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.
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.
No, it didn't. Some of my previous comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8468863
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856221
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489834
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709632
Homejoy won't be the last company of this type to collapse.
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 something really, really strange - "You don't fail until you give up", and I wondered why someone would say something like that.
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.