Nowmaid: it's Uber, for maids. Press a button, get a maid.

Most of what you'd think to do to establish quality, ensure your housekeepers are legitimately bonded & insured, and reliably staffed will result in those housekeepers becoming full-time employees of your company.

A full-time housekeeper is, as it turns out, a pretty expensive employee. In addition to the tax burden, the training overhead, and the huge employee turnover, housekeepers also have some of the highest workmans comp insurance rates in the market.

Meanwhile: how long do you think you can pocket 50-70% of the value in a housekeeping transaction just for providing an iPhone app? Remember, anyone can build that same app. The real value is being provided by the actual workers, and by whatever processes keep those workers happy and productive.

I think this may be one of those businesses that instead of being "eaten" by software, quickly reverts back to the mean of the original business.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3846208

In that business, in order to ensure quality, the owner had devised a detailed set of procedures and even acquired uniforms for his housekeepers --- but kept them all 1099'd instead of giving them formal employment. Which is an IRS and State/Local red flag.

Presumably (you'd hope) this business either employs its housekeepers outright, or is making an effort to disassociate itself from the actual delivery of services and just acting as a dispatcher/marketplace for housekeepers, and caveat emptor to the people who hire from it.