Start from the trade.
We learn a trade before we build for it: its services, how its customers search, the questions they ask. A new trade is research first, software second.
OUR STORY
Where the trades meet software.
Rule & Form was founded on knowing both: the work that happens in attics and crawlspaces, and the software that now runs entire parts of a business. It exists because those two worlds sat apart for far too long.
It started on job sites in Texas.
Our founder grew up in an HVAC family and spent years in the trade, in attics, on remodels and at supply-house counters. Those years showed the skill and pride that go into the work, and how much of running a trade business happens outside the trade.
Then came twenty years in design and software: art direction at Capital One, interactive work at an agency in Seattle, and products of his own. Twenty years of watching software go from showing information to doing the work.
The gap was hard to ignore.
Respected contractors, with skilled crews and decades of experience, still had websites that barely represented them. They were paying for marketing they couldn’t easily judge and software they had to learn, while the technology to do far better was arriving everywhere else first.
We couldn’t find a good reason those two things should stay apart. So we started building.
SO FAR
What we’ve built. One release at a time.
- 01
Plumbing
The first trade, built service by service: every job a plumber does, with a page for each.
- 02
Every state
Service areas resolved across all fifty states and DC, down to boroughs and consolidated city-counties.
- 03
Spanish
Every page served in a second language, kept in step with the English.
- 04
Jobber
Website leads delivered straight into the job software the business already runs.
- 05
Four more trades
HVAC, electrical, roofing and pest control, each with its own services and its own answers.
- Next
More trades
Every trade that serves a home, one blueprint at a time.
HOW WE WORK
The way we build is the product.
Nothing made up.
What we publish comes from what a business has confirmed. Where something isn’t known, we leave it blank rather than guess.
The owner decides.
We prepare the work. The person whose name is on the business decides what goes live.
Finished is never the goal.
We ship improvements to every site continuously, and say what changed in the changelog.
A NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER
I’ve spent my life between two worlds: the trade I grew up in, and the software I spent twenty years building. Rule & Form is where they finally meet.
The people doing this work have been underserved for a long time. We want to build something they’re proud to put their name on, that earns their trust through the quality of its work, and keeps earning it every month.