GrubHub founder starts a handy alternative to the gig economy

It started not with a stroke of creative genius, but with a rain barrel that Mike Evans '99, MEng '00, wanted to install in his garden. Fourteen calls later, he still hadn't been able to hire anyone. He started researching the home maintenance sector and discovered that many US trade schools have closed in recent decades, creating a shortage of handypeople. That's how Fixer was born. "What it comes down to is there aren't enough people to do the work," says Evans, who founded Fixer in 2017.