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Why Homejoy Failed

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Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#41

Post by mikeash »

jdmichal wrote: post #8
cm2187 wrote: post #5

The difference with Uber is that it requires a lot more trust to give someone access to your home while you're away to clean it. Not sure I would want to subscribe to a service where I would have to trust any local dude to visit my home. It's like a nanny. Picking someone to look after your kid is a very personal thing. It's not a lowest bidder thing.

Getting in a car is pretty much the most dangerous thing a person does in an average day. You may be trusting a cleaner with you possessions, but you're trusting that Uber driver with your life.

The difference is that with a driver, our incentives are aligned. My desire to continue living injury-free matches up perfectly with his desire to do the same, and not damage his valuable equipment.

With a house cleaner, my desire to keep my possessions is at odds with the cleaner's desire to have more stuff. I have to count on their desire for repeat business, or their morality, to outweigh that.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#42

Post by gloves »

Soon the floors of Silicon Valley will be littered with the corpses of Unicorns. Sustainability surely has to take precedence over growth at any cost soon?! One can hope...

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#43

Post by mikeash »

andy_ppp wrote: post #37
forgetsusername wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference with Uber is that it requires a lot more trust to give someone access to your home while you're away to clean it. In one case you're risking personal items and privacy; in the other your life is actually in that person's hands.

People are more scared of burglary than car crashes.

Which is probably justified. There are a couple of million burglaries per year in the US (many/most of which will affect multiple people), and only about 30,000 traffic fatalities per year. And a good chunk of those fatalities are either easily avoidable by passengers (wear your seat belt!) or unavoidable even by drivers (getting whacked by a drunk driver).

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#44

Post by prostoalex »

kefka wrote: post #26

The underlying question is "Does skirting employment law by using only 1099'ers make a profitable business solution?" In this case, the answer is no. But the general answer to that question is "Yes, it is very profitable to upend employment law for the profit of the few, on the backs of the many."

After a certain growth period it might be more cost-effective for a company to convert certain contractors to W-2 employees. Company can now mandate hours and keep a highly-rated worker from switching to a competitor. Homejoy never passed that "certain growth period", though.

So it's not a clear-cut "contractors = good, employees = bad" thing. It's just that companies exploring these markets are all at early stage of their growth.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#45

Post by roymurdock »

Geolocation in smartphones turns people into nodes, and successful apps/services solve an impersonal, one-off matching problem between these nodes.

The more personal/temporally repeated/geographically repeated the problem is, the less you need a smartphone to have a successful service. Then you find yourself competing with web services companies and your competitive advantage is gone.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#46

Post by hammock »

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…

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

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#47

Post by saalweachter »

prostoalex wrote: post #31
saalweachter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an important question any entrepreneur has to answer: what value do I add to the business? If you're providing some expertise or startup costs to purchase expensive investments (buildings, machinery...) or creating some sort of efficiency of scale, you've probably got a viable business. If your business plan is to skim money off of workers who could do their jobs and get paid without you, your workers ar…

> If your business plan is to skim money off of workers who could do their jobs and get paid without you Lead generation is a viable business, as demonstrated by Yelp (and previously Yellow Pages), it's just not hot and fast-growing.

Yeah, I agree.

There's going to be a huge difference between businesses where customer acquisition is needed regularly (eg, taxis; it makes sense to take a different taxi with a different driver, based on whichever is closest to you) and where customer acquisition is needed infrequently (eg, cleaners; it makes sense to use the same cleaner over and over, on a fixed schedule).

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#48

Post by hvs »

arxpoetica wrote: post #18
sageabilly wrote: post #2

"The steady leak of its best workers to direct employment arrangements with its own (now former) clients." This is a huge hurdle in any direct services market. While you're not likely to hire your own private driver and thus end your working relationship with Uber, you're probably very likely to find a cleaner that you like a lot and who does a great job cleaning your house and go on to form an exclusive working rela…

Seems like there might be a model that works better by focusing on managing relationships-- not necessarily a home cleaning service--

It's called Angie's List.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#49

Post by JoeAltmaier »

philh wrote: post #34
forgetsusername wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference with Uber is that it requires a lot more trust to give someone access to your home while you're away to clean it. In one case you're risking personal items and privacy; in the other your life is actually in that person's hands.

With a driver, your life is in the hands of someone who has nothing to gain from getting in a car crash. With a cleaner, your possessions are in the hands of someone who might have plenty of incentive to steal your stuff and sell it.

This casual assumption that all housekeepers are thieves is galling. Its a kind of working-class bigotry that is tossed around by the entitled without even noticing they are doing it.

Of course folks have plenty of incentive to not steal - they have self-respect.

Re: Why Homejoy Failed

#50

Post by kefka »

prostoalex wrote: post #44
kefka wrote: post #26

The underlying question is "Does skirting employment law by using only 1099'ers make a profitable business solution?" In this case, the answer is no. But the general answer to that question is "Yes, it is very profitable to upend employment law for the profit of the few, on the backs of the many."

After a certain growth period it might be more cost-effective for a company to convert certain contractors to W-2 employees. Company can now mandate hours and keep a highly-rated worker from switching to a competitor. Homejoy never passed that "certain growth period", though. So it's not a clear-cut "contractors = good, employees = bad" thing. It's just that companies exploring these markets are all at early stage of…

Why would it be? I'm seeing a lot of reasons to bust "employment". Here's some.

1. Unemployment insurance? Well, you aren't employed.

2. Get hurt on the job? You're not on a job, 1099'er.

3. You "get" to pay the employer's tax as well as your own. Jokes on you, bub.

4. Want to join a union? They kill your account.

5. Real contracts can agree upon wages. How do you do this via Uber/Homejoy/"sharing job"? You don't.

6. Pregnant or sick? FMLA protects employees; not you.

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