Just launched in Philly, a new web app is using AI to help people fix their houses or find someone who can

Growing up at her dad’s real estate brokerage in Southwest Philly, Schola Chioma Eburuoh watched her dad, a Nigerian immigrant, help other immigrants find a soft landing place throughout the Philadelphia area. It showed her how having a home allows people to create community and fosters a sense of peace.

And it gave Eburuoh a sense of purpose that brought her to her mission now: helping people thrive in their homes.

Her web app, FiXA, which launched in early March, allows homeowners and renters to diagnose and tackle necessary home repairs through an easy-to-navigate, AI-enabled platform. Users can also use FiXA to connect with a vetted woman-led or family-owned contractor in the Greater Philadelphia region to do the dirty work for them.

Eburuoh, 27, and her cofounder, Sophia Guarbay Cabral Casino, 28, want FiXA to be “your go-to place for troubleshooting and contractor connections,” Eburuoh said. Philly is the web app’s “proving grounds,” she said, because it has some of the country’s oldest and most challenging housing stock. The city also has deep community roots, and the founders predict that will help FiXA thrive against competitors like Angi (formerly Angie’s List) or Thumbtack.

Eburuoh and Casino developed FiXA while enrolled at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design as part of an assignment to build something that could solve an everyday problem.

Their initial idea was to create an AI tool that allowed people to take a picture of construction waste in Lagos, Nigeria, that would then tell the user how it could be repurposed.

“Our professor said, ‘You’re trying to solve the world’s problems, and you should just solve the everyday person’s problems.’ So it was very humbling,” Eburuoh said. She added, “We can’t create world peace today, but we can solve something that’s been bugging us in our day-to-day life, that other people can probably relate to.”

So the duo debriefed in a coffee shop, and turned to a discussion about the problems that irk them personally. Eburuoh’s refrigerator had been acting up and Casino’s shower drain was hopelessly backed up, even after she snaked it. It was their light-bulb moment.

They thought, “Maybe we just need a tool that will help us troubleshoot,” Eburuoh said. So that’s exactly what they built.

At heyfixa.com, users are first prompted to type a description of their problem and optionally add a photo to support the diagnosis. Then the site prompts them to choose from a list of issues that could be the problem before choosing whether to get DIY instructions for the fix or hire a contractor.

If users choose to go the DIY route, they’ll receive a repair guide on the site and via email. Anyone, anywhere can use the web app’s diagnostic tool and DIY guides for free.

“Most diagnostic tools are thinking from the contractor connection piece, but we’re also focusing on the education first,” Eburuoh said about the DIY guides, which include repairing common household problems like a leaky sink or drafty door. “We’re meeting [the homeowner] exactly where they are.”

If, instead of going the DIY route, a user chooses to connect with a contractor, FiXA will make the introduction to one of the four contractors it currently works with, all of which are women-led or family owned. The website’s current contractor connections service Philadelphia and its four Pennsylvania collar counties: Delaware, Montgomery, Chester, and Bucks.

Those contractor referrals are where FiXA can make money, if the connection is successful. Eburuoh and Casino want to scale it beyond the Philadelphia area, but their prototype still has a lot of growing to do.

As Eburuoh and Casino built FiXA, they aimed to center the experience of single women. This demographic accounted for 21% of homebuyers from mid-2024 to mid-2025, according to the National Association of Realtors.

“Home repair is kind of intimate, and it can be very high stakes as well,” Eburuoh said. You’re “letting someone into your home.”

With that in mind, she said, FiXA “has to be accurate. The contractor has to be reliable and the introduction has to feel safe.”

So the cofounders still handle referrals themselves.

Currently, if a FiXA user decides to connect with a contractor, it’s Eburuoh herself who’s making the introduction — and it’s to contractors like Lea Bibbo, the operations manager of Delaware County-based Superior Design Services.

Bibbo and Eburuoh connected at a Delaware County Chamber of Commerce meeting. Bibbo said she was wowed by Eburuoh’s idea and hands-on commitment.

Bibbo has experienced the relief other women feel when she answers the phone at the office. She said it’s often women who call first and get the ball rolling on home projects.

“Women absolutely trust women,” she said.

Eburuoh said nurturing their contractor relationships is an essential part of the platform. She aims to provide “a high-quality lead market.”

Contractors only pay FiXA per completed lead, and users are only connected to one contractor at a time until there’s a fit. That way, contractors aren’t “running around to many homeowners doing estimates and then never getting the job,” Eburuoh said.

Ten days after FiXA’s launch on March 2, about 400 people had visited the site, driven largely from social media platforms. About 40 went through the diagnostic and three chose to connect with a contractor.

It was “a very exciting start for us,” Eburuoh said.

The duo hope to expand into Boston and Baltimore and work with enterprise partners, including Habitat for Humanity, to offer workshops educating homeowners about renovation and upkeep.

“Trade knowledge used to be passed down from parent to child, neighbor to neighbor,” but that’s no longer the case, Eburuoh said. Losing that means it can be harder for people to maintain, and stay in, their homes. That can have large and lasting impacts on communities, the cofounders observed.

She added, “We’re making sure families who have built Philly — and other cities — have the tools and knowledge to stay in it.”