Alex Hawkinson just wanted to give his house a voice. In February 2011 Hawkinson, an executive at technology startup ReachLocal, headed up with his family to their remote cabin in the Colorado Rockies only to find it soaked from the inside. Several months earlier the power had gone out and a pipe had burst. Moisture had made its way into every crevice. Fixing the place ended up costing more than $100,000. "It struck me: I couldn't believe the house didn't have a voice," says Hawkinson, 41, a midwestern-raised serial entrepreneur. "I have a handyman who lives half a mile down the road. He could have shut the water off, and we would have had no issue."
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