Not many tech entrepreneurs cite the inspiration for their business as long hours spent pressure-washing other people’s homes. But George Eliadis, the CEO and co-founder of New York-based Probook , says that’s where the idea for the start-up began to take shape. “Stuck up a ladder, operating a noisy, vibrating piece of machinery, you can’t even hear the phone ring,” says Eliadis, who spent years working with his dad’s pressure-washing business. “You certainly can’t be running the business.”

Probook, which has just announced a $40 million funding round, reflects such frustrations. Launched in 2024, the business aims to automate large chunks of the relationship between home services companies offering help in areas such as HVAC, plumbing and electrical services and their customers. The goal is to get these firms to use Probook’s platform as the foundation of that relationship.

Eliadis started with the challenge of dispatch – ensuring that the firm sends exactly the right engineer to each call-out, depending on factors such as their experience, expertise, capacity and location. Probook’s machine learning tools use the context provided by the customer to identify and dispatch the most appropriate engineer.

It’s a tougher ask than it sounds. Customers want the right engineer for the job, of course, but the business needs to maximize value too. Maybe this is a customer with an out-of-date HVAC system that needs modernizing – in which case, it would be better to send an expert engineer capable of presenting some options rather than just getting the old system up and running again. Maybe it’s a simple job tweaking a new install – for which a junior engineer might be a better fit.

In addition to dispatch, Probook’s platform also offers a suite of artificial intelligence-powered voice agents capable of handling calls from customers at every stage of a case – with an option to escalate to a human operator too – as well as ongoing communication tools and related services. “The aim is to ensure the platform handles every aspect of the job until the engineer is knocking on the front door, as well as any follow-up communication and administration,” Eliadis adds.

The value should be two-fold. First, there’s an obvious opportunity for Probook’s platform to improve efficiency, reducing home services companies’ costs. But there should also be chances to drive value – though improved customer loyalty and brand value, for example, but also as the dispatch process helps engineers unlock new sources of revenue. During less busy periods of the year, Probook can also help firms encourage customers to undertake precautionary maintenance work.

This value proposition appears to resonate. In less than two years, Probook has signed up a couple of hundred clients in more than 35 states across the US. They range from relatively small independent operators to larger home services networks, often backed by private equity in a market that is consolidating fast. Notable customers include TurnPoint Services, Master Trades Group, Del-Air, Peterman Brothers and Sila Services.

It’s an attractive industry to be in – people will always need help with their homes, but as properties incorporate more technologies, that help will become more sophisticated. Research from the consultant McKinsey says US spending on home services this year will come in at around $700 billion, with stable growth continuing.

There are competitors, of course, but Eliadis believes his experience provides competitive advantage. “Most AI vendors flocked to this space because it looked attractive on a spreadsheet,” he says. “We came to it because we grew up in it.”

Investors back that confidence, with the company’s funding round comprising a $34 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and a $6 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital. Sequoia also participated in the Series A. The money will help Eliadis step up customer acquisition after spending much of the past two years selling Probook to customers almost by himself.

David Haber, a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, believes the firm was smart to start with dispatch, given the criticality of this activity. “Dispatch is the nerve center of every home service business and Probook built their entire platform around it,” he says. “It's a years-old structural moat.”

Konstantine Buhler, a partner at Sequoia Capital, adds: “Most founders building for the trades have never worked in them. George has. Pair that with the team’s outlier technical depth, and you see why we backed Probook at seed and why we're doubling down now.”