Why Homejoy Failed

Post by harshaw » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 5:08 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #36

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…

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.

Post by thehenster » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

Post by JonoBB » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 5:17 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #63

untog wrote: 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.

Post by potatolicious » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #116

hammock wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a service called Handy (app-based home cleaning and handyman). It works fine. And doesn't seem to be struggling from what I can tell. https://crunchbase.com/organization/handybook/ edit: I'm in Chicago

Handy's a terrible service, actually. Creepy automatic recurring subscriptions for house cleaning, no way in the UI to cancel the subscription (!), frequent site downtimes. Had to go to great lengths to cancel an appointment I didn't create in the first place.

Post by s73v3r » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

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,…