Four years ago, Matthew Armstrong and his wife, who came to the Capital Region to help launch Antioch Community Church, moved into a lower-income Baton Rouge neighborhood and saw how overgrown lots and blighted properties were not only dragging down property values but the morale of the neighborhood, too.
To help, Armstrong began mowing yards around his neighborhood and later began collaborating with Jacob Jolibois, the former principal and director of digital at MESH, in early 2018 to see whether what began as an act of kindness could become a business. The duo, who met through church, was impressed by the gig economy—the idea they could hire people who needed flexible work hours and still help fix blighted properties.
Last September, they decided to pull the trigger and pursue an on-demand lawn care app, where customers could hire mowers from a smartphone. They officially launched the company in January, and in April—exactly 13 months to the day of Armstrong’s initial idea—Block Lawncare cut its first yard.
Since launching in April, the app has been downloaded over 3,000 times and has more than 1,700 registered users. The app’s beta version is currently open to roughly 25% of users in city limits, and they’re actively adding new neighborhoods based on demand.
Read the full Entrepreneur feature about Armstrong and Jolibois’ Block Lawncare from the latest edition of Business Report.
