The last contractor you’ll ever call
Meet Anson Garaba, the founder behind The Middleman, a startup reimagining how homeowners experience maintenance and renovation projects.
After nearly a decade working across trades and home management roles, Anson saw firsthand how fragmented and stressful home services can be. In the summer of 2024, those experiences crystallized into a clear insight: while tools and platforms exist for contractors, homeowners are often left navigating poor communication, unclear expectations, and unnecessary stress. The Middleman was built to change that.
Rather than operating as a traditional marketplace or lead-generation platform, The Middleman acts as a standardized interface between homeowners and residential contractors. The focus is simple but powerful—create a transparent, guided customer experience from first contact to project completion, filling communication and feedback gaps that contractors don’t have the capacity to manage on their own.
Over the past year, The Middleman has made strong early progress:
- Validated the model with paying customers
- Launched a custom-built web app
- Refined their target market and messaging based on real-world usage
The company has also onboarded its first contractor partner, an important milestone that helped validate the model while ensuring contractors can participate without added overhead.
With early funding, grant support, and connections through Alberta Innovates and Edmonton Unlimited, Anson and the team are now preparing for their next phase of growth. Looking ahead to 2026, the focus is on scaling customer acquisition, growing recurring revenue, strengthening operations, and laying the groundwork for a larger fundraising round.
As a student founder, Anson credits Edmonton’s collaborative startup ecosystem, with support from Edmonton Unlimited, the University of Alberta, and programs like Experts On Demand, for helping The Middleman stay focused on traction, learn quickly, and avoid common early-stage pitfalls.
“Focus on problems you understand deeply. Use your lived experience, talk to customers early, and lean on the community. Things don’t take off overnight—but persistence really does matter.”
We’re excited to support student founders like Anson who are building with insight and ambition, right here in Edmonton.