Homejoy back as Homeaglow
homeaglow.com
homeaglow.com
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466888
At best, it was neutral-meaning and _awfully_-executed.
That founder seems so tenaciously determined to promote his new iteration of the same old failed startup but keeps getting called out over and over again on his shadiness.
It's uncomfortable to have to give you my email on it, and it becomes irritating to only be told there are no service providers in my area. I'm not sure why you're collecting it there, care to illuminate that for me? Or at least reassure me I won't be spammed?
I'm genuinely interested in your service for a multitude of reasons... So please, see this as an attempt at constructive feedback/questioning.
Also, the form doesn't remember your choice for flexibility. It'd be a nicer experience if it did.
You have expressed interest in the service. Maybe they don't serve your area, or maybe you aren't ready to use the service this month or next month but might 6 months from now. So how does this service get your business, a business that in theory you want?
Is the business supposed to simply wait for you to re-find it when you need it, or continue to come back and search again for when it's available in your area?
Isn't the whole point of LEAN and MVP to do this process so you know where demand is coming from?
They take information that they purchased from their previous company, and also collect information presumably, and sell it. Their profit is based on the difference in that informations value to a different buyer.
A service worker submits background info, how much they are willing to work for, logistics of what they'll do and other info. This is free for homejoy because that person wants to work and this will let them do that.
They take that information and sell it to a buyer. The buyer pays:
cost = [workers specified rate] + [ informations value]
So homejoys profit is presumably something like the value of that information - opex as they likely have no assets.
I am not saying there is anything wrong or unethical about this, just that there are no barriers to entry, high competition and high ability to substitute this for many things. This is sort of like the yelp model, except that yelp, despite some of the hits to its reputation, has a massive data set that is relatively complete and very difficult to replicate now in magnitude and completeness, it is also more broadly useful. While eating out is, to some extent, a luxury, people do need food. So more people, I would baselessly assert, eat out in some capacity on the monthly basis than have their home professionally cleaned.
Also, I have a cleaner but prefer them to leave some of the spiders in my house. Those spiders hopefully deter the more dangerous ones (redbacks, white-tailed, etc) and their webs hopefully frustrate mosquitoes.
laundry, on the other hand, i will gladly outsource.
edit: only because i don't have in-unit laundry.
Never used Homejoy, was the above always a feature?
I realize their issue was people just went around Homejoy and paid the cleaner directly. I'm wondering if people did this because they liked the work the person did and wanted them back but Homejoy didn't offer this feature.
Perhaps HomeAglow is structured differently? Their website doesn't say.
Aglow is a word: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aglow
Adora Cheung, How to Start a Startup; Lecture 4
They worked hard, but at the end of the day this is really hard to execute on because it is a luxury item, not very sticky, has no urgency and the barriers to entry are virtually non-existent. Uber is a good market maker in an analogous indutry, however they have some pretty key differences.
* Extreme urgency. If I need to get to point B, it is likely important that the quicker and easier I can get there from point A is important to me. I can probably wait to have my room cleaned, but I definitely need to be at work by 9 all the times it is a weekday or I have to be there.
* Bigger market. There are more people who, at some point during the day, find themselves needing to go somewhere that isn't where they are. Probably more people travel over a mile a day than need their house cleaned.
* Cheaper and more efficient. Uber is much cheaper than Taxis in many situations, and often a higher value prop. You can save money taking a subway and a bus to many locations, but of these things do not go to the destination in an acceptable schedule, Uber will, and it will do it cheaply and there aren't too many options although there are certainly some. If you need your house cleaned, you can google like 10-4000 providers.
* Labour is more attractive. This one is big, maybe biggest. While Uber has been slashing prices, and not offering a great value prop to drivers in many cases (based on conversations with a few drivers) they are still held in relatively high esteem by society, and the work itself is of (for many) more desirable than cleaning houses. Given the option for equivalent wages, I would rather drive around and pick people up than clean someones house.
At the end of the day Uber and Homejoy are information arbatrageurs. The delta between knowing where all cars that would be willing to take a fare are as well as where all the people who need to travel are, is a lot more valuable than knowing how to contact all the people who are willing to clean houses is.
editII: unpredicatability. I can't predict that fucking bank of america would cancel my credit card at 5:00am in the morning when I was leaving the bar to get a cab. I needed a ride and 10 minutes prior had no idea. I can however, pretty regularly predict when I need my house cleaned making it quite easy to evaluate options and make those arrangements.
* difficulty to complete by user. I could, if I was some sort of heathen or proletariat type punter, clean my own house. However, it would be more difficult for me to travel somewhere far away. Granted, cleaning a dirty house would take a long time, but if we just assume an average uber is like 4 miles, most people would pay like 6.00 to not walk 4 miles which would be about an hour. However, many people would spend an hour cleaning their house rather than have a complete stranger come over and do it for them for >6.00 while they waited.
While, like apples or coffee vary in quality, if they are at a certain bar it doesn't matter. To a user a clean house is pretty similar so really the only thing that matters is how I value cleanliness. I can even do it myself in a pinch. So the reputation almost has no value for a commodity product.
You either trust homejoy/homeaglow or you trust someone else, but the result is nearly the same and managing this is not complex because you need almost the same thing everytime. So if you independently find someone to do it, you can just have them do the same thing repeatedly.
Ride and homesharing provide the same service in different places and contexts and they provide the complex coordination of scheduling and market making on the fly. Diverting a moving vehicle to pick up a person in a different location than their last ride and bringing them to a location they have never been before.
Airbnb provides people with different schedules to coordinate buying and selling space in differing locations with a degree of trust and efficiency. You get a different product from airbnb every time.
Homejoy does not provide a distinct service from either the market, or itself.
really good point.
not sure what the service equivalent of a commodity is.
The way I see it, if you are not building something that businesses will pay for (B2B), you are making a huge bet akin to a lottery.