Lawn Love

Lawn Love operates an online and mobile marketplace for lawn care and other outdoor property services. Homeowners enter an address to receive an instant, personalized quote generated from satellite imagery and property data, book a service online or by phone, and are matched with an independent, background-checked and insured lawn professional in their area. Scheduling, routing, payment processing, customer service and feedback are handled through the Lawn Love platform, and customers pay only after a job is completed, with no contract or subscription fee required. Service plans allow customers to set a recurring frequency, skip visits, or book one-time jobs, and all work is covered by a satisfaction guarantee under which the company re-performs the service or refunds the customer.

The catalog spans lawn mowing and maintenance, edging, bush and shrub trimming, yard clean-up, flower bed weeding, fertilization, pre-emergent and standard weed control, aeration, seeding, gardening, leaf removal, gutter cleaning and snow removal; the company states that existing customers can access nearly 30 outdoor services through a single account. On the supply side, Lawn Love provides pros with a job pipeline, an app for finding, quoting and completing jobs, route planning and clustering algorithms, in-app payment at the time of service, and back-office functions including customer service, accounting and collections.

Since 2021 Lawn Love has operated as part of LawnStarter, which acquired the company; the combined business is described as the largest US digital marketplace for outdoor services.

Founding story

Jeremy Yamaguchi founded Lawn Love in San Diego in 2014 after finding it unexpectedly difficult to hire someone reliable to mow his lawn. Yamaguchi, the son of missionaries, was raised in Tokyo and lived in Rwanda, Tanzania, the Philippines and Myanmar before immigrating to the US at 16; home schooled and without a college education, he taught himself design and coding, ran a digital agency, and in 2009 launched a maid-service startup called Golden Shine that was sold to a private equity search fund in 2013. Lawn Love followed a year later and Yamaguchi was admitted to Y Combinator.

Business model

Marketplace model: Lawn Love does not employ the service providers but matches consumer demand with a network of independent, background-checked and insured lawn pros, taking responsibility for quoting, scheduling, routing, payment processing, customer support and service guarantees.

Customers are quoted and charged per job through the platform, with residential mowing and trimming advertised from $35; recurring service plans and bundles are priced below one-time services, and payment is taken after the job is completed with no contract or subscription fee.

Traction

By November 2018 the company employed about 100 people and was available in 38 states and 120 cities four years after founding, having added services such as snow shoveling and Christmas light installation. The company site currently cites operations in more than 120 cities and 900 neighborhoods and over 700,000 customer reviews averaging 4.7 out of 5, while Y Combinator lists a team size of 150.

Latest developments

Lawn Love continues to operate its consumer marketplace under LawnStarter ownership, marketing access to nearly 30 outdoor services through a single account and a network of background-checked pros, and maintaining city-level service coverage across the US. Founder Jeremy Yamaguchi is described on Y Combinator's site as now building a tech-enabled roll-up in pool care.