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Miso (YC S16) offers high quality on-demand home cleaning in South Korea
- haksudol 10y agoHi. I'm Haksu. co-founder of Miso. If you have anything to ask, I'm happy to answer.
- kazinator 10y agoThis "miso"? This one? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EB%AF%B8%EC%86%8C https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EB%AF%B8%EC%86%8C
- victorology 10y agoThat is correct. :)
- partisan 10y agoWhat are you planning to do with the capital?
- rsp1984 10y agoAre you employing your cleaners or is the model similar to Homejoy where you are a marketplace for independent cleaners?
- victorology 10y agoWe are a marketplace for independent cleaners.
- Avshalom 10y agoCan they set their own prices then?
- haksudol 10y agoNo. Our pricing table is simple. 45,000KRW(about $40) for 4 hours, 85000KRW(about $80) for 8 hours.
- Avshalom 10y agoThen you're not a marketplace for independent cleaners.
- hkmurakami 10y agoIntriguing. As a thought experiment, if San Francisco organizes a farmers market for Tomato farmers and city residents but stipulates that prices must be fixed at $2 per tomato, is that no longer a market by the economic definition, now that price discovery has been taken away?
- narrowrail 10y agoIt would be a fixed market, not a free market.
- Avshalom 10y agoDepends on if you're buying from 'the farmers market' or if you're still shopping amongst individual--but price fixed--farmers.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoI guess the big question for this concept is how do you avoid becoming another HomeJoy? What advantages does the SK localization/market give you? Interesting that YC is willing to bet on this concept again.
- victorology 10y agoI believe high quality is key. We have been able to receive high reviews from our customers even though we offer little hands on training. In April, our average review was 4.6 out of 5. We are also rolling out an insurance product that is not widely offered in Korea at the moment.
- finnh 10y agoHow will you maintain high quality if you don't train your workers?
- haksudol 10y agoWe have review system to filter bad cleaners. When new cleaners onboarded, we thoroughly check their performance from our customers. Also we assign high score cleaners to more customers. That review system keep our platform in high quality.
- Naritai 10y agoDid HomeJoy not have a review system? I honestly don't know. But are you confident this will be enough to differentiate yourself from competitors?
- haksudol 10y agoBasically review system is very effective one to maintain high quality. Not only review system, we are adopting insurance plan for our customers and cleaners. That is also attractive point for high experienced freelancer cleaners. We believe there are plenty of ways to keep our customers happy.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chejazi 10y agoDo you see the evolution of iRobot-esque autonomous cleaners as a threat to your business? Are you planning on pulling an uber with all the capital you raise and pursuing R&D of said devices?
- Hydraulix989 10y agoI think it's still enough of a long-term threat (I'd say 5 years for these to start to become an issue, 10 years to become commonplace) to not get in the way of growing their business, and maybe eventually they will employee a few of those devices themselves. If anything, in Uber's case, the other players have shown it can be a wise choice to form partnerships rather than to take on the risky and capital intensive process of building up an in-house R&D unit.
- Naritai 10y agoEven then, self-driving cards are a single-purpose task (yes, that task is complex, but it's single purpose). Cleaning is the amalgamation of a number of tasks. Furthermore, anyone who's had a cleaner knows that a big part of home cleaning is 'neatening', i.e. pickup up and straightening material to make them more aesthetically pleasing. Machines won't be easily doing that for some time.
- finnh 10y ago"All the capital you raise?" They've raised 190K. Uber has raised 12.5 Billion dollars.
- chejazi 10y agoI didn't say "raised", and a prevailing trend for a successful startups is to raise lots of capital.
- haksudol 10y agoCleaning is very sophisticated and complicated work. We observed even small detail can change customers' satisfaction. Current robot technology is still very early to handle complex human work like cleaning. In a longterm, robotic tech is opportunity rather than threats. Though we do not have specific plan to make autonomous cleaning system, we can take advantage from robot innovation.
- victorology 10y agoHi, I am Victor, another co-founder at Miso. Just arrived at SFO to take part in this summer's YC batch.
- eulji 10y agoAs someone mentioned you are not a marketplace for independent customers. Beware the customer satisfaction is not the only metric that you should be looking at. Especially in South Korea. Do not contribute to the Choson hell please.
- asimuvPR 10y agoWould you mind speaking about your experience of joining YC and building a business in SK?
- victorology 10y agoWe don't have much experience with the program yet. We arrived in SF this morning and the first dinner ended about an hour ago. There are some stressful aspects to building a business in SK and being in the Bay Area. 2/3 of our team will remain in Seoul while we are here. Relocating to a new area for 3 or 4 months poses its difficulties. Despite that, we applied to YC for a reason and believe it will pay off. YC's network is great and the feedback so far has given us clarity as to what we should focus on. On a day to day basis, we plan on matching our hours with Seoul and will have Google Hangouts up to communicate better. We also brought office phones (VOIP) so we can continue to handle customer care as well as cleaner phone on boarding so we can continue to have a good grasp on what our customers want. I will probably be able to offer more insights after a bit more experience in the program.
- asimuvPR 10y agoDo you plan to blog about the experience? If so, where? :)
- jstnjosepht 10y agoI was under the impression that one founder was allowed to remain "home" but the rest were required to relocate for the duration of YC. Is this not the case?
- callmeed 10y ago>> Unlike the USA which has worker classification problems, South Korea’s cleaning industry is primarily comprised of freelancers. That seems like the money statement there. Is this basically saying Miso can get away with paying cleaners the equivalent of a very low hourly wage?
- victorology 10y agoDepends on your definition of low. In Korea, the minimum wage is around $6 while we pay $10 and up to $13 for empty homes.
- misomiso 10y agoOh yeah! I've been waiting for over a year for this HN username to pay dividends!
- hkmurakami 10y agoNext thing you know, your account will be hacked and taken away from you. ;) https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd#.3rrbch1fx https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...
- victorology 10y agoNice to meet you! :)
- jstnjosepht 10y agoWhat will the team be working on during YC? Adapting the model to the US?