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Why Homejoy Failed

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Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#201

Post by rconti »

It blows my mind that a company this small would have any desire to have an international presence. I get that the "growth first, profits later" mentality can have some benefit, but why on earth deal with the hassle of language, culture, currency, and legal barriers? These things are bad enough from state to state and city to city. The international push seems more about hubris and ego than out of any practical concerns -- at least until urban areas in the home market of the company are saturated.

Also, buying cleaning supplies for 1099 workers who do other jobs on the side? Why this was ever considered a core competency is beyond me.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#202

Post by Karunamon »

kefka wrote: post #115
IgorPartola wrote: post #3

I read a comment on HN a while ago that went along the lines of "there is a new breed of startups that's in the business of selling dollar bills for 95 cents". I really like that formulation. Your job gets a lot easier as soon as you provide more value than you charge for it. Seems like that was one of the big problems with Homejoy: they were not able to charge more. The reality is that home cleaning is very price co…

Nahh, it's more like: "there is a new breed of startups that's in the business of selling dollar bills for 50 cents and the bills are counterfeit. Cash out before we're caught." It really says it, considering that much of the VC groups not only allow breaking the law, but encourage it in the name of "progress". And you know, who cares about the worker anyways. They're replaceable (until the specific AI comes and take…

Many of the laws are crap anyways and due for replacement - taxi medallions being the canonical example here.

And quite honestly, most Uber drivers don't want to be employees. They want the freedom to drive whenever they want just by clicking a button on an app.

The only person that wants to force an employee/employer relationship on Uber are a small handful of angry drivers, and the state.

Kind of puts the motives into perspective.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#203

Post by gaius »

quanticle wrote: post #194
pavlov wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A story about what it's like working for Handy, "My Day Interviewing For The Service Economy Startup From Hell" : http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for-the-s...

On a side note, I wonder why the reporter bothered changing the name of the co-founder of Handybook in that piece. From the remainder of her description (e.g. the mention of a Harvard MBA and the experience at McKinsey) I was able to determine that "Ajay" was actually Umang Dua, after about two minutes on CrunchBase and LinkedIn.

He comes across as pretty sleazy in the article.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#204

Post by erispoe »

Domenic_S wrote: post #180
mikeash wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also solved a problem that's more or less already solved. Uber is great because finding a taxi can be hard, and finding a good taxi can be really hard. Finding somebody to clean your house is really easy. I must get half a dozen flyers a week for cleaning services stuck on my door. If I don't trust that, I can just ask my neighbors for a recommendation.

> Finding somebody to clean your house is really easy. Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy, sure, but finding someone who's 1) consistent 2) always on-time and 3) not $100/hr is next to impossible. Perhaps in a large metro it's easier, but I've had basically no luck in suburban silicon valley.

The Silicon Vallex is in a large metro. It's still pretty dense and you have 8 million people around. I don't think the experience would be different in Oakland, Fremont, San Francisco...

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#205

Post by brandonmenc »

tyrust wrote: post #199

A tangential thing I noticed: >Unlike Uber, which requires a drivers’ license, cleaners need more intensive training to do the job properly. It's sort of bizarre to have higher expectations for cleaners than automobile drivers. Driving a car with multiple people around town to semi-familiar places? Sure, that driving test you took when you were 16 years old is fine. Cleaning a house? Waaaait one minute, what are your…

Most adults have clocked thousands of driving hours. Few have say, shampooed a carpet.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#206

Post by kefka »

Karunamon wrote: post #202
kefka wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nahh, it's more like: "there is a new breed of startups that's in the business of selling dollar bills for 50 cents and the bills are counterfeit. Cash out before we're caught." It really says it, considering that much of the VC groups not only allow breaking the law, but encourage it in the name of "progress". And you know, who cares about the worker anyways. They're replaceable (until the specific AI comes and take…

Many of the laws are crap anyways and due for replacement - taxi medallions being the canonical example here. And quite honestly, most Uber drivers don't want to be employees. They want the freedom to drive whenever they want just by clicking a button on an app. The only person that wants to force an employee/employer relationship on Uber are a small handful of angry drivers, and the state. Kind of puts the motives i…

Lets say your narrative is true....

> Many of the laws are crap anyways and due for replacement - taxi medallions being the canonical example here.

Agreed. It came from a time in which kidnapping and other nefarious tactics were used. Certification and medallions were the answer to that. Their time has grown old.

> And quite honestly, most Uber drivers don't want to be employees.

Unsubstantiated. How about asking if they "Believe the compensation is enough to offset the risks they take as self-employed, plus license compliance and commercial driving insurance?"

Having not run the numbers, I would guess that the risks and costs leave UBER drivers worse off than not working.

> The only person that wants to force an employee/employer relationship on Uber are a small handful of angry drivers, and the state.

Unsubstantiated. When you get into a wreck driving as UBER, and UBER tells you to lie to your vehicular insurance regarding commercial traffic, yeah, I think there's something about the anger that's justified.

And a company that takes advantage of people, recommends felony insurance fraud, and blatantly flaunts lawbreaking in everyone's face, yeah. Something needs to be done.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#207

Post by Albright »

vegabook wrote: post #174
untog wrote: 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…

In old-economy-speak what you just said basically translates as "you entered a crowded market". When you're standing on an unknown, rainy street corner far away from home, a taxi's services are urgently required, and not abundant. When you're lounging on your sofa and start contemplating how it would be nice for someone else to bin the pizza boxes, it's the opposite on both counts. Moreover, I don't see the money men…

For those unaware, it looks like this is "Dear Future HomeJoy Engineer:" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956

Commentary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8795197

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#208

Post by Pxtl »

sageabilly wrote: post #2

"The steady leak of its best workers to direct employment arrangements with its own (now former) clients." This is a huge hurdle in any direct services market. While you're not likely to hire your own private driver and thus end your working relationship with Uber, you're probably very likely to find a cleaner that you like a lot and who does a great job cleaning your house and go on to form an exclusive working rela…

Imho, this is why a generalized system of home-services might work better.

I mean, Uber's success is that it connects where you are with nearby drivers. The map.

We could similarly have a "map" not geographically, but thematically, of nearby service providers. I need a foundation guy who does green technology. Or a cleaning lady who knows how to work with antique mahogany.

Of course, this kind of map is far harder to do than a simple GMapps GPS system. So you'd need more human overhead both walking new service-providers and new customers through the tagging system of describing a service.

But still, there's room for that: a complex recommendation engine where you describe the kind of job you need done and it links you up with local experts in that kind of work, combined with Uber-style ratings. Google sucks for this.

You target a high price-point because you shoot for the one-offs, which means they may need human arbitration. Anything repeating and you'll lose them to direct personal relationships anyways - you add value and get profit from the first-time use of a new service-provider.

Something in-between Uber and Yelp, "do stuff at my house".

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#209

Post by fab13n »

Am I fair if I sum the business model as follows? Homejoy:

* proposed a service best provided by employees,

* planned to save money by using independent contractors,

* but had no plan about addressing any of the consequences of using independent contractors.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#210

Post by yarou »

patio11 wrote: post #127
tptacek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mild disagree here: the premium isn't coming from cleaners, it is coming from a hundred thousand or so local mom-and-pop operations which own one to five trucks. They hire substantially the same workers by demographics and do not appear to give their employees meaningfully superior compensation than the on-demand service companies. The model appears to be centralize lead generation nationwide, pool support resources,…

I think that Homejoy was a thoroughly rent-seeking enterprise, rather than a disruptive technology startup.

Frankly, I failed to see (and still fail to see) what was disruptive about their process. They were essentially competing in a close to perfectly competitive market (with some minor level of differentiation).

Contrast that with Uber, who was able to capture most if not all of the Schumpeterian rent.

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