What was the added value over other smaller cleaning services?
Homejoy says goodbye
211–220 of 410 posts
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#212I used Homejoy and I liked it's ease of use. But after the cleaning lady they sent me was done, she offered me her direct phone # and told me I could contact her directly for any future cleaning needs. I always wondered how this business model was going to work if Homejoy's contractors could just give out their phone # at the end of their first service and the customer could just contact them directly for any future…
This was very common with AirBnb as well at the beginning: you could exchange private information with the host and then pay them directly. However, over time it just made more sense to use AirBnb's interface.
What these companies need to do is provide an ease-of-use, reliability, and security so that the customer is incentivized to use the official way over doing it under the table. Sure you could pay the cleaning lady directly, but having it automatically debited from your credit card is much easier.
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the lack of passion from the cleaners I doubt cleaning other people's shit is anyone's passion.
Just as much as I doubt checking me out in a check-out line is anyone's idea of "passion", but it's still rude and unprofessional to not show me courtesy. You don't get a moral blank-check just because you don't like your job.
Courtesy and passion are different things. Let's not devalue the word.
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#214best of luck to the founders on their next venture
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just as much as I doubt checking me out in a check-out line is anyone's idea of "passion", but it's still rude and unprofessional to not show me courtesy. You don't get a moral blank-check just because you don't like your job.
Courtesy and passion are different things. Let's not devalue the word.
You're mistakenly drawing a parallel between the two words. I am saying a cashier that is not passionate about their job is not _entitled_ to be uncourteous and therefore act unprofessionally.
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#216A lesson to take away here is that a startup which faces legal/regulatory threats to their existence has to be small enough to be ignored or huge enough to change the rules.
Uber is probably the first company you think of, with their absurdly large investment rounds, or maybe PayPal, but don't forget YouTube. They went from a little video portal with everyone else's stuff on it to a protectorate of one of the world's largest businesses so quickly the copyright holders had no chance to deprive it of existence.
The danger zone is in the middle. Homejoy didn't expect to be in this kind of trouble, but once they were, it made finding a huge round of funding both necessary and impossible. So this is the rational decision.
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely, however another "advantage" of many "sharing economy" companies is that they skirt regulations that incumbents must adhere to.
The real question to ask in this case is whether those regulations should be there in the first place.
In the case of using the "independent contractor" loophole to avoid paying UI, social sec tax, minimum wage, etc, it's an issue of making sure everyone plays by the same rules. Operators who abide by these rules should not be punished for doing so.
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#218I used Homejoy and I liked it's ease of use. But after the cleaning lady they sent me was done, she offered me her direct phone # and told me I could contact her directly for any future cleaning needs. I always wondered how this business model was going to work if Homejoy's contractors could just give out their phone # at the end of their first service and the customer could just contact them directly for any future…
I would wager that the answer is to provide some other value to the contractors, but I have no idea what that could be.
Give new customer priority to the contractors that have a high in-service retention rate, perhaps. If you have a history of customers who stop using the service after contracting with you, you stop getting customers.
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Defaults can change really quickly. Unlike Facebook Uber has basically zero network effect between cities. So, a competitor can win one or two small cities and just keep growing. Consider there are only 40,000 taxi drivers in New York. All it takes is for a company to find the top 5-50% of Uber/Lift drivers in a city offer them a minimum income of a few k/month assuming they take A% of rides and work y hours and boom…
If Uber "pops" it will be because the ride sharing industry died. There is no scenario where Uber becomes MySpace to a competitor.
There is no scenario that's rather optimistic of you.
Don't get me wrong there currently very popular and profitable so they don't need to worry about a Pets.com style crash. However, the barriers to entry are relatively low just look at Lyft. Eventually investors are going to want to get their money back, so they either start issuing dividends or face a hostile takeover.
Re: Homejoy says goodbye
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disregarding the competitive aspect, it's absurd to me that people praise banning Uber and Tesla for the "consumer safety" of taxis and car dealerships.
There is a significant consumer safety element to the way Taxis are regulated. The fact that this is used to protect a monopoly is a separate issue and I agree that it is a real problem. The Tesla analogy is perfect, though. I've never felt like car dealerships being independently owned was a useful benefit. I don't see any reason why both models can't coexist.
> There is a significant consumer safety element to the way Taxis are regulated.
Whatever those safety elements are, I've certainly never experienced them. Theoretically they're there, I guess, but my (admittedly anecdotal) experience has been that Uber is safer in every way than taxis are.