Frank App is currently raising at a pre-money valuation cap of $10 million. This round’s SAFE comes with a 20% discount on that valuation. In comparison to other startups pursuing crowdfunding, Frank App’s valuation is low and attractive. It is also fairly decent given where the company is developmentally.  Therefore, the company’s price score is above average.

Frank App is playing in a fairly large market space. According to this source, the US remodeling market is worth $97.6 billion this year. However, the growth of this space has been sluggish at best. Between 2016 and 2021, the industry’s annualized growth rate was just 1%. Other sources viewed the market opportunity as being significantly larger in size. One of these showed that the market for small remodeling projects was worth $234 billion in 2020 and indicated that a 2.4% annualized growth rate would take it up to $251 billion by 2023. The market was worth $158 billion for larger remodeling projects in 2020, down from $163 billion a year earlier. However, a 5.6% annualized growth rate is expected to raise it to $186 billion by 2023. While this market may look great overall, it is important to keep in mind that Frank primarily generates revenue through its users rather than the total industry spend. The company will collect a 5% commission on sales through its marketplace and will charge contractors a monthly fee to use its platform. This business model will limit its ability to tap into the sizable market it is targeting. Because of this, the market score for Frank App is only slightly above average.

Frank App benefits from having a strong founding team. Co-founder and CEO Zachary Schlossberg was previously a self-employed innovation and design strategy consultant. He has worked as a strategic designer for BCG Digital Ventures and as a lead industrial designer and consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering. Schlossberg was also a design strategy consultant for Propelland, where he worked on human-centered research. Moreover, he was the co-founder of The Loftmen, a boutique furniture design studio for both commercial and residential millwork. 

Frank App’s other co-founder is Head of Sales Dennis Ketcham. Previously, Ketcham was the co-owner of The Remodel Showroom, a kitchen and bath showroom. Before that, he worked as an operations consultant at FD Building Company, a general contractor for the remodeling industry. Ketcham also brings experience in real estate, high-end estate management, and design services. 

The Frank App team also includes Head of Product Zach Buchman, Head of Design Clarice Rodriguez, and Software Developer Ryne Benson. This composition gives Frank App a strong design focus, though the company lacks in marketing and sales expertise. 

The founders of Frank App bring strong design and construction expertise as well as past entrepreneurial experience. This mixture of skills makes them well-qualified to lead a company like Frank App. The other team members do provide some needed skills, but there is still a gap surrounding marketing and sales functions. Additionally, the company does not seem to have any major advisors or investors. Thus, Frank App’s team score is decent but not particularly impressive.

At the present, management is still in the process of building its platform to prepare for growth. That said, Frank App is promoting an incredibly differentiated product from much of the competition. There are certainly other players out there. As an example, Houzz Pro offers services like lead generation and proposal management solutions for contractors. Another company called Improveit 360 provides proposal management and manual estimating functionality. The same applies to Clear Estimates. However, Frank offers all of these services in one solution. Plus, it is the only business among its competition to offer lead vetting and automated estimation in addition to manual estimation. It should be said, however, that some of its competitors do offer things that Frank does not currently offer. Houzz Pro, for instance, offers client collaboration functionality. It also offers financial tools like time and expense tracking as well as QuickBooks integration. The other factor working against Frank App is its lack of defensibility. The company does not have any patents and designing a platform is not particularly capital intensive. Taking all these factors together, Frank App’s differentiators score is strong.

Frank App is still developing its platform. The company claims that it has been testing initial functionality for at least 18 months and that it has more than 200 contractors ready to sign up on launch. However, the beta launch of Frank App’s estimator has not yet happened. As a result, the company is not generating any revenue at this time, nor did it generate any revenue in 2019 or 2020. During that time frame, however, the company did generate net losses of $7,792 and $164,803, respectively. Operating cash outflows during the same period were $4,372 in 2019 and $165,698 in 2020. Frank App has successfully raised capital previously — around $300,000 — and has accrued very little debt to reach its current stage. Due to the lack of revenue, though, the performance score for the company is its lowest across all five metrics.

The risk profile for Frank App is somewhat elevated. Much of this is a result of the product not being fully developed. Because the company has not even tested its platform in a beta launch, the product-market fit for Frank App is still unverified. It’s unclear if there will be enough users interested in the app or if the price that Frank App is planning to charge will be accepted by users. Furthermore, there is not a definite timeline for when the platform will be launched. If it takes too long for launch to happen, the company may have to raise funds again, and investors could see their shares diluted. 

The largest issue facing Frank App is the fact that its product is not complete. If the company fails to reach launch or prove product-market fit, investors will see no return from this round. However, a lack of platform development is not the only problem. The market opportunity for Frank App looks large, but it shrinks considerably when factoring in the business model that Frank will employ. This issue is exacerbated by the market’s overall slow growth. With so little growth happening in renovation and remodeling, Frank App may struggle to establish a niche for itself. In addition, the company is generating no revenue, and it is incurring significant net losses and cash outflows. 

On the bright side, Frank App’s valuation in this round is quite reasonable. If the company does find success with its platform, early investors will be in a good position to see their shares increase in value. In addition, the founding team is thoroughly experienced. The product is fairly differentiated from the competition, and it is testing its product with a real client, which seems promising for future development.

Frank App is developing a platform to help contractors provide quotes for potential clients. There are a number of reasons to consider the company promising. First, the company is offering a decent valuation. Both of the co-founders have strong experience and construction expertise. The app seems to have what it takes to stand out among its current competition, and the product is undergoing real testing.

On the other hand, the product is still not complete or monetized, and this poses a major risk. In addition, Frank has continued to take losses without generating any revenue. Finally, investors should keep in mind that while the market space is large, it may not be growing especially quickly. Taking all of these data points into account, Frank App is a Neutral Deal at this time.

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Analysis written by Daniel Jones.