Exec launches professional cleaning service | Hacker News Reader

Exec launches professional cleaning service

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49 pointsjustin38 comments

I tried this and was really impressed. Removed the hassles of 1) finding a cleaner; 2) arranging a huge time window to be home (they text you when they are on their way); 3) guessing what cleaning products I need to provide; 4) guessing what language to speak.

I'm already familiar with what a cleaner is for so it was a small step for me to try this. Now that I'm in their system I'm much more likely to use Exec for things I've never considered hiring someone to do before.

65 an hour! Even with two people that seems a bit much. I have a woman I pay 30 dollars for an average of 3 hours of cleaning and she does such a good job I only have to have her over usually once every two weeks. She also does laundry, dishes, windows, sweeps and mops the floors, the whole shebang.

Still I like how Exec is looking at their customer base and adapting, that's how you stay relevant in an ever-evolving market!

Seriously, $65/hr is nuts. If that's the going rate for cleaning service in SF, I clearly picked the wrong profession. Even for two workers that's high. What are they doing, cleaning up hazmat? How can it be that their regular service functions at $25/person-hr, but cleaning is $32.50/person-hr?

I wonder if they have trouble finding trustworthy workers, or if they are intentionally targeting the the upper segment of the market. (Perhaps to drive sales for other Exec services?)

Is it possible they are providing benefits to their workers, and that explains the cost? It probably makes sense for someone who is around harsh chemicals all day to have decent healthcare.

If people actually pay taxes/ssi, $65/hour isn't that nuts any more.

Sure, you can go ahead and go the "no paperwork" route, that'll get the job done cheaper. But it's probably not a good plan for a web service.

How can they make their regular service work for $25/hour then?

Contractor vs. Employee would be one easy difference. Cleaning is a more specific task. I'm guessing they have a list of "do's and don't" for the 2 people @ $65 rate. If you have someone performing random "on demand" tasks paid after completion, they could easily just be 1099's. Profit could be similar.

This pricing is not out of line in the least if you're treating this as a real business. Hourly wages would probably be in the $12-18 range. With 2 cleaners per job, that looks like an acceptable margin while also providing for all the normal overhead. Certainly a different approach from PathJoy.

What percentage would you estimate as the normal overhead for something like this? What would an acceptable margin be? They have $3.3M in investment funding, so it seems like the margin would not need to be very high at the start (if they're going for growth).

There are a lot of factors in overhead but 20 - 40% would be right assuming all the common expenses for this kind of business. I also assume they employ their cleaners and aren't all contractors.

Sure they have some cash but this is a service business with the biggest money to be made in recurring customers. Providing a deep discount upfront and then having to adjust later to make a profit seems short sighted.

Before they launched the cleaning service, Exec was already offering cleaning (and providing cleaning supplies to their workers) as part of their normal $25/hour service. I suspect they realized that the costs don't work out, and with two people at $65/hour it's "only" 30% more expensive that their standard service.

How did you find this great lady for $10 an hour? Do you buy the supplies or does she bring her own? Do you tip? Do you give a holiday bonus?

Does she provide liability insurance in case she breaks your washing machine?

Potentially, as long as you don't run out of Lemon Pledge, you're ok on supplies. I think homeowners (or renters) insurance would cover you on liability (I would be unhappy if she broke my washing machine, more unhappy if she broken/stole/etc. my laptop, but really worried if she got hurt and I might be liable, and incredibly worried if she accidentally hurt someone else in the building while I was employing her... but I think a homeowner's policy would cover all of that).

Yes supplies, are only a small factor. A Broken laptop is an expensive cleaning. A quality owner/operator/business is going to take care of it to keep you happy but, that comes with a slightly higher cost per job. For the other scenarios you mention, I'm not sure your going to have that easy of a time filing a claim, especially if you mention "employee". To flip it around a bit, would you also bear the cost if a plumber/electrician made a mistake and flooded/burn your house?

Recommendations from friends. Fully insured, licensed, independent business owner. As for supplies it's really nothing I don't keep on-hand anyways. Dish Soap, SOS pads, windex, pine-sol(have to love wood floors), swiffer, feather-duster, laundry detergent, dryer sheets; to count these in my costs would be a misnomer, I have to buy them anyway lol!

To be fair if I were to make a cost of living adjustment it would probably be closer to 15-17 an hour in a place like Silicon Valley. Still, people simply need to ask around for references if they want to find someone reliable and affordable.

Indeed there is an entire underground, for lack of a better word, for these kinds of services. They work on referrals and some continue to grow and add employees while, others are happy to just get paid for the hours the can work. However, because of the nature of these kinds of services opinions vary and that's the problem. One persons great is another persons sucks. I think Exec discovered this and is now aiming for quality and consistency rather than sending some random person over to "clean".

I'm sure they'd have problems running a sustainable cleaning business on $30/h considering taxes, supply costs and other fees you'd have to pay as a business owner.

That is a great reason why they never should have tried to approach this as a business where they employ cleaners. If they were just a service to hook up cleaners and customers, the pricing would not be a problem. You'd avoid all of it, and so would the cleaners and the customers. Step in the middle and say 'I employ the cleaners' and, bam, you have just destroyed the entire concept. You've just radically restricted your geographic reach. You've massively multiplied the cost to EVERYONE, including yourself, your customers, the cleaners, everyone. The cleaners are immediately divorced from receiving benefits of efficiency improvements. If they become more productive, their employer pays them the same (or less) and expects continued improvements. As opposed to actually making more money for less work, the way productivity improvement is supposed to work.

There are a million cleaner lead generation companies... They all suck.

What are their weaknesses? Do they mostly only deal with cleaning companies rather than individuals? I know that with cleaning there are certain concerns when it comes to being bonded and whatnot since you're going into peoples homes, but I don't know a great deal about it. I'd love it if there was a nice site I could hit up to find a cleaner in my area or get bids from multiples for what I want. For instance, the few places I've searched out myself around here insist that they come every week, won't even take laundry down to the laundry room, etc. There are more and more sites every day that would let me locate people to do work without having to pay the overhead necessary to keep an entire corporate structure oiled and upright even though they're not providing any service technology couldn't do better and for almost no cost. I just don't know of any for cleaning, and I expected this to be one of them... was a bit disappointed when I found out it wasn't. Even if they are hugely successful, I can't imagine them expanding to West Virginia any time soon.

I accidentally filled out a leadgen form for movers once. What it did was forward my personal information to 20 different moving companies who contacted me individually wanting me to fill out the same detailed paperwork 20 times about my move for a quote.

It's tragic because you can't turn off the inbound calls. There's no one thing to block.

Lead gen in general is an internet history lesson. The focus on local/reviews over the last few years was intended to be the fix for the trash lead gen created. The fact is, the vast majority of businesses like this are very small (even the franchises) and there is no corporate structure. They only make a profit if the come every week and they need to set limit on the kinds of things they do. For most of these, Google does a good job of putting the customer and service together even if reviews are another waste land. The missing questions are: is this service what I want and is it worth paying for?

For everyone quoting super low numbers:

I live in a dorm at Stanford University. I have contacted about a dozen different services looking for someone to clean my 300 square foot studio. The _cheapest_ thing I have found is $65, with the range being about $65 -> 120

Is it because I don't live in a city? I am seriously confused.

I'm in the same area and it is basically the same. You have to find a private individual who is willing to help. Usually these people work 1 or 2 houses per week. Ask your profs for a recommendation.

Can't help on cost but for most things there is a another type of MVP. Minimum Viable Price. It just costs a certain amount to perform the service even if you think it's only X.

I found this end note interesting:

"Kan faces competition from the YC family itself. Another Y Combinator-backed startup Pathjoy is doing maid services for as little as $20 an hour."

Besides the fact that Pathjoy has terrible design (sorry, it's true) and is much cheaper, is there a big difference between the two?

Pathjoy seems to specialize in cleaning only. I really loved using them. The whole before, during, and after experience was seamless and great. The lady they sent over was extra sweet and stayed out of our way while she cleaned. She even left a note on her way out that really showed how much pride she took in her work and how hard she was willing to try to meet her own standards (which beat my standards of "clean" ;-) ).

How is this a "startup" that needs VC funding? It looks like a cleaning company, just like the millions that are already out there. What am I missing? They have an app?

My question as well. Though I think you can scale service businesses, they scale differently to product businesses. (E-myth revisited provides a roadmap).

But yes, cleaning is already a crowded market, and if someone could make the "Starbucks of cleaning companies", you'd think they'd have done it anyway. I guess Exec's bet is that they can leverage tech somehow to change the dynamics of the business, like Uber did.

Does anyone else on HN think this is a growing trend?

- Services/Startups that start really wide and then begin to pivot by narrowing in scope/niche (ex. An exec for all things -> building an Uber for cleaning service)

I think that is simply a sign that the company is recognizing their markets better (hopefully).

I don't understand how this is different than the cleaning services that already exist in every major city. I use http://www.accessmaids.com here in Chicago. I can schedule online, pay with a CC, tell my doorman to let them in, and they send 2 people over for 1.5 hours for only $81 + tip.

Please tell me a service like this is novel in SF...

Why are they employing anyone? This sounds like the perfect data service to provide to hook up people who have a cleaning job that needs to be done with people who are willing to do the job and enable them to agree on a price, with the data service taking a (small, no more than a finders fee) cut.

Include some ability for users to feedback on their experience with various cleaners, allow cleaners to feedback on users, provide some scheduling management tools for the cleaners, maybe take another small sliver for those services, etc. The goal being making it as easy as technologically possible both for someone to get their house cleaned and someone who wants to clean houses to find work. This is the model that will destroy all traditional employers, and doing so with great speed is important. There's not time to drag feet and try to drag along archaic structures like holding employees or being tied to employers any more.

Guaranteed performance would be my guess.

We've hired cleaners through agencies in the UK before.

The issue these and similar businesses will face, I expect, is that once the cleaners become established with a household, there is always a large temptation to "go direct" and cut the agency out of the loop. THis is a win/win for the cleaner and the household. Typically the agency markup is split 50/50, and the cleaner makes slightly more and the family pays sligtly less.

There also isn't an easy way for the agencies to enforce non-competes or anything either, I'd expect.

This may be another factor Exec discovered before rolling out an "official" cleaning service. The focus then is less on one off requests and more on getting return business and managing the customer. It would be easy enough for a contractor who got random work from Exec to pull a few regulars if there was no follow up after the web scheduled job. As a side note, I disagree with the win/win idea. Ethics and trust are put into question for me. If the service provider is willing to screw over their employer, what are they going to do in your home.

I don't know how Exec will run their business, but typically in the UK an agency will supply a cleaner for you, who is typically a housewife or similar with time on their hands and wants to earn some extra money. If you're happy with the cleaner they supply, they end up working regularly at your house, for months or years.

All this time, the agency is taking a % cut for providing the original cleaner. After that, the additional value they add is zero.

So yes, it may be unethical to disintermediate the agency, but by this time you have been working with the cleaner for weeks/months, so you get a fairly good idea as to what sort of person they are.

If you think of it as a placement agency, i.e. contractor, who works for you, then yes that extra % may seem like a problem. But then do you manage sick/vacation time? A company who manages the schedule would usually try to have a backup cleaner during those times or provide a new cleaner in the event the current one leaves. They might also follow up to maintain work standards. They might(should) provide insurance coverage on your belongings in case of an accident. On the cleaner side, finding "part-time" work is often a challenge and they enjoy the benefit of having the job handed to them and don't have to worry about where the next job is coming from.

It's interesting, there seems to be a few here on HN that have a problem with people building businesses and making money. Is it implausible that the cleaner you have had for months/years could end up with more work than they can handle and begin to bring in help to do the jobs they won? That's often how small businesses are created.

I have absolutely no problem at all with people starting a business and making money. Good for them.

I am just saying the flaws in the business model as I've experienced it. Agencies could add value via insurance, holiday cover etc, but the ones I've experienced never do.

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