The multi-step contractor wizard that actually converts

I have watched contractors abandon sign-up flows for seven years. Almost every abandonment is the same story: the pro filled out three or four irrelevant screens before hitting the question that disqualified them. They leave angry because nobody respects their time. Wave 203 shipped /for-pros in the only order that respects it — license first, insurance second, scope third — and baked a CAC-versus-Angi trust gauge into step one so pros can see the economics before they commit a single minute.

The three steps

Step one is the license verification. A contractor types their license number, picks the issuing jurisdiction, clicks verify. The wizard calls our regulator rail — the same one described in the Wave 181 deep dive — and renders the board's live answer. If the board says active, the wizard advances to step two. If the board says expired, suspended, or not-found, the wizard shows the board's own reason, links to the board's renewal flow, and ends the session. No email capture, no silent downrank, no nagging follow-up. The pro sees the same truth the homeowner would see.

Step two is insurance and bonding. Pros upload a PDF of their general liability certificate, their worker's compensation certificate, and their surety bond (if applicable to the jurisdiction). Uploads are processed through a small OCR pass that extracts the carrier name, policy number, and expiration date. The extracted fields are shown to the pro for confirmation, not auto-saved blindly. If any expiration is within 30 days, the wizard flags it and asks the pro to upload the renewed certificate instead.

Step three is availability and scope. Pros pick their trade classification (consistent with the jurisdiction's vocabulary — CSLB classifications for California, CCB endorsements for Oregon, and so on), set a service radius from a home ZIP, choose which project sizes they want to bid (small, medium, large, or luxury), and tick a weekly availability calendar. This is the step where competitor platforms usually start. We end here because the first two steps have already produced a pre-qualified candidate; now we are only matching them to the right work.

Why the order matters economically

Measured at every step on the Wave 203 beta: 11 to 18 percent of applicants fail step one. Of those who pass step one, 6 to 9 percent fail step two on an expired bond or insurance. Of those who pass steps one and two, about 2 percent self-abandon step three.

If we had asked the insurance and availability questions first, we would have burned every applicant's time on 25 percent of applicants who would later fail the license check. Some of those applicants, given a partial profile, would have talked themselves into pushing on an expired license ("I'm in grace period," "it renews next week"). The license-first order prevents the soft-reject conversation entirely.

Insurance-first would have been even worse. An applicant who uploads a PDF, fills in carrier information, and then gets told their license lapsed is angry in a way an applicant who fails verification in step one is not. The up-front rejection feels respectful of their time. The late rejection feels like a bait-and-switch.

The CAC-vs-Angi calculator

Inside step one, visible before the applicant verifies their license, is a small calculator that asks for two numbers: how much the contractor currently spends on Angi leads per month, and their average closed project value. The calculator returns a projected CAC — Customer Acquisition Cost — under Angi's per-lead model and under AskBaily's flat-fee-on-closed-won model. The math is transparent: Angi charges per lead, AskBaily charges a flat percent of closed-won revenue, so the break-even depends on the contractor's current close-rate on Angi leads.

At a typical Angi close-rate of 8-15 percent, AskBaily's model produces lower CAC in every scenario we have tested. We show that result honestly. If a contractor's close-rate is above 25 percent on Angi (rare, but possible for highly differentiated pros), the calculator says so. We do not fake the comparison.

The calculator is the trust gauge. It is visible before the pro commits any time, it uses the pro's own numbers, and it shows its own math. No competitor platform shows a CAC comparison calculator against itself, let alone against a named competitor, for obvious reasons.

What Angi and Thumbtack cannot copy

They can, technically. They will not, for the same reason they cannot copy our license verification rail: their supply-side revenue depends on a large pool of pros paying per lead. A CAC calculator honestly comparing their model to a flat-fee competitor would tell a lot of their supply-side to leave. The numbers do not work in their favor at typical close-rates, and they know it.

They also cannot copy the license-first order. An Angi-style flow that rejected 11-18 percent of applicants on screen one would collapse their supply-volume metric and their per-lead inventory. Our flow, which ends with a small pool of pre-qualified pros, is the shape that matches our unit economics. Their flow, which ends with a large pool of self-attested pros, is the shape that matches theirs.

The wizard as a commitment

The three steps are /commitments-line-material. We said, publicly, that we would verify every pro's license in real time. The wizard is where that promise is delivered. Every applicant who completes step three has a live-board-verified license, a currently-active insurance policy, and a scope-and-availability record that is ready to be matched to homeowner work. That is the shape of supply the homeowner ultimately experiences. Making the supply side match the homeowner's expectations is the entire point.