Hi, I'm John.
Right now, I'm co-founder and CEO of Hoist, a venture-backed startup supported by Khosla Ventures, Greylock, and Northzone. Hoist makes buying home services as easy as buying on Amazon and helps pros make more money and waste less time.
Before Hoist
I grew up in a family home service business: my grandpa started it, my dad ran it, and my brother and I scaled and eventually sold it. Working in the trades gave me a front row seat to how annoying buying home services is for homeowners but even worse how painful and inefficient marketing and sales is for providers.
Before co-founding Hoist, I spent a few years building software for other startups. I led engineering at WellStart Health, a digital health startup focused on helping people make sustainable lifestyle changes to fight chronic disease. I founded a small dev agency called Better Development, and worked on projects like Whiz Tutor a marketplace for in-person tutoring, and UvoHealth a app-free video chat platform for medical offices. My work spanned from sales, design, product and engineering accross mobile, ecommerce frontend and backend. I've scaled and managed teams and dirtectly produced code and product throughout my entire career. However, through all this my roots of home services kept calling me back.
Hoist
I've been working on Hoist for over five years now: A lot of through pivots mistakes and hard earned lessons. The goal has always been the same: fix a broken system for homeowners and pros. The way people buy services is shifting online; we're just helping the trades catch up.
Other Projects
An ongoing art and music project where I can be totally unedited. It's conceptual, emotional, and cheaper than therapy.
A small side project born from trying to understand my own mental health. It sends random mood check-ins by text, helping you keep a better more objective pulse on yourself.
A podcast I co-hosted about software development and design. We tried to stay language-agnostic but ended up talking a lot about Rails, React, startups, and building things that last.
Interviews
Personal
I live in Ventura, California with my wife and two daughters.
Contact: johnsalzarulo@gmail.com
Note: This website is heavily inspired by MacWright's amazing work.