Sean McMeen

Two days after my sixth birthday, on the Fourth of July, lightning struck our house in Springfield, Illinois, and it burned to the ground. I can still see the flame shooting out of the back of the house. At six you don't understand insurance claims or rebuild timelines. You understand that home was there in the morning and gone by night.

Years later, in a house of my own, I walked downstairs into several inches of water. An outside spigot had frozen, a pipe had burst, and water ran through the basement I'd finished just months earlier. Everything we had just built, we started over.

I did what most homeowners do. I shut the water off, called my insurance company, and asked what I was supposed to do next. They recommended a local company. I had them come out, and I wasn't satisfied.

So I pulled out my phone and searched for a company to come dry out my wet basement. I didn't search for a "water damage restoration company." I honestly didn't know that term at the time, and most homeowners don't either. You search the problem you have, in the words you have, and you look for somebody to solve it. On your phone. On Google. And now, more and more, by asking AI.

The companies that showed up were not the companies best equipped to help me.

On September 9th, 2015, I started Vinnie Mac to close that gap for restoration contractors, the people who show up on the worst day of somebody's life. I understood the person on the other end of that search bar, because I'd been him twice.