The part about Homejoy needing to keep up with Handy's flood of Groupon 'deals' just further drove home how destructive Groupon has been for businesses, except Groupon, which still has a multi-billion dollar public market valuation. Groupon should really be called Pandora's Box.
Why Homejoy Failed
251–260 of 342 posts
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I asked my neighbor about cleaners, they use X and gave me her phone number. I called X and she did an amazing job. Turns out, X has a higher incentive to clean my house because she can synchronize timing with my neighbor and reduce her overhead cost. The arrangement has worked great for everyone, running 9 years in a row and more neighbors have joined. I see this as an ideal win-win experience for all parties involv…
Talking to Your Neighbour as a Service? Asking People You Trust for Recommendations as a Service? I'm not sure there's a VC-growth business to be had in there exactly. I mean, Airbnb kinda tried to the latter by getting you to add your Facebook friends so you can see their reviews, but I don't get the impression that's gone far.
That's supposedly the thing about Nextdoor, and then rest of the social network ecosystem out there. Unfortunately, more and more people are ditching social network or disallowing apps sharing data, so what do you say?
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dad is a cab driver. I myself have a lot of experience managing cab business, I can tell you cab business works pretty much the same way. You can sign up with as many cab drivers you like and offer them as much business they can handle. Sooner or later they will find permanent paying customers and move on. Especially among elderly, kids and women. Its the standard in every industry. Once you've built your ground,…
No, that's wrong everywhere I've lived and traveled. With non-recurring trips (pretty much everything except commuting), you almost never migrate to a single provider. The advantages of tapping into a pool of providers is too great. In house-cleaning, there are no advantages to tapping into a pool, and in fact people are leery of it.
Consider the single largest market for limousine services: businesspeople traveling to and from airports. These people absolutely will pay extra for a reliable, no-surprises ride from a person they know, plus they know in advance exactly when they will travel. Uber offers little to no advantage for this group.
Uber's advantage comes from catering really well to ad-hoc, short-hop travel, but this is a different market.
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#254I operate my business on such a tight budget it seems almost criminal for a business to fail with $40 million to work with. I could spend many lifetimes growing my business with that kind of money.
IMO you don't force a market to grow. You accept what the market gives you and then you grow into the market as it allows you to grow. Not the other way around.
This is one of the biggest flaws in how investors expect their businesses to grow. I would argue that having a small business that one day will be a big one (perhaps 10-20 years later) is far better than shoving a ton of money at a problem and if it doesn't grow fast enough then pull the rug from beneath them.
I think it's also a sign that investors who are actually in SV are not dictating how things are run. While this may be common knowledge, I'm unaware of precisely where money is flowing in from. But if I had to guess, I'm almost certain it's big money coming in from all over the world who expect VCs to treat startups like they would treat stocks and bonds.
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too dude. I actually -F'd it and was surprised I was the first. Then again it's 4pm in NY, let alone SF. The night is young...(if the HN algo doesn't tank the story, that is).
The link back to the HN post, and the subsequent resurface of the post in HN comments on a related NYT article, are already in TFA.
oooh! "TFA". I had to google that. TIL.
You must be a master of UD scrabble.
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too dude. I actually -F'd it and was surprised I was the first. Then again it's 4pm in NY, let alone SF. The night is young...(if the HN algo doesn't tank the story, that is).
The link back to the HN post, and the subsequent resurface of the post in HN comments on a related NYT article, are already in TFA.
The downside of comments first on HN.
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
And now I am sad again because cleaning service discovery is still broken. Not that you're wrong, just that it would be really nice to be able to find cleaners through a service with good reputation tracking and recommendation. Which is intrinsically difficult to build for exactly the reason you specify.
I asked my neighbor about cleaners, they use X and gave me her phone number. I called X and she did an amazing job. Turns out, X has a higher incentive to clean my house because she can synchronize timing with my neighbor and reduce her overhead cost. The arrangement has worked great for everyone, running 9 years in a row and more neighbors have joined. I see this as an ideal win-win experience for all parties involv…
The problem with this issue is noted by another commenter below: you just started your own business, why pay another middleman?
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> "no way in the UI to cancel the subscription" Handy isn't the only one, and this ought to be illegal. If I can sign up online I ought to be able to cancel online. These companies can lie to themselves and the public all they want - the exclusive purpose of making you call to cancel (or worse, visit a physical location) is to discourage cancellations. It compromises the notion of a free and voluntary exchange of mon…
LA Fitness has this one down to a fine art. You have to send a form, -by certified mail- to an address. They will not let you cancel in person, on the phone, or online.
And if you send in the paperwork, but not by certified mail? They'll toss it, unactioned.
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#259I operate my business on such a tight budget it seems almost criminal for a business to fail with $40 million to work with. I could spend many lifetimes growing my business with that kind of money. IMO you don't force a market to grow. You accept what the market gives you and then you grow into the market as it allows you to grow. Not the other way around. This is one of the biggest flaws in how investors expect thei…
That's the old bootstrap vs VC money argument, but bootstrapping doesn't work for a lot of business.
You can't make an Uber or Google or Facebook or Twitter without VC money, it simply can't happen.
Re: Why Homejoy Failed
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No it didn't. My first question when I heard of them is how they prevent cleaners from ever using the platform again. This seems to be the single biggest long term stumbling block, that they never really got close to solving. http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/31/why-homejoy-failed-and-the-... Aside: I saw Adora at the London StartUp school hosted by YC. She really didn't come off that convincing to me. Then she said some…
I don't get what's the issue with that statement. Until you give up on the idea, you didn't fail. What other interpretation do you have in mind? It's one of those cliche way of saying failing is just the beginning of success.
The thing that convinces me is her determination. She worked as cleaner before starting the business, and understood some of the pain. She probably overlooked at the issue and probably overconfident like the article cited, but someone who was willing to cover cleaner to apologize for cancellation on Thanksgiving? That's very good for her (but unable to prioritize some critical negativity in the algorithm? that's just sad). Without knowing the full story (we are just hearing fragments from allegedly ex-Homejoy employees), I think the business model is not profitable. Maybe doing cheap is really hard, and doing fancy and professional is the only way out.