I'm reminded by a simple but powerful message one of my professors delivered to my MBA class a few years ago.

"You can't just look for a gap in the market. You also need to verify there's a market in the gap."

Homejoy most likely saw opportunity in the first sentence, but it appears they may not have spent time thinking about the second (or didn't research a broad enough segment of the market).

'Disrupting' a market isn't simply about creating a mobile app, or a 'marketplace' for service X after all. That's just a game of buzzword bingo.