid’s two customer groups – homeowners and contractors.
“The big thing we learned was the need to significantly improve our UI,” Williams said. That also led to considerable refinement of the backend.
“We’re now working on a mobile app,” he added.
Since our April article, Williams has added two people to the executive team. One is Pryately, a North Carolina native who earned his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and his MBA from Vanderbilt University. He told us he had started his own business, but found that it required “a lot of capital.” In joining Perserbid full-time, he sees a great opportunity to grow the business.
The other new team member is Matt Mayfield, an individual Williams describes as “the most experienced of all of us in starting companies.” Mayfield is a San Diego-based entrepreneur with experience in the fitness industry. He will serve as Perserbid’s Chief Operating Officer.
“I met Matt in St. Louis when I started GetFit Gadgets,” Williams said. He eventually closed that start-up and relocated to his hometown of Johnson City.
