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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the sharing economy as a whole will go away.

Homejoy is a bit special in that they sell something that you really only need once, and that's if you know nobody who will recommend you a cleaner. (Why don't they pivot, for instance into a moving company? Pays good money for college kids if they happen to be free, cheap for people who need to move. Location services lets you identify people who are near the opportunity.)

But the idea of a service where both buyers and sellers can find each other on a casual basis is sound. It's just that we need to sort out what the terms are. Should full-time Uber drivers get different protections from part-timers? Needs a trip through the social/political grinder for an answer.

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I think you have this a bit backward. The cleaning business is at it's core, a recurring revenue business. Cleaning at regular intervals keeps the cost down (time) and builds back profit if the first cleaning was discounted. Moving on the other hand is something you don't need often and is harder forecast revenue. In either case the employee/contractor problems exists.

I assume what the GP is referring to is that nothing prevents a satisfied Homejoy customer from exchanging contact information with their cleaner (and, if they do like the cleaner, they would benefit from doing so rather than taking on future unknown cleaners).

I believe the point was if you like your cleaner, you could contract with them directly the next time. Of course, there's probably some protection from going through the service, so not entirely true.

Sure if you assume HomeJoy as a lead Gen model, loyalty on both sides could be a problem. HomeJoy generally positioned their service like that. However, I don't think that was the intent in the long term. If loyalty is a problem with a service business then your customer acquisition has a flaw (high discount) or you provide no additional value to the customer (quality control, customer service, insurance, backup cleaners).Certainly the loyalty problem exists with "traditional" services as well. The big franchises stay in business by first providing good service and second loyal workers. Those factors plus acquiring the right kind of customer provides the recurring revenue this type of business needs to survive.

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