GreenPal co-founder Gene Caballero describes his envisioning of GreenPal, which offers users a one-stop shop for booking landscaping professionals to take care of their lawn, as a “light bulb moment.”
Caballero attributed the app’s inspiration to his personal experience working in lawn care to make extra money from as early as junior high, and later working in sales on the West Coast—where he was in a prime position to see the growth of technologies like Uber, Lyft and AirBnb.
“So we knew that … if someone was going to summon a stranger to come pick them up, or allow a stranger to live in their basement for a weekend for extra money, then I would hope they would do the same with home services—specifically landscaping,” he said.
GreenPal has been used by over 1 million homeowners and more than 50,000 landscaping professionals, Caballero said. The Nashville, Tennessee-based platform currently serves about 250 markets across the U.S., Caballero noted, a number that now includes the Las Vegas area.
The company officially launched in Las Vegas late last month, after homeowners and landscaping professionals organically began to sign up in the area, he said.
“When you have both of those, we know that, ‘Hey, this is a market that we need to launch sooner than later,’ ” Caballero said.
Las Vegas homeowners can now not only get their regular mowing, edging and weed eating done through GreenPal, but also any other landscaping services—from planting to trimming hedges to snow removal and more.
Though GreenPal’s primary demographic before the COVID-19 pandemic was dual-income, no-children households, Caballero said it has shifted in recent years to include senior communities.
“The consumer mindset has kind of shifted,” he said. “We don’t want to call anybody. We don’t want to have to go anywhere. We want to hit a button and things magically happen. So I think that’s where GreenPal, for the homeowner-side, just fits right into your everyday use of apps and businesses.”
GreenPal is the first true operating system for landscaping professionals, Caballero claimed, and basically any work outside of the home can be aggregated through the platform.
“For the landscaping professional, that’s whose life we’re really changing,” he said. “So, not only do we handle their demand creation, we handle their scheduling … and also their payment process.”
Landscaping professionals looking to join GreenPal must be 18 years old or above, with a valid driver’s license and Social Security number and a valid bank account at a financial institution. They also must send pictures of their previous work, Caballero said.
What homeowners look at most when choosing a lawn-care professional off GreenPal is ratings and reviews, he added.
“After every service, homeowners rate and review their vendors,” he said. “And that’s what we’ve been told feedback-wise from homeowners that’s the most important for them. So we do all that up front.”
The way GreenPal works, Caballero said, is this: If a homeowner in Las Vegas needs lawn work done, they just need to go to the platform’s website or app and enter their address and desired day of service. That alerts all the pre-screened vendors in the area, who can make a bid that will go straight to the homeowner for review.
The homeowner can then decide which lawn care professional to book based on vendor ratings, price and more. They enter in their payment information, so that once a vendor is done with the service and they upload a picture of it through GreenPal, the homeowner—if satisfied—can press the button and the vendor gets paid.
“It’s free for homeowners to sign up and get bids,” he said. “And it’s also free for landscaping professionals.”
As of early August, various local lawn-care professionals in Las Vegas had already been booked hundreds of times through GreenPal, according to its website, with pleasant reviews.
The service is slated to launch in around 50 to 60 new markets this year alone, Caballero said. Even so, he emphasized, the platform’s biggest competition is still the status quo—word-of-mouth at the office or on Facebook.
“Our goal was to launch in as many markets as possible and just become the default way that homeowners find and schedule and pay their lawn guy,” he said. “That is our goal.”
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