What are people's thoughts on applying this kind of "craigslist for services" business model to a number of verticals (not just cleaning or any other single market)?
Like http://thumbtack.com?
How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
41–50 of 171 posts
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#42Good read. I recently became a father and suddenly the need for hiring baby sitters,nannies, house cleaners is critical and like the blog says "it is not rocket science but not as easy as ordering book on amazon", I totally concur. My wife and I have been struggling to find "good" and "reliable" cleaners, or babysitter even though we have tried craigslist, care.come (for nannies) etc. Basic household needs have many…
My only advice is to pay your nanny salary rather than hourly. You will get way more quality candidates. Also, try sitter city in addition to care.com.
Thx will do. For salary, it gets tricky because most of them price themselves hourly and we have to pay for transportation costs. Yes, I live in NY metropolitan area so the cost is steep.
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#43What are people's thoughts on applying this kind of "craigslist for services" business model to a number of verticals (not just cleaning or any other single market)?
There are a bunch of companies that do this (think Red Beacon, Angie's List, TaskRabbit, and a number of other verticalized marketplaces). I'm sure there's a vertical that still needs to be tackled though.
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#44This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties. myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website. They allow both parties to meet without issue. No wonder they are doing well. Now, can you do this too? Y…
Another example of a company that successfully did this is uShip
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#45Were there difficulties, or things you had to learn business-wise, when switching to the model where you employ the cleaners yourselves? Can you talk about what was involved in that in terms of researching liability (e.g., is your company liable if there are injuries on the job or while traveling to the job?), taxes, paperwork, things like that?
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#46Cached version of the blog's front page (has the whole article) http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BeeWgSX...
Thank you. Our Canadian developer is working on fixing now!
Why not go ahead and learn basic HTML? You brag about it like you're proud of knowing nothing.
You could literally be proficient in HTML and basic server management this afternoon if you tried.
I'm not saying you should or taking a cheap shot, I just can't understand why some refuse to learn when their jobs depend on it.
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#47And this is probably why I will never be rich. The idea of hiring somebody to clean your house(or watch your kids, or do the grocery shopping) is completely foreign to me.
You've got it backwards. It's only after you have money that you'd start thinking about hiring someone to clean your house. If you're saying you can't empathize with people who are different from you ... well that's a different issue. Most people are not like you so you'll either have to learn how to empathize with them, or create businesses/products that directly address needs you understand (and have determined man…
Had a long talk about this recently with friends - people have different comfort levels with different "class" levels and what that says about us. It took me a long time to be comfortable with having a cleaner come by once every 2-3 weeks even though it made total sense both financially and relationship-wise (neither me or my fiancee are deep cleaners). Same sort of thing regarding hiring lawn people - even though they have better tools and can do it faster than I could. And a friend caught herself saying that she uses Amazon Fresh but that "she feels guilty about it". I think it's that we're all from strongly middle-class or working-class backgrounds.
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#48This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties. myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website. They allow both parties to meet without issue. No wonder they are doing well. Now, can you do this too? Y…
Logo links to the blog because that is the blog your reading. I clicked it too thinking it would take me to the site.
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#49Insert mandatory caveat here about fictitious self-employment.
Can you clarify what you mean?
Re: How We Bootstrapped a $20K Website into a $4M/year Business
#50Good read. I recently became a father and suddenly the need for hiring baby sitters,nannies, house cleaners is critical and like the blog says "it is not rocket science but not as easy as ordering book on amazon", I totally concur. My wife and I have been struggling to find "good" and "reliable" cleaners, or babysitter even though we have tried craigslist, care.come (for nannies) etc. Basic household needs have many…
My only advice is to pay your nanny salary rather than hourly. You will get way more quality candidates. Also, try sitter city in addition to care.com.
Good nannies can command $60K-80K/year in metro areas like NY and SF.