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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

It reminds me of all the Uber and Airbnb clones that didn't recognize that the primary features that created their success was the commoditized nature of the seller and the ability to tap into latent supply (and circumventing the established regulatory environment, but that is a conversation for another time).

An Uber for home cleaning was never going to work because it is tough to commoditize inviting someone into your home and both the cleaner and the user have an incentive to cut out the middle man as soon as a solid working relationship is established.

An Airbnb for massage therapists was never going to work because there isn't a huge supply of people who are capable of providing the service but are unable to find customers themselves.

An Uber for delivering food works because no one cares who delivers the food and because it is a service that almost anyone can perform.

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> An Uber for home cleaning was never going to work because it is tough to commoditize inviting someone into your home and both the cleaner and the user have an incentive to cut out the middle man as soon as a solid working relationship is established.

Eh, I've started using Helpling in Singapore (on-demand home cleaning service) that seems to be quite stable/successful.

Of course, I doubt they're Uber-scale profitable, and I don't know how much capital they're burning (if any), but there definitely seems to be business value there.

> Uber-scale profitable

That's an oxymoron, Uber are massively loss making.

They're still hemorrhaging money, no?

You're right, I misspoke. I should have said "Uber-valuable".

There is a massage on demand service. In fact, there are a lot of businesses that fill the small niches. They are not and will never be Unicorns, but they are solid businesses. For example: Soothe is an app for on demand massage service. Works great.

So, once you find someone you like, why not just contract off-app?

We use Rover all the time and usually use the same dogsitter. I don't move off app because the money I'm spending isn't enough to try and get a discount ($25 for a night out with the wife, $60 or 70 a day if we go out of town). Plus they offer pet insurance and some other protections that are worth it.

I use Rover all the time, we have had a number of dog sitters offer themselves as a personal dog sitter off the Rover app for a small discount.

We always politely decline because of the layer of perceived security Rover offers with their insurance.

I've offered to pay the person who watches my dog directly, and she declines exactly because of the value add of Rover insuring her. Seems a fair model.

Can you not insure yourself, or insure yourself against someone else?

Sure, but Rover is presumably benefiting from a much better economy of scale and bargaining position (since it's buying for however many thousands or millions of users it has), whereas you are unlikely to be able to do the same as an individual.

Businesses can often broker discounted group policies which are a fraction of the cost of what an individual policy costs(e.g. health insurance).

Yes but at that point and for the price it's a convenience/time thing. I probably spend 250 or 300 a month on dog sitting through Rover. The time it would take for me to find a way to self insur is worth considerably more to me than 300.

I thought it was fair until I found out they were taking something like 20% from the sitter on top of charging me a service fee of 5% or so.

This conversation actually made me curious what the actual value of that insurance is.

According to this source, at retail prices dog walking insurance costs 500$ a year for comprehensive coverage, or about 40$ a month: https://www.petsits.com/petsittinginsuranceusa

Rover takes almost 40$ in service fees for one weekend of boarding my single dog!

I appreciate the value of insurance, I kind of appreciate the Craigslist+ role they serve, but at the point where more than 25% of my payment is never making it to the sitter... Rover is just burning my money to fund a bloated payroll and lofty valuations

Doesnt bother me in the slightest. Sitters seem happy and protected, I'm happy and protected, the vendor makes what they can. Not everything needs to be a fight against the injustice of middle-men.

We also use Rover because they have insurance that allows the dog sitter to take your pet to the vet and pay the vet for services without you having to be there in person.

I would argue that there are many incentives to use platforms/apps for both the client and the provider/host, instead of contracting off-platform/off-app. For the provider, the app gives them 1) a steady stream of new leads and 2) it allows them to build up a reputation on the platform for repeat business. Maybe it is sometimes a bad sign to contract off-platform, because it could signal that they are not trustworthy enough, or do not have a high enough service quality and so would not have a high rating if they were on the platform? Also as the other user said: platforms often offer mediation/dispute resolution and insurance.

Platforms offer a way for individuals or small businesses to get started in a new sector without doing a lot of marketing for themselves. It's a bit like being part of an alliance.

I am not arguing for the continued domination and rent-seeking practices of Silicon Valley middle-men corporations. I'm arguing that the existence of any online bazaar/marketplace and the ability to search and compare, makes for excellent dynamics.

To go even further, I advocate for an emerging alternative that has been termed 'Protocol Cooperativism':

Instead of monopolistic rent-seeking platforms, it focuses on open source economic protocols that allow full negotiation between peer to peer users. Check out Ceptr.org, MetaCurrency and Holochain. It provides the frame and framework for ever evolving protocols (comprehensive versioning tech).

You can, but they are not always available and it takes some time to find the perfect fit. I like the fact that the price is the same yet there are rules and options if you need a change or the practitioner cancels. Same with Rover.

It surprises me that nobody's mentioned Fiverr in the same vein.

I'd think "an Uber for creative work" is at least prone to the same incentives to cut out the middleman.

The digital nature of the work means the market is global, unlike home cleaning or massages, making a matching system more valuable.

I have never personally used Fiverr. How easy is it to get in contact with each other outside of the Fiverr ecosystem? That is a natural outcome of all the other examples in which there is some contact between provider and customer in the physical world. With Fiverr everything occurs digitally so it is probably easier to prevent people from circumventing the app.

Super easy. You have to share documents and designs. Almost all of those design sharing systems allow messaging. Or you know google docs and invite them to read shows you the email.

There's really no way for them to stop it. It's all just about if they want to deal with invoicing and other stuff themselves or go direct. Many don't want to bother. But every wall they throw up makes it more likely people will jump off after that initial aquisition.

But many of these jobs ARE just one shots. Tho I usually go back to the same folks who did good work and communicated well with later tasks.

Agreed - I like fiverr over hiring direct because I don’t really want to be in someone’s rolodex as a customer they are going to call and pester. As for maids, I feel the problem there is you rarely get anyone who is going to do more than feather dust your home. So a “service” isn’t going to radically improve that. As for glasses I really want to like WP but their plastic frames really are subpar. It’s a far better experience to buy off the rack at Costco if cheap is what you’re seeking. For years I would spend $600/year buying zero G from a small boutique until I decided maybe instead I should have five pairs of WP... so I tried that and every single one of them had something I didn’t like.. so one day I found myself in Costco and decided to give that a go and have never looked back. Heh that’s probably indicator #641 I’m turning into an old fart.

I buy glasses from Zenni and I've always been happy. Although Sam's club has brought their prices down to be more competitive. I'm seeing more things included that used to be extra.

Which is probably okay, in the same sense that companies and temporary workers (or workers otherwise sourced through a staffing agency) will "cut out the middleman" (in this case, the staffing agency) and transition to permanent direct-hire employment after a certain period (assuming said temporary worker has demonstrated oneself to be valuable enough to be worth keeping on).

In the case of creative work, it's arguably less hassle to let Fiverr handle things than to sign into a bunch of one-off contracts, and reserve "cut[ting] out the middleman" for cases where someone has consistently delivered work to your standards (or, on the other side, has consistently paid well) and there's a desire to make for a more long-term arrangement than one-off jobs.

It would be interesting if a delivery service curated a customer list in the same way that housekeepers do

People eat carryout often - sometimes every meal/dinner. Just pitch the service as "call Ma for dinner" or somesuch

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