Branch 02 · First Light
Code — First Light
At the dawn of the web, Jack Phan built the first algorithm to match homeowners with contractors online — a breakthrough that helped make the Yellow Pages obsolete for home services.
Jack taught himself HTML, C++, and SQL at the dawn of the commercial web and turned that self-education into an industry-shaping product.
Handyman Online
Founded in 1996, Handyman Online is where Jack got his start — and made his mark. As Head of Technology (not a founder of the company), he built the first algorithm to match homeowners with contractors on the World Wide Web in 1997, a breakthrough that helped make the Yellow Pages obsolete for home services.
Backed by more than $24 million in venture capital led by TCV and First Analysis, the company was acquired by ServiceMagic in 2001 — the platform that became HomeAdvisor and is now part of Angi (NASDAQ: ANGI).
Why it matters
First Light is the moment the pattern-recognition instinct found its medium. A matching algorithm is, at heart, a machine for finding signal in noise — the same instinct that recurs at every later branch of the timeline.
Travel forward to The Exits, where the building becomes a habit.