No more than a month ago, Michigan –– as well as most of the Northern United States –– was covered in record-breaking deep snow. Sidewalks were unwalkable, underpasses were unpassable and driveways were undrivable.

While these deep-snow woes were bad news for many, it was good news for Cameron Lockrey, a student studying business at Calvin and the owner and creator of Kickback Services.

Kickback, according to Lockrey, is an app that connects people who want a task done –– such as shoveling their driveway –– with people who want to do that task. Task-posters name their price, taskers complete it and Kickback takes a 5% cut of the transaction.

This winter saw an influx of snow removal tasks on the app. Along with some well-timed news coverage on Lockrey’s app from WZZM13, last month’s snowstorm provided an ample opportunity for Kickback to grow, according to Lockrey. As of right now, Kickback is currently sitting at 615 users. At the beginning of 2024, Kickback was at a mere 257 users, according to Lockrey.

Work on Kickback began in 2022 and Lockrey released the app in September 2023. Lockrey used Bubble.io, a full-stack, no-code app designer for both iOS and Android.

Securing funding has proven easy for Lockrey. In spring 2023, Kickback won $1,250 from the MWest challenge, an entrepreneurship competition for students in Michigan. In October of 2023, Kickback won $5,000 at 5×5 Night, an entrepreneurial pitch competition hosted by the organization StartGarden. In November of 2023, Kickback won the grand prize of $1,000 at Calvin’s PitchUp competition, hosted by the Calvin Startup Garage.

According to Lockrey, Kickback’s humble origins lie in a pressure-washing business he’d run with friends.

“Kickback originally started as an idea from when me and my friend were pressure washing back in 2022 because we wanted to start a pressure washing business and some of our clients would call us for really weird odd-jobs,” Lockrey told Chimes. “But some of them would call us for [things] like lawn mowing, moving rocks, mulching, landscaping. It was just a bunch of these odd jobs. And I kinda wondered ‘well, I actually love being outside and actually doing these jobs. But I wonder if there’s an app out there that would let me be able to do this for extra money.’”

Since then, Kickback’s repeated success has, according to Lockrey, given him “affirmation that this is a feasible idea to pursue,” and that overall, “it’s been a very fun journey.”

Lockrey has lots in mind for the future of Kickback, including understanding his audience.

“The ratio from taskers to homeowners [is] maybe like 15:1 or something like that. And so it’s a very skewed ratio,” said Lockrey. “A lot more people are willing to make money than there are people willing to post [jobs] on the platform.”

Learning about Kickback’s customers, marketing and growing in West Michigan and tapping into his target demographic are high on Lockery’s to-do list as Kickback expands.

After college, Lockrey plans to continue his work with Kickback and potentially go on to establish other businesses.

“Ideally, I would like to either start my own agency or work in an agency specifically in paid ads. So that way, that’s a skill I can sharpen and then apply that to Kickback in any other businesses that I might start in the future,” said Lockrey. “I would like to have Kickback on the side, and grow it until it starts becoming a bigger and bigger project.”

In the long term, Lockrey’s ambitions are big. The ultimate goal, according to Lockrey, is to take Kickback “nationwide,” amassing “hopefully millions of users.” While ambitious, Lockrey has a timeframe for this plan: five to eight years.

With a few weeks of winter ahead, the possibility of more snow looms. For Lockrey and Kickback, it’s another opportunity to shovel –– and in turn, to shine.