Bill Oesterle, a founder and the longtime chief govt of the service assessment web site Angie’s List, who additionally ran Mitch Daniels’s first marketing campaign for governor of Indiana however later clashed with the state’s Republican institution, died on Wednesday at his residence in Indianapolis. He was 57.
His assistant, Jackie Annan, mentioned the trigger was problems of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s illness.
The thought behind Angie’s List, which Mr. Oesterle (pronounced OST-er-lee) based in Columbus, Ohio, in 1995 with Angie Hicks, was to attach individuals who paid a subscription charge to reliable contractors and different residence enchancment professionals, eradicating a few of the anxiousness from hiring a stranger for costly residence repairs.
The business, initially known as Columbus Neighbors, was a hyperlocal affair: Ms. Hicks signed up new subscribers by going door to door and supplied referrals over the telephone, consulting an precise listing that needed to be up to date every time an organization’s ranking modified. The service unfold the phrase even additional by promoting in newspapers, and the identify turned Angie’s List in 1996.
In 1999, with the dot-com growth close to its apogee, Angie’s List moved on-line. The website, which nonetheless charged a subscription charge and likewise made cash via promoting, rated totally different companies from A to F in classes like punctuality and professionalism. It additionally allowed customers to put in writing signed opinions about totally different companies of their space, which Angie’s List hoped would make opinions fairer and extra correct. (Users’ whole names didn’t seem, however they did have to supply them to the corporate.)
Businesses that acquired dangerous opinions may attempt to settle the problem with clients who complained via Angie’s List; if the business ignored the grievance decision course of or did not resolve a grievance, it could possibly be positioned within the Penalty Box, a sort of on-line pillory, and briefly lose its itemizing on the positioning. Widely praised companies earned a Super Service Award, in addition to larger consideration on the positioning.
Mr. Oesterle turned chief govt in 1999, when Ms. Hicks left to attend Harvard Business School. (She later returned in a unique capability.) In time the corporate employed greater than 2,000 staff, primarily based mostly in Indianapolis throughout Mr. Oesterle’s tenure, and developed a person base of thousands and thousands in dozens of cities throughout the United States.
In 2004 Mr. Oesterle stepped away to run Mr. Daniels’s marketing campaign for governor. He had identified Mr. Daniels, who was then director of the Office of Management and Budget, for years. Mr. Oesterle raised thousands and thousands of {dollars} for Mr. Daniels’s marketing campaign whereas having him tour the state in an R.V., trip a motorbike and keep in a single day with constituents to reveal that he was a person of the folks.
Mr. Daniels received handily, beating the Democratic incumbent, Joseph Kernan, with greater than 53 % of the vote.
Mr. Oesterle turned in opposition to the Indiana Republican institution in 2015, when Mr. Daniels’s successor as governor, Mike Pence, signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a regulation that critics contended would permit companies to discriminate in opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. folks.
The regulation drew an outcry from politicians in different states in addition to business leaders like Tim Cook of Apple and lots of Hoosiers — hundreds protested on the statehouse.
Mr. Oesterle threatened to cancel a $40 million deal to develop Angie’s List’s Indianapolis headquarters, depart his job as chief govt to concentrate on homosexual rights in Indiana and assist a challenger to Mr. Pence, to whom he had donated $150,000.
He advised The Indianapolis Star in 2015 that he thought the invoice would injury the state’s financial system and the Republican Party.
After the uproar, Indiana lawmakers shortly handed an modification supposed to guard L.G.B.T.Q. folks from discrimination. But Angie’s List by no means constructed its Indianapolis growth.
Angie’s List went public in 2011 however struggled financially after a promising preliminary public providing. Mr. Oesterle stepped down as chief govt in 2015, and in 2017 Angie’s List was acquired for about $500 million by IAC, a digital media group managed by the entrepreneur Barry Diller, which merged the corporate with its HomeAdvisor service. Angie’s List is now generally known as Angi.
William Seelye Oesterle was born on Sept. 26, 1965, in Lafayette, Ind., northwest of Indianapolis. He was the youngest of 5 kids of Eric Oesterle, an agricultural economics professor at Purdue University, and Germaine (Seelye) Oesterle, who studied horticulture at Cornell University earlier than they married.
Mr. Oesterle grew up in West Lafayette, the place he graduated from highschool in 1983. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in economics from Purdue in 1987 and took a fellowship with Gov. Robert Orr.
After a couple of 12 months, Mr. Oesterle was employed by the Hudson Institute, a suppose tank that on the time was led by Mr. Daniels and headquartered in Indianapolis. He was later accepted to Harvard Business School. But earlier than he left, Mr. Daniels had a dialog with him.
“He pointed a finger at my chest and said, ‘You’d better come back here. You owe it to us,’” Mr. Oesterle mentioned in 2021.
He accomplished his grasp’s diploma at Harvard within the early Nineties, and in 1991 he married Melissa McCain. Their marriage resulted in divorce.
Mr. Oesterle went to work for a personal fairness agency in Columbus, Ohio, the place he met Ms. Hicks, a current graduate of DePauw University.
Inspired by a publication service in Indianapolis that helped folks discover plumbers and different residence staff, Mr. Oesterle and Ms. Hicks began understanding of his storage. Once the corporate started to take off, they named it after Ms. Hicks, purchased the service that had initially impressed them and ultimately moved their headquarters to Indianapolis.
In 2002 Mr. Oesterle helped create the Orr Fellowship, named after Governor Orr, which brings as much as 90 new faculty graduates to Indianapolis to work for main corporations for 2 years.
In 2007, Mr. Oesterle married Kristi English. She survives him, as do 4 kids from his first marriage, Maggie Shipman, Katie Smith, Fischer Oesterle and Emma Oesterle; a stepdaughter, Kayla English; a daughter from his second marriage, Luella Oesterle; two brothers, Eric and Dale; two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Ellen Oesterle; and three grandchildren.
The Orr Fellowship was the primary of many efforts Mr. Oesterle undertook to maintain gifted, educated staff from leaving Indiana.
Mr. Oesterle began a business to handle the issue: MakeMyMove, which works with communities in Indiana and different states to current incentives for distant staff to maneuver to these communities.
Source: www.nytimes.com