26 ms·

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 sm

• mikeash 11y ago
  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.
  • harshaw 11y ago
    nope... not where the density is lower
    • sib 11y ago
      True, but the issue is, the Homejoy solution was even less effective in low-density areas...
  • Domenic_S 11y ago
    > Finding somebody to clean your house is really easy. Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy, sure, but finding someone who's 1) consistent 2) always on-time and 3) not $100/hr is next to impossible. Perhaps in a large metro it's easier, but I've had basically no luck in suburban silicon valley.
    • larrys 11y ago
      "Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy" Back in the day I had a cleaning service that I trusted and used regularly put a wet rag on top of a CSU/DSU [1]. Not something that I ever thought could happen. Ironically the spare CSU/DSU was sitting right next to that. (Cold and ready to be put in service if the main one failed.) There were of course vents on the top. That's where the rag went. And I was near the equipment at the time (I would never let a cleaning service in where there was sensitive equipment without being onsite). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSU/DSU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSU/DSU
    • jkyle 11y ago
      Metro's aren't easier in my experience. I live in Silicon Valley now. . . found the best cleaner I've ever had. Very happy with her and her helper's work.
    • erispoe 11y ago
      The Silicon Vallex is in a large metro. It's still pretty dense and you have 8 million people around. I don't think the experience would be different in Oakland, Fremont, San Francisco...
  • cfelix 11y ago
    I wouldn't say that finding a house cleaner is really easy, but once you solve this problem and all goes well you just stick with the same person.
  • tootie 11y ago
    Finding a taxi in a big city is very easy and has always been very easy. I don't use Uber because they charge $10 for a car seat and I've never waited more than 10 minutes for car when I just call. When my company needed to send people 30 miles round trip every day for 2 weeks, a car service will give you a deal, Uber won't. Uber also has virtually no competitive advantage over Lyft. I think that all this startup analysis is giving way too little credit to the benefits of being lucky.
• hammock 11y ago
  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/ https://crunchbase.com/organization/handybook/ edit: I'm in Chicago
  • untog 11y ago
    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, until it couldn't. Venture capital makes it difficult to tell who is succeeding, and who just has money to spend.
    • enraged_camel 11y ago
      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.
      • mbesto 11y ago
        The only reason it took everyone by surprise is because tech media (including YC) hailed it as being the "next big thing".
      • 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
        > Yeah, Homejoy's demise took everyone by surprise. No, it didn't. Some of my previous comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8468863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8468863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709632 Homejoy won't be the last company of this type to collapse.
      • 11y ago
• samstave 11y ago
  For me it was price. I have three kids, so we do a lot of laundry. I simply wanted someone to fold and put away about twice a week... Home joys minimum worked out to be about $75 per visit... So about $37.5 per hour... And I don't think folding clothes as a service worth $600 per month.
  • muzmath 11y ago
    You simply were never the target audience in the first place.
    • ghaff 11y ago
      In general, in Western economies, personal services that don't benefit significantly from scale or automation are going to seem reasonably expensive unless you are in the very top tier of income. Consider that $15/hour is about the wage floor and you probably need to add transit time and other overheads for an independent contractor. So, yeah, it's hard to see a couple of hours of work costing less than $50 or so. And, if this is a weekly or more frequent expense, that starts to add up. I have a housecleaner come in every few weeks and it does help to keep my place in some semblance of order, but it's definitely a luxury expense and I would probably be too cheap to have it done weekly.
      • nilkn 11y ago
        The wage floor is way below $15/hour in much of the country, but I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that Homejoy's pricing was static and independent of location. Does it make sense for someone in a modest cost-of-living area to be paying San Francisco rates?
        • ghaff 11y ago
          Minimum wage is less in general but I'm pretty certain that if I took an ad out on Craigslist to get someone to come over to my house to do some task, you'd be looking at $15-20 an hour at least. As you say, I'm sure it would depend on the area.
• zippergz 11y ago
  "In reality, inviting someone into your home is a very personal thing, and people much prefer to build a relationship with someone that they might pay a little more on a regular basis, than get a different person each time." Yes, for sure. I've had professional home cleaners for nearly 10 years now. And over the course of those years, I've had many conversations with friends and neighbors who do as well (e.g. in giving/receiving recommendations). I can't imagine using a service that sends someone different every time, or even someone for whom I can't see reviews and receive references before the first visit. I think most of the people I've talked to are in the same boat. This is a service that requires putting a lot of trust in the service provider. I could potentially see myself using an app that helped me find a provider, but it would need to give me a lot of information about them up front, and let me choose from several. And then it would have to let me keep getting the same person every time. It ends up being more like an Angie's List than a Homejoy. For something like a handyman, where the service is less intimate and less frequent, this might make more sense (though I have had enough horrible experiences with handymen that I also would want personal recommendations at this point)...
  • preinheimer 11y ago
    I gave Handy(Book) a try, and consistency in who arrived was my issue. The first person they sent was absolutely fantastic, send her every week!. Trying to book her again was a nightmare, the docs didn't match the application, and support pointed me back at the documentation. Finally a month later, after several support calls and emails, I had the same cleaner booked. Success! The morning of my appointment I looked online and they'd switched my cleaner. The new person arrived 45 minutes late, did a poor job, and tried to get me to book her outside of Handy. Finding someone on Craigslist is easier and cheaper. Answer a random ad, asses quality after their first visit. Either book them on a recurring schedule or move on to the next ad. The only difference is paying with a cheque rather than a CC.
    • dsl 11y ago
      Just had the same issue with Handy. They notified my girlfriend 20 hours before an appointment that our requested cleaner was unavailable, and when we canceled charged us $15 for canceling within 24 hours. After 4 different attempts to cancel we gave up and called American Express. They blocked Handy from charging the card again and did a chargeback for every dollar we ever spent with them.
• mason55 11y ago
  IMO they focused on the wrong parts of the chain. Like you said, anyone can start a cleaning service and if all Homejoy does is match you with a cleaner who might or might not show up then there's no reason for them to exist. But there is no reason that an app-based cleaning service can't succeed, full stop. There's plenty of room to add value, just like there is in any other business where you can get economies of scale. Homejoy just didn't focus on those parts of the business.
  • navait 11y ago
    Care to illustrate with a real example?
    • mason55 11y ago
      - Instead of giving away supplies, raise the percentage of the fee that you pay out. Then buy bulk supplies and sell them to the cleaners at a discount. - Partner with P&G and Unilever to get access to trial products that you can give to your cleaners to try - Act as an agent to negotiate group rates on stuff like health insurance - Provide business services if you book a certain number of appointments each year. Tax help, those kinds of things. - Maybe you can provide access to events or something where Homejoy books a group of cleaners and since it's a business you can charge them good rates - Find other way to book cushy jobs that you can give access to for your most used cleaners Obviously there's a 1099 line that they don't want to cross but if you provide access and opportunities and tier it based on appointments booked then you provide incentives to stay on the platform. Similarly for customers, do things like give away cleanings or discounts randomly. Use your partnerships from above to give customers free stuff or coupons. Sell cleanings in 10 packs or offer a monthly or annual subscription that comes with a discount.
      • unclebucknasty 11y ago
        Those sound like good ideas, but I'm not sure they solve the key challenge of there being more value in the connection itself. That is, once a service provider has a customer, that customer represents the overwhelming majority of value to be had by the service. Likewise, for a customer who is happy with and trusting of a cleaner, discounts would likely have to be unsustainably large to move them. Finally, with the middleman in the transaction, discountability is actually eroded. There is really little economies of scale to be leveraged at the cleaners' level and customers would probably come out better if cleaners simply passed the Homejoy cut to them.
• sgustard 11y ago
  Average 3-star Yelp review is likely a core issue. http://www.yelp.com/biz/homejoy-san-francisco http://www.yelp.com/biz/homejoy-san-francisco e.g. "I have never had more problems with any service or company than I have with this business."
  • ukd1 11y ago
    Yep, the cancellations and late arrivals, plus changing people and therefore variable quality made this a pain when I was using it.
• ssharp 11y ago
  Care.com is doing similiar things with housekeeping services, although they started with matching child care providers to parents and seem to just be expanding into new verticles -- housekeeping, pet watching, etc. I think it's a good strategy. I'd rather use one app to handle those types of tasks than have to manager a Homejoy, Petjoy, and Kidjoy account.
  • debacle 11y ago
    The regulatory ecosystem around child care is much better and the baseline of quality control is much greater.
    • gertef 11y ago
      That's not true. The regulatory system surrounds day care centers, which is not care.com's business. care.com's business is in 1:1 care (nanny) where there is not regulation or quality control, except a bit of tax control.
      • debacle 11y ago
        > where there is not regulation or quality control In my state, you need to be licensed to provide child care. It looks like California and a few other states are similar.
        • DanBC 11y ago
          https://www.berkeleyparentsnetwork.org/advice/childcare/license https://www.berkeleyparentsnetwork.org/advice/childcare/lice... It seems to depend on how many children are being looked after and where the care takes place.
          • debacle 11y ago
            Yeah, California law seems more lax in that regard.
  • 11y ago
• vegabook 11y ago
  In old-economy-speak what you just said basically translates as "you entered a crowded market". When you're standing on an unknown, rainy street corner far away from home, a taxi's services are urgently required, and not abundant. When you're lounging on your sofa and start contemplating how it would be nice for someone else to bin the pizza boxes, it's the opposite on both counts. Moreover, I don't see the money men being impressed by a founder who can put out a piece so toe-curlingly embarrassing as "Dear Future HomeJoy Engineer".
  • atom-morgan 11y ago
    I've been lurking on this thread waiting for someone to mention that post. I'm really surprised it took this long.
    • vegabook 11y ago
      Me too dude. I actually <ctrl>-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).
      • mturmon 11y ago
        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.
        • deleted 11y ago
          [deleted]
        • vegabook 11y ago
          oooh! "TFA". I had to google that. TIL. You must be a master of UD scrabble.
        • atom-morgan 11y ago
          The downside of comments first on HN.
• jkyle 11y ago
  > Effectively, from transaction #1 you're in a perfectly replicable pattern - Cleaner X comes to your house every Y weeks and works for Z hours. This is the key failure. Anyone's whose regularly procured cleaning services knows the dance. You find a reputable cleaning service, they send out a cleaner. If you don't like them, you keep asking for a different one. When you find one you like, you ask them what they'd charge if you deal with them directly. Why should they pay an app developer (or cleaning service) a cut of their profit when they can just show up and earn it themselves? Most of the house keepers I've known did this until they'd built up enough of a consistent clientele that they could break out on their own....eventually building their own "crew". Cleaning services are only good for businesses who require a paper trail for tax deduction purposes and who aren't as price sensitive as individuals.
  • kamaal 11y ago
    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, you never like to go through a third party.
    • amorphid 11y ago
      That's one big reason it's hard to scale a service business. Why maybe a fraction of X when you can make X?
      • kamaal 11y ago
        Its not just paying commissions to the third party. If you are a good taxi driver, who keeps their car clean, provides bottled drinking water to customers, are punctual, polite, trustworthy etc you will get many people who would like to call you directly instead of going through a service like Uber. And along the way you would have met many customers who are exactly like you- polite, trustworthy and nice. It becomes a natural fit. Uber kind of services work because they are currently burning millions of investor money to subsidize your travel. Once they run out of money, you are back to the same thing again. Which is why some times you must do extra work for free, because it keeps people around you happy and in return they are indebted to do something in return for you(Recommend you, tip you, hire you etc)