CO-FOUNDER OF ANGIE’S LIST RAN GOVERNOR’S CAMPAIGN

Bill Oesterle, co-founder and longtime CEO of the service-review website Angie’s List, who also ran Mitch Daniels’ first campaign for governor of Indiana but later clashed with the state’s Republican establishment, died May 10 at his home in Indianapolis. He was 57.

The cause was complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig ’s disease.

The idea behind Angie’s List, which Oesterle founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1995 with Angie Hicks, was to connect people who paid a subscription fee to trustworthy contractors and other home improvement professionals, removing some of the anxiety from hiring a stranger for expensive home repairs.

The business, originally called Columbus Neighbors, was a hyperlocal affair: Hicks signed up new subscribers by going door to door and provided referrals over the phone, consulting an actual list that had to be updated whenever a company’s rating changed. The service spread the word even further by advertising in newspapers, and the name became Angie’s List in 1996.

In 1999, with the dot-com boom near its apogee, Angie’s List moved online. The site, which still charged a subscription fee and also made money through advertising, rated different businesses from A to F in categories such as punctuality and professionalism. It also allowed users to write signed reviews about different businesses in their area, which Angie’s List hoped would make reviews fairer and more accurate.

Oesterle became CEO in 1999, when Hicks left to attend Harvard Business School. (She later returned in a different capacity.) In time the company employed more than 2,000 workers, mainly based in Indianapolis during Oesterle’s tenure, and developed a user base of millions in dozens of cities across the United States.

In 2004, Oesterle stepped away to run Daniels’ campaign for governor. He had known Daniels, who was then director of the Office of Management and Budget, for years. Oesterle raised millions of dollars for Daniels’ campaign while having him tour the state in a recreational vehicle, ride a motorcycle and stay overnight with constituents to demonstrate that he was a man of the people.

Daniels won handily, beating the Democratic incumbent, Joseph Kernan, with more than 53 percent of the vote.

Oesterle turned against the Indiana Republican establishment in 2015, when Daniels’ successor as governor, Mike Pence, signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law that critics contended would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.

The law drew an outcry from politicians in other states as well as business leaders such as Tim Cook of Apple and many Hoosiers.

Thousands protested at the statehouse.

Oesterle threatened to cancel a $40 million deal to expand Angie’s List’s Indianapolis headquarters, leave his job as CEO to focus on gay rights in Indiana and support a challenger to Pence, to whom he had donated $150,000.

He told The Indianapolis Star in 2015 that he thought the bill would damage the state’s economy and the Republican Party.

After the uproar, Indiana lawmakers quickly passed an amendment intended to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.

Angie’s List went public in 2011 but struggled financially after a promising initial public offering. Oesterle stepped down as CEO in 2015, and in 2017, Angie’s List was acquired for about $500 million by IAC.

William Seelye Oesterle was born Sept. 26, 1965, in Lafayette, Ind., northwest of Indianapolis.

Oesterle grew up in West Lafayette, where he graduated from high school in 1983. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Purdue in 1987 and took a fellowship with Gov. Robert Orr.

He completed his master’s degree at Harvard in the early 1990s.

In 2002, Oesterle helped create the Orr Fellowship, named after Orr,

the first of many efforts that Oesterle undertook to keep talented, educated workers from leaving Indiana.