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Why Homejoy Failed

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Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is statistically true, people don't act as if this were the case. While trusting someone with your physical safety should be a high-trust decision, we treat it cavalierly enough in our day to day lives that most people clearly don't worry about it. Maybe it makes sense, though, because the other person in the interaction has more incentive to defect when given access to all of your possessions than when gi…

While trusting someone with your physical safety should be a high-trust decision, we treat it cavalierly enough in our day to day lives that most people clearly don't worry about it. We just can't avoid it. We assume that nobody's poisoned our food, we assume that nobody is going to go suicidal on the roadways and ram themselves head-on into our car, we don't wear body armor to work because we assume our coworkers wo…

Right, exactly. I didn't put enough conditions on my "should". I meant that in a crazy utopia, we would never be put at risk because of others, the real world is very very far from this utopia, and we put high levels of implicit trust in other people all the time. There's nothing wrong with this, given the world as it is.

Going back to Uber vs. Homejoy, the level of risk differential is much higher with Homejoy, because when using an Uber, you are probably not assuming much extra risk compared to what else you would do to get where you are going. For a cleaning service, then the risk differential is noticeable ('someone has access to my house' vs 'Only I and my family have access to my house') when jumping up from "doing the cleaning yourself". If you're comparing Homejoy to other cleaning services on a risk basis, you'd have to actually look at the numbers. I'm really not trying to bash Homejoy or cleaning services here.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of anyone

Many HN'ers like open offices so now you have someone to think of :) Personally I would like a private office but I'd always leave my door open.

There's a world of difference between choosing to leave a door open door and not having a door in the first place.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#103
post #25

I think this is a demonstration of the limits in "app-ing" an industry. Uber worked fantastically because it leans heavily on the geolocation facilities in a smartphone - you're always moving, getting picked up from different places, by cars located in different places. Homejoy had none of that. You rarely move home, and your cleaner rarely does either. Effectively, from transaction #1 you're in a perfectly replicabl…

Average 3-star Yelp review is likely a core issue.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/homejoy-san-francisco

e.g. "I have never had more problems with any service or company than I have with this business."

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#104
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be replying to a comment which has very little in common with the one I wrote.

Huh. The Uber driver could rob you too; they could rape or murder. They could kidnap. They have, really, far more opportunities to harm you. But the ol' housekeeper is alone in getting assumed to be a thief. Probably this was not meant. But its been a hot button, the casual assumption that housekeepers are thieves, since forever. I guess I read that into the comment too readily.

Yes, the Uber driver could rob you or worse, but they would also be guaranteed to get caught, so they probably won't do it.

I think you are picking on a rather objective and dispassionate observation about incentives to take a grandstanding against classism, I appreciate the sentiment but the execution is flawed.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#105
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. The Uber driver could rob you too; they could rape or murder. They could kidnap. They have, really, far more opportunities to harm you. But the ol' housekeeper is alone in getting assumed to be a thief. Probably this was not meant. But its been a hot button, the casual assumption that housekeepers are thieves, since forever. I guess I read that into the comment too readily.

Yes, the Uber driver could rob you or worse, but they would also be guaranteed to get caught, so they probably won't do it. I think you are picking on a rather objective and dispassionate observation about incentives to take a grandstanding against classism, I appreciate the sentiment but the execution is flawed.

Modeling the behaviour of personal assailants from the POV of their rational risk-reward expectations does not match reality very well. They are largely people who are not in control of their impulses.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#106
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know too much about it, but just from an initial glance it seems like it is better positioned, simply by offering things like plumbers, electricians, etc - again, they aren't services you fall into regular patterns with. They're very much on-demand when there is water leaking all over your apartment. That said , I'm sure "doesn't seem to be struggling from what I can tell" could have been said about Homejoy,…

Yeah, Homejoy's demise took everyone by surprise. Unless the company is public, it's almost impossible for a casual observer to tell how healthy it is.

The only reason it took everyone by surprise is because tech media (including YC) hailed it as being the "next big thing".

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#107
post #72
post #57

But on this particular holiday, a booking had slipped through unnoticed, due to a website malfunction, according to a former employee. Rather than cancel an appointment at the last minute, Homejoy’s cofounder and CEO Adora Cheung grabbed a toilet brush and a vacuum cleaner. Then she headed to San Francisco’s Mission Dolores neighborhood and scrubbed. “The customer had no idea,” said Arjun Naskar, one of the earliest…

The snark us unwarranted here. The article explains that all employees went through a house cleaning during on boarding. There are plenty of ceo/founders who would consider themselves not responsible for doing the dirty jobs that make a company work, particularly on a holiday such as thanksgiving (in the US, a very family-time centric holiday)

Just because lots of people are terrible doesn't mean this is laudable. One of the major roles of management is (or is supposed to be) to jump in and fill holes when needed.

In my opinion, a sane business starts out with the CEO/founders doing the actual work, and only after a great deal of expansion does it reach a point where upper management can think about being disconnected from it. I guess massive VC funding allows companies to skip straight to the second part.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#108
post #72
post #57

But on this particular holiday, a booking had slipped through unnoticed, due to a website malfunction, according to a former employee. Rather than cancel an appointment at the last minute, Homejoy’s cofounder and CEO Adora Cheung grabbed a toilet brush and a vacuum cleaner. Then she headed to San Francisco’s Mission Dolores neighborhood and scrubbed. “The customer had no idea,” said Arjun Naskar, one of the earliest…

The snark us unwarranted here. The article explains that all employees went through a house cleaning during on boarding. There are plenty of ceo/founders who would consider themselves not responsible for doing the dirty jobs that make a company work, particularly on a holiday such as thanksgiving (in the US, a very family-time centric holiday)

Again: the premise of the business is that there's a premium to collect on top of the work of housekeepers, who generally do that job because it is the only way they can scrape by, and that the premium should be assigned to people who can code. The article's author thinks that performing the gig once is somehow an illustration of a startup founder's determination. I winced.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#110
post #25

I think this is a demonstration of the limits in "app-ing" an industry. Uber worked fantastically because it leans heavily on the geolocation facilities in a smartphone - you're always moving, getting picked up from different places, by cars located in different places. Homejoy had none of that. You rarely move home, and your cleaner rarely does either. Effectively, from transaction #1 you're in a perfectly replicabl…

Average 3-star Yelp review is likely a core issue. http://www.yelp.com/biz/homejoy-san-francisco e.g. "I have never had more problems with any service or company than I have with this business."

Yep, the cancellations and late arrivals, plus changing people and therefore variable quality made this a pain when I was using it.
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