Bill Oesterle, a founder and longtime chief executive of the service ratings website Angie’s List, who also led Mitch Daniels’ first campaign for Indiana governor but later clashed with the state’s Republican establishment, died Wednesday at his home in Indianapolis. He was 57.
His assistant, Jackie Annan, said the cause was complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The idea behind Angie’s List, that Mr. Oesterle (pronounced OST-er-lee) co-founded with Angie Hicks in Columbus, Ohio, in 1995, was to connect subscription-payers with trusted contractors and other home improvement professionals. from the fear of hiring a stranger for expensive home repairs.
Originally called Columbus Neighbors, the company was a hyper-local affair: Ms. Hicks enrolled new subscribers by door-to-door and telephone referrals, consulting an up-to-date list that needed to be updated when the rating of a company changed. The service spread the word even further by advertising in newspapers, and the name became Angie’s List in 1996.
In 1999, as the Internet explosion was nearing its peak, Angie’s List went online. The site, which still charged subscription fees and also monetized advertising, rated several companies from A to F in categories such as punctuality and professionalism. It also allowed users to write signed reviews about various businesses in their area, which Angie’s List hoped would make reviews more fair and accurate. (Users’ full names were not displayed, but they were required to provide them to the company.)
Companies that received poor reviews could try to resolve the issue with customers who complained through Angie’s List; if the company ignores the complaint-handling process or fails to resolve a complaint, it could be placed in the penalty box, a kind of online pillory, and temporarily lose its listing on the site. Acclaimed companies earned a Super Service Award and more attention on the site.
Mr. Oesterle became CEO in 1999, when Ms. Hicks left to attend Harvard Business School. (She later returned in another capacity.) Over time, the company employed more than 2,000 employees, mostly based in Indianapolis during Mr. Oesterle’s tenure, and developed a user base of millions in dozens of cities across the United States.
In 2004, Mr. Oesterle stepped down to lead Mr. Daniels’ campaign for governor. He had known Mr. Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, for many years. Mr. Oesterle raised millions of dollars for Mr. Daniels’ campaign as he toured the state in an RV, rode a motorcycle, and stayed overnight with voters to show that he was a man of the people.
Mr. Daniels won handily, defeating the Democratic incumbent, Joseph Kernan, with more than 53 percent of the vote.
Mr. Oesterle turned against the Republican establishment in Indiana in 2015, when Mr. Daniels’ successor as governor, Mike Pence, signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law critics say would allow companies to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
The law provoked outrage from politicians in other states, as well as corporate executives such as Apple’s Tim Cook and many Hoosiers – thousands protested outside the state house.
Mr. Oesterle threatened to cancel a $40 million deal to expand Angie’s List’s Indianapolis headquarters, quit his job as CEO to focus on gay rights in Indiana and support a challenger to Mr. Pence, to whom he had donated $150,000.
He told The Indianapolis Star in 2015 that he thought the bill would hurt the state’s economy and the Republican Party.
After the uproar, Indiana lawmakers quickly passed an amendment designed to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination. But Angie’s List never built its extension in Indianapolis.
Angie’s List went public in 2011, but struggled financially after a promising IPO. Mr. Oesterle stepped down as CEO in 2015, and in 2017, Angie’s List was acquired for approximately $500 million by IAC, a digital media group controlled by entrepreneur Barry Diller, who merged the company with his HomeAdvisor service. Angie’s List is now known as Angi.
William Seelye Oesterle was born on September 26, 1965 in Lafayette, Ind., northwest of Indianapolis. He was the youngest of five children of Eric Oesterle, an agricultural economics professor at Purdue University, and Germaine (Seelye) Oesterle, who studied horticulture at Cornell University before they were married.
Mr. Oesterle grew up in West Lafayette, where he graduated from high school in 1983. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Purdue in 1987 and a fellowship with Governor Robert Orr.
After about a year, Mr. Oesterle adopted by the Hudson Institute, a think tank led at the time by Mr. Daniels and was based in Indianapolis. He was later accepted into Harvard Business School. But before he left, Mr. Daniels had a talk with him.
He pointed a finger at my chest and said, “You better come back here.” You owe it to us,” Mr Oesterle said in 2021.
In the early 1990s he completed his master’s degree at Harvard and in 1991 he married Melissa McCain. Their marriage ended in divorce.
Mr. Oesterle went to work for a private equity firm in Columbus, Ohio, where he met Ms. Hicks, a recent graduate of DePauw University.
Inspired by an Indianapolis newsletter service that helped people find plumbers and other home workers, Mr. Oesterle and Mrs. Hicks began working out of his garage. Once the company started to grow, they named it after Ms. Hicks, bought the service that originally inspired them, and eventually moved their headquarters to Indianapolis.
In 2002, Mr. Oesterle helped create the Orr Fellowship, named for Governor Orr, which brings up to 90 new graduates to Indianapolis to work for large companies for two years.
In 2007, Mr. Oesterle married Kristi English. She survives him, as do four children 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 first of many efforts Mr. Oesterle undertook to keep talented, educated workers from leaving Indiana.
Mr. Oesterle started a company to address the problem: MakeMyMove, which partners with communities in Indiana and other states to provide incentives for remote workers to move to those communities.
