Hire Goats pivoted from an affiliate model to a reverse marketplace

Aaron Steele didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur or a farmer.

He earned a degree in city planning and, for a while, followed that career path. One summer, Aaron and his wife decided to buy a few goats, hoping to give their three young boys practical responsibilities over the summer holidays. That summer, their region suffered a drought, causing weeds and brush to explode in growth. “We had read that goats love weeds and brush more than they love good grass and pasture,” says Aaron. “Those goats did an amazing job on that vegetation.”

The family wanted to have more goats than their own property could support. After some research, they discovered a few herd managers providing grazing-as-a-service for targeted vegetation control. Aaron offered his goats for hire and the demand took off. The pressures mounted. Aaron still worked full-time as a city planner while managing his grazing service. Meanwhile, he frequently fielded requests from friends and neighbors interested in starting their own grazing business. Aaron asked himself, is this how he could grow?

Aaron launched an affiliate business: an online directory of grazing services, monetized by collecting yearly fees from vendors for being listed. The website became the top destination for grazing-as-a-service. “A lot of people owned small herds. They were jumping in, but few had a professional appearance,” he remembers. “The timing helped. It was a new industry without a set business model. If you could at least appear professional, then you looked like the industry leader.”

Local media covered his first projects, the popularity snowballed, and the business was profitable in the first year. As the years went on, Aaron encountered some growing pains with the affiliate model. Operational burdens only grew more demanding with each new vendor: training and retaining affiliates, drafting coverage area contracts, and collecting the yearly fees. Aaron joined a startup incubator where he was matched with a coach. 

By turning from an affiliate model to a marketplace model, many administrative burdens could be automated. The marketplace model would center what vendors most valued: the customer connections they got  through the affiliate website. Finally, the model could minimize a critical vendor pain point—the annual fee—by spreading that cost across bookings as a commission fee. 

The next iteration of the grazing service business would center the marketplace model, under a new name: Hire Goats. Aaron began to investigate how to build it and tried several no-code tools.

Although Sharetribe was Aaron’s favorite for usability, at first, it wasn’t a fit for Hire Goats. Property owners would need to reach out to vendors and describe their needs. Then vendors would respond with a proposal. When Sharetribe introduced reverse marketplace features, Aaron jumped in and moved forward quickly. At the time of this writing, Hire Goats features nearly 100 providers offering grazing services, and sends them dozens of quote requests from eager customers every month.

Aaron has big ambitions for Hire Goats, but he is wary of being seen as a fad. “You don’t want to make it a mobile backyard petting zoo,” he says. On the other hand, he’s aware that he can’t be “too hardcore about the benefits of fighting invasive species of plants and preventing wildfire.” Grazing services do both, providing a sustainable and practical solution, while also creating a delightful experience.

Aaron envisions a professionalized future for grazing-as-a-service. “We can't continue to deliver the sustainability benefits if the public doesn't accept us as a legitimate service,” he says. Through a managed marketplace of quality vendors, he hopes to develop “a higher degree of professionalism in our industry to make that happen.”