Home improvement is exciting — until you open the instruction manual to assemble your new ceiling fan, grill or flat pack table.
Nate Henderson remembers the moment he realized there had to be a better way. One of Henderson’s friends tried putting together a piece of furniture with his wife, but it devolved into an argument and ended with the couple throwing away the project.
“We started talking about that, and looking around to see if there’s something to help the DIY consumer do better, that’s not paper and not just video. And that’s really how it began,” said Henderson, whose Grapevine company just landed a $9 million investment to help it grow.
In 2015, Henderson and his childhood friend Ahmed Qureshi created an app — appropriately named BILT — and packed it with thousands of interactive tutorials for products that usually require paper instruction manuals.
Today, BILT has millions of users in over 200 countries. It offers 12 different languages and is available in both the Apple app and Google Play stores.
BILT spent a year and a half considering different investment partners before closing a deal with Austin-based Silverton Partners, which Henderson said has “a gold standard reputation in Texas.” He said the new capital will let BILT grow “at kind of a hyper pace.”
Tutorials are created by BILT “instruction designers” — a mix of employees with either engineering or graphic design experience. Brands usually reach out to BILT to create partnerships with the app.
The app is free to consumers, ad-free and contains hundreds of brands.
“When you see it in BILT, it’s the exact, right, perfect experience you need to be successful,” Henderson said.
Users can click and drag to rotate, zoom and move 3D images of the parts and tools required for each step. Audio or written instructions, or both, are available. The beginning of each tutorial includes the approximate time the assembly will take, how many people it will require and additional tools that may be needed.
Even the Air Force and Navy have partnered with BILT, creating tutorials for things like aircraft maintenance.
“They have said, ‘You know what, let’s make our servicemen and -women really successful at what they do.’ It gives them greater job satisfaction, they know they’re doing a quality job, it saves money for the taxpayer. And everybody wins across the board,” Henderson said.
Henderson thinks BILT is a market maker, suggesting it fills a void not covered by instruction manuals or YouTube videos.
“When you think of competition, I would suggest you think of it more as substitutes,” Henderson said. “Most people today, when they say the paper [manual is] not working for me, the default is to go to YouTube. The challenge with YouTube is it’s a bit like the wild, wild West.”
Henderson said YouTube videos are often outdated or inaccurate. Paper instructions offer their own challenges, and come with environmental costs. Henderson estimates that in one year, the BILT app will be able to prevent about a billion trees from being cut down.
“Imagine the billions and billions of pages of paper, that weren’t a good experience anyway, that now don’t have to be printed,” Henderson said about paper manuals. “It will be one of the great sustainability stories, I think, of the next decade.”
Silverton Managing Partner Morgan Flager agrees that BILT has come up with a better way.
“I can’t imagine in five years, we’ll still be dealing with paper instructions,” he said.
BILT will become increasingly necessary as customers continue to order products online, Henderson said.
“The more we buy online, the more pressure it puts on brands to say, you’ve got to figure out a way of packaging things smaller, and yet at the same time deliver an even better customer experience,” Henderson said. “The brand has spent years creating a great product that may actually work well. If you can’t assemble it right, or you’re frustrated, your loyalty toward that brand starts to get pretty shaky, and then you tell others about it.”
Smaller packages, combined with the need for great customer service, is where BILT comes in. Smaller packages mean more assembly, and more assembly means more instruction manuals. Instead of traditional paper models, companies can include a barcode for customers to scan, prompting them to download the BILT app to view an interactive tutorial.
Henderson wouldn’t provide specific revenue figures for BILT, but he said it’s experiencing 100% growth year over year, coming in under the $20 million mark in revenue.
BILT is heavily involved now with home improvement brands. But it plans to move into the automotive, small appliances, machinery and semi-professional spaces.
“Ask yourself the question, what are the industries that require some type of assembly or installation or setup?” Henderson said. “It never ends.”
