homejoy

The thing is, I see places like some places in startupland (e.g., HomeJoy, HubSpot) similar to Wharton.

Sure if you assume HomeJoy as a lead Gen model, loyalty on both sides could be a problem.

The real story here is that Handy outcompeted Homejoy and disrupted their business.

Pay for pros at the top of the Homejoy ladder was the same as starting pay at the bottom of the Handy ladder.

At the time I felt a bit stupid when, months later, Homejoy and several other startups entered the scene.

You have services like homejoy to take care of the heavy duty chores like cleaning the bathrooms, mopping floors and cleaning the kitchen.

HomeJoy generally positioned their service like that.

By removing Homejoy after the evaluation period, the homeowner and service provider get into a stronger relationship, that is cheaper for the homeowner and more financially rewarding for the service provider.

> A few weeks after Homejoy announced > that they're closing down,...

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 always thought that Homejoy were planning to automate as much as possible, if not everything, related to cleaning services using robotics and stuff, and that humans were only a temporary measure while developing technology.

Yes, Homejoy could have developed and provided to its cleaners tools to make the cleaning faster (for example: something that would be to a toilet brush what a hoover is to a mop - I have no idea how to develop such a thing), making the overall cleaning cheaper - it would take less time, and cleaners charge per hour.

Tomorrow I'm going to my boss and telling him "we need more code!" I'll refuse to say what the code should do, but I'll point out that Homejoy refactored their codebase before dying of a bad business model.

This is a dumb sentiment and the article is actually one of the few that ignores the bogus culprit of employee classification in Homejoy's demise.

Homejoy solved the annoying issues of waiting for quotes, not being able to reach your cleaner, having to sort through reviews, ect.

I'm surprised the article didn't mention Handy at all, because it is the most relevant comp for Homejoy.