I have worked in online front-end branding, design, and strategy for more than 8 years. My partners and I started Dwela.com as all three of us are homeowners ourselves and thought it would be great to have an online destination that we could search quickly for various types of things we need around our own houses.

With my own company I have been involved with several networking groups and events, all of which I believe are valuable. I wanted to take the necessity of peer to peer networking to the web in a way it had never been done before.

While researching the concept we found several sites to search and find services but all had a similar weakness:

1. As the user, I had to enter my information and wait to be contacted with options, rather than scrolling through various service providers and make my own choice

2. As the member, I only had the option to provide contact information and sometimes a logo

We felt that it was time to create a collaborative space that several industries with one common thread (homeowners) could co-market together, build relationships and educate one another, and pass refferals to peers. And that is how Dwela.com came to be, of course with several features like associates lists, blogs, and profile syndication via email to name a few.

If Dwela.com is a cake, the public-facing site is the icing. With web sites these days, it doesn't matter how cool it is, or how much you spent on it. At the end of the day if Google and Yahoo don't provide it as a result when a search is done, the site is virtually dead space. Web site optimization and pay-per-click campaigns is a billion dollar a year industry. It is difficult for the small business owner to compete. Jesse Chatham, co-founder of Dwela.com has been optimizing web sites with an organic approach for nearly a decade. It is his knowledge that Dwela.com members gain for their profile on Dwela.com.