As a small business owner myself, this resonates. I would love to be in a position to be able to confidently pay money to other professionals to make problems go away.
Unfortunately, my overall experience has been that hiring any “expert” in a field that I am not also an expert in has a 50% chance of working, and a 50% chance of blowing up in my face and creating more problems.
I recently attempted to get a new accountant to help me handle some business growth. It was a person from a well regarded local firm, initial meetings were good, and then they proceeded to deliver none of the agreed-upon work, take 2-3 weeks to respond to emails (multiple times, I had to call their office and schedule an in-person meeting just to get a response), and then de-prioritize my business relative to other clients so badly that I wasn’t able to submit my taxes until June.
If anyone can successfully build a service that lets me reliably pick professional-services providers with the same level of confidence that I pick an AirBnb (not 100%, but pretty good, with an expectation for reasonable mediation and fallback coverage if the offering is radically different than what’s described), I would happily pay a 20% premium on those services versus the existing “ask friends for referrals and cross your fingers” status quo.
If it’s anything like the market for home services, the middleman service will be even worse than dealing with vendors directly: a middleman adding a layer of indirection but little value.
Depends on how much work you are having done. On a remodel you need a GC unless you have a lot of time and expertise to hire all the trades and such yourself. They really do provide value.
Is this an example of the Market for Lemons? If I hire a developer I have a pretty good idea what to look for (and to a lesser degree, a designer, as I have worked with enough designers to know how the good ones work). But I would have no idea what makes for a good accountant or corporate lawyer or plumber, so would need to depend on referrals and a certain amount of blind trust.
I am building this for M&A and investor due diligence. DueDilio is an online managed marketplace focused on due diligence. We connect business buyers, sellers, intermediaries, and private investors with pre-vetted due diligence service providers. Our large and growing network of verified independent professionals, boutique, and mid-size firms specialize in finance, legal, technology, commercial, and other key areas of business diligence.
We've connected clients with accountants previously with good results.
As someone who have been on both sides of the table I can completely resonate with your statements. But I think that there is an expectation by small business owners that every expert will completely understand their business and will deliver exceptional results from day 1. So I think there should be some learning curve with very clear results expected on each and every step.
Is answering email at least this week exceptional? What learning curve a small business accountant has even? It’s not a factory with amortizing equipment, worker schedules, rolling production and distribution of expenses. I work with accountants all my life, and for small businesses it’s a matter of loading contracts, bank statements, invoices and salaries into an app, sorting expenses by legal category and that’s it. There is nothing to learn in a small business accounting, it is entry-level for this job title.
Unfortunately, my overall experience has been that hiring any “expert” in a field that I am not also an expert in has a 50% chance of working, and a 50% chance of blowing up in my face and creating more problems.
I recently attempted to get a new accountant to help me handle some business growth. It was a person from a well regarded local firm, initial meetings were good, and then they proceeded to deliver none of the agreed-upon work, take 2-3 weeks to respond to emails (multiple times, I had to call their office and schedule an in-person meeting just to get a response), and then de-prioritize my business relative to other clients so badly that I wasn’t able to submit my taxes until June.
If anyone can successfully build a service that lets me reliably pick professional-services providers with the same level of confidence that I pick an AirBnb (not 100%, but pretty good, with an expectation for reasonable mediation and fallback coverage if the offering is radically different than what’s described), I would happily pay a 20% premium on those services versus the existing “ask friends for referrals and cross your fingers” status quo.