Are you employing your cleaners or is the model similar to Homejoy where you are a marketplace for independent cleaners?
We are a marketplace for independent cleaners.
Can they set their own prices then?
No. Our pricing table is simple. 45,000KRW(about $40) for 4 hours, 85000KRW(about $80) for 8 hours.
Then you're not a marketplace for independent cleaners.
Intriguing. 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?
Depends on if you're buying from 'the farmers market' or if you're still shopping amongst individual--but price fixed--farmers.
It would be a fixed market, not a free market.
I 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.
I 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.
How will you maintain high quality if you don't train your workers?
We 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.
This sounds like a recipe for basically asking the cleaners to underreport their hours to "go the extra mile" in exchange for high quality scores. How do you avoid this?
They're uh, probably counting on it actually. Explicitly or not.
Did HomeJoy not have a review system? I honestly don't know. But are you confident this will be enough to differentiate yourself from competitors?
Basically 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.
Uber has a review system, yet lots of stories about low quality drivers. They may be low in overall % of rides but get lots of new coverage overtime somebody has an axe to grind. I think you need to consider this more carefully.
Expanding on the "avoiding becoming Homejoy" train, how do you prevent cleaners and clients from striking a deal outside of your marketplace once the client is happy with the cleaner and is presented with a discount by the cleaner?