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20 | October 18, 2018 | The Northbrook tower news
northbrooktower.com
Northbrook resident pioneers home maintenance internet company
Neil Milbert
Freelance Reporter
Northbrook’s Allen Shulman
believes we’re all in this together.
He has put his philosophy
of life into practice by starting
DwellSocial, an internet company
that is a vehicle for connecting
with friends and neighbors
for an easier, less-stressful and
more cost-effective way of getting
things done.
DwellSocial specializes in
home maintenance.
“We believe DwellSocial can
fundamentally change the way
people think about taking care
of their homes,” said Shulman,
who left Angie’s List to partner
with his co-founders, Highland
Park’s Mike Cerna, and Daniela
Tomas, of Chicago, in the summer
of 2017.
“We all have to do the same
things to properly maintain our
homes. When we do it on our
own there’s the pain in the rear
end factor. DwellSocial lets us
do all the things we need to do
together.”
DwellSocial membership is
free for consumers, while contractors
pay $25 monthly. When
you log onto dwellsocial.com
you’ll see a menu of what Shulman
calls “open groups” that
show what neighbors are doing
with regard to home maintenance.
Currently, there are
18 groups on the North Shore
from Evanston to Lake Bluff
but most of the members are
from Highland Park, Deerfield,
Northbrook and Glenview.
“Click the group you want
and you’re in,” Shulman said.
“You’ll see which contractors
are recommended. Right now
if you went to dwellsocial.com
you’d see there is a tree-trimming
group, a carpet-cleaning
group, a gutter-cleaning group,
a window washing-group, a
new-carpet installation group
and a sewer-routing group.
“We provide a platform for
contractors. Once they’re on
the platform they have access
to the groups. They can get five
jobs in one, eight jobs in one, 10
jobs in one, which is why they
can give the discount. “We find
great contractors and provide
them with opportunities they
can’t find anywhere else. When
people recommend a contractor
we let the contractor know.”
Before launching DwellSocial,
Shulman, Cerna and Tomas
all had a wealth of experience
that they acquired by working
with contractors and working
for firms offering discounts.
Shulman’s father was a professor
at Michigan State University
and he grew up in East
Lansing, Mich. before going to
college at the University of California/San
Diego.
However, he had grandparents
from Chicagoland and after
college he came to the area to
learn the construction business
by working for his father’s firm,
Red Seal Homes. He met his future
wife Debby, a Northbrook
native who went to Glenbrook
North and they settled in Northbrook.
“I enjoyed working for Red
Seal but I felt passionate about
doing something on my own,”
he said. “I started NorthStar
Homes and was a custom builder
all over the North Shore for
15 years. That’s where I started
interacting with contractors and
working with home owners and
learning what they don’t understand
about taking care of their
homes.
“Based on my experience
with NorthStar Homes, I founded
the Internet (home maintenance)
company BrightNest in
2010. We helped people know
what they should do, when they
should do it and how to do it.
We would provide that information
based on where they lived
in the country and customized
a digest for them that came out
every Friday at 9 a.m.”
In 2013 Angie’s List — which
refers home owners to plumbers,
roofers, electricians, heating
and air-conditioning firms,
Northbrook resident Allen Shulman started DwellSocial, a home
maintenance internet company. Photo Submitted
“We believe DwellSocial can fundamentally
change the way people think
about taking care of their homes. We
all have to do the same things to properly
maintain our homes. When we do
it on our own there’s the pain in the
rear end factor. DwellSocial lets us do
all the things we need to do together.”
-Northbrook resident Allen Shulman on DwellSocial,
a home-maintenance company he and two co-founders
started.
painters, plumbers, remodelers
and other home maintenance
specialists — acquired Bright-
Nest. Shulman stayed on as an
employee for four years “learning
about the business and trying
to help consumers.”
“I realized in 2017 that even
though Angie’s List and all of
its competitors were out there
people still weren’t taking better
care of their homes,” he said.
“They only went to Angie’s List
when something went wrong. I
decided to start DwellSocial because
I understood the power of
recommendations from people
we know and trust. We needed
to drop the pain in the rear factor
to the point where people
couldn’t help being a good
home owner.
“That’s when I met Mike and
realized he was the perfect partner.”
The Highland Park entrepreneur
is both an architect and a
software developer.
Cerna said his first major Internet
endeavor came in 2006
when he was co-founder of thepoint.com,
a social collective
empowerment site.
“It had lots of facets, like
getting new parks in neighborhoods,”
the Chicagoland native
said. “It rose and fell and
in 2008 I pivoted to Groupon
(as one of its founding fathers)
and it exploded (in popularity).
After Groupon, I worked
on several other projects with
my friend, Jim Sayegh (a Chicago
real estate developer).
We started glosser.com, doing
something similar to BrightNest
but with a different angle. It was
about what you can do to show
off your home.
“Most people show their assets
on Linked In and Facebook
but they almost never show off
their home which is their biggest
financial asset. There was
a problem with photography
rights so we abandoned that effort.
Right after that I was thinking
about what would be next
and someone introduced me to
Allen.”
Tomas was the next to join the
DwellSocial management team.
“I worked with her at Angie’s
List and she was a rock star,”
Shulman said. “Her expertise is
working with the best contractors
in the country and based on
that experience she helped Mike
and I formulate the DwellSocial
concept. We raised $780,000,
mostly from local firms. About
four months ago we hired another
computer technology engineer,
Joe Harrow, of Chicago,
who had worked with Mike as
one of the leaders at Groupon.
“Then, we hired a part-time
employee out of Denver, John
Feustel, who was at Groupon
early, and went from being an
engineer to being a programmer.”
Although there currently are
only four full-timers and one
part-timer at DwellSocial, Shulman
and Cerna believe they’re
on the cusp of something big.
“The web-site that we have
has the power to revolutionize
an entire segment of the Internet,”
Shulman said. “The company
that acquired Angie’s List
released a survey about a year
ago that said 90 percent of all
professional referrals are still
done off line.
“We’re looking to raise $1.5
million to $2 million so that
in the course of the next year
we can expand from the North
Shore to the Chicago metropolitan
area at which point we’ll
likely get the attention of a lot
of investors and be able to go
nationwide and worldwide. The
power of this concept works
anywhere people live together.”