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Homejoy says goodbye

blog.homejoy.com

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Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#351

Post by civilian »

Nadya wrote: post #276
jclune wrote: post #268

I run a company similar to HomeJoy in Japan, and I disagree with most comments here. 1. Those who claim cleaning is not a "skilled job" should get off their keyboard, spend a day cleaning their moms house, and get back to me when they learn they are 3X slower than a pro and destroyed something with bleach-based spray. 2. It feels like nobody here actually read Adora Cheung's quotes about multiple lawsuits coinciding…

Not sure if the offer is rhetoric or not. No contact email, no business name. Is it related to #1 as a joke-of-sorts? 日本語を知っている必要がありますか？

I think this is him: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjclune

The company is HouseCare. http://housecare.tokyo https://www.linkedin.com/company/mommycare The company info email address is: info@mommy-care.jp

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#352

Post by unclebucknasty »

michaelt wrote: post #307
x0x0 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but complaining their cleaner wasn't "passionate" mostly comes off as being pissy your poorly-paid short-term menial labor didn't fluff your ego enough for being so awesome to pay him or her. You can do a perfectly good job cleaning without pretending you're so passionate about cleaning you'd just love to do it for free! (I have similar complaints about development jobs, btw -- you can do a perfectly good job a…

A lot of jobs involve what sociologists call "emotional labor" - jobs where, to be an effective worker, you can't always show your first-choice emotions. If I'm at a table service restaurant and my waiter is visibly unhappy about having to bring us food and drinks, I don't want to be an asshole by keeping on making him do that. I'd rather cook my own food at home next time. But a table service restaurant where waiter…

>I'd feel like an asshole asking some poor stranger to scrub my toilet.

I understand that sentiment and I was tempted to feel that way. OTOH, I realized that that sentiment in itself involved a certain amount of condescension, as it assumes that their means of making a living warrants my pity.

The service we use is owned by a very nice lady who also shows up to clean. She has an assistant and a couple of additional employees who clean other houses for her. To my mind, she is simply a fellow business owner who provides a service for a price. I hope that she is taking good care of her employees as well and, for our part, we tip to show our appreciation.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#353

Post by DarthMader »

yumraj wrote: post #227
philip1209 wrote: post #49

They've raised almost $40M in funding: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/homejoy

According to Recode article they were looking to raise more money. Am curious how could they have burned $40mil in ~1.5 years..

Loss leading sales that attracted 1 time customers that either never came back and/or decided to cut them out.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#354

Post by artag »

There is a ton of analysis in this post about what went wrong. As someone who runs a service marketplace business, I know how hard it is scale this type of business (scaling quality, managing a remote workforce, supply churn, repeat usage and all the other things...). The founders had worked long and hard to succeed (knowing them first hand). They also happen to be incredibly nice people - always willing to help others. All the best to Adora & Aaron. I look forward to seeing what you launch next!

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#355

Post by DarthMader »

iblaine wrote: post #313

Their HQ was a mess. If your business is cleaning then you should have cleaning in your blood and dream about pine sol when you sleep. I get the sense that the company was started for the sake of starting any company. In doing so they created a company without any vision. Look further into the company and you see things like the founders saying working on Christmas Eve is ok. Presentations where they say luck is irre…

The holy grail of success isn't working hard, vision, or values. The holy grail is understanding the competitive environment so well that you impose a sustainable competitive advantage that isn't easily copied and a strategy that executes like hell. This is why Musk, Jobs, Buffett were/are so successful. This is also why Uber is absolutely crushing any other competitor in the U.S.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#356

Post by DarthMader »

ylhert wrote: post #240
why-el wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a qualitative difference between this and other on-demand services such as Uber in that you will never see the "here is my phone number" phenomenon in Uber.

Uber will be the eBay of this "bubble", which I think is limited to on demand startups but not startups as a whole. It'll be one of the few co's to survive, imo

I can see Postmates and Uber as the only eventual survivors in 10 years.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#357

Post by narrator »

I think the problem here is low quality and lack of adequate screening. This seems to be a problem with a lot of online businesses. In a different way it was a problem for PayPal when they started. They were overrun with fraud and had to find clever ways to control it. Anytime you interact with the general public, especially people with out a resume doing cheaply paid work and with the general public internationally you are going to have, among the quality people, a bunch of bad apples, people with mediocre talent and weirdos, disgruntled and otherwise. The value that a sharing economy online service adds is screening out all that and delivering high quality.

When moving into a new area it takes a while to figure out who the trusted providers are. Sometimes the top guy on Yelp is outrageously expensive and overbooked and you have to ask around the neighborhood. Then when you've found the right people you trust, you form a relationship and use them forever and they take care of your stuff. The problem is that once I find my trusted guy for X I just stick with him. Homejoy seemed to be turning that experience into a dice throw.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#358

Post by duderific »

npizzolato wrote: post #165
krstck wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this the company that posted their ad directly onto HN talking about how happy they were to be working on Christmas eve (or whatever holiday it was)?

Yes. Someone else linked it earlier in the comments, so here you go. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956

From the post: "i wonder — how am i so fortunate to be the ceo of a startup where people are so driven?"

Wow, that woman sounds incredibly obnoxious. Talk about a humblebrag.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#359

Post by jondubois »

brianmcconnell wrote: post #71
fraXis wrote: post #7

I 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…

A prediction about "sharing economy" companies. Almost all of them are tacking on a thin rind of web/mobile UI and smart dispatch technology to an existing service. The long-term winners will be companies like Flywheel that recognize this and focus on providing that service to existing operators, much like payment processors. This, of course, is perceived as a smaller market since they can't count revenue the same wa…

I think ride sharing companies like Uber are a bit different though because the dispatch system (the element of coordination and availability) is critical for that type of service.

This is different from cleaning because people don't need down-to-the-minute availability. Homejoy had to find a way to lock their cleaners into ongoing agreements to prevent them from bypassing them.

I agree that it's natural with these services for consumers to want to 'bypass' the middleman if possible.

Unfortunately, under capitalism, creating value and capturing it are two very different things. There are a lot of business ideas which have potential to create amazing value for society, but these businesses will not be able to exist because they are not capable of capturing that value.

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