I think this is a demonstration of the limits in "app-ing" an industry. Uber worked fantastically because it leans heavily on the geolocation facilities in a smartphone - you're always moving, getting picked up from different places, by cars located in different places.
Homejoy had none of that. You rarely move home, and your cleaner rarely does either. Effectively, from transaction #1 you're in a perfectly replicable pattern - Cleaner X comes to your house every Y weeks and works for Z hours. No matter how great that initial app experience is, it's basically not needed afterwards.
There's also something interesting in here about the limits of the "gig economy". Arguably, by creating a marketplace of cleaners competing with each other for your money, they'd drive costs down for customers. In reality, inviting someone into your home is a very personal thing, and people much prefer to build a relationship with someone that they might pay a little more on a regular basis, than get a different person each time. It is a premium service, after all.
> Effectively, from transaction #1 you're in a perfectly replicable pattern - Cleaner X comes to your house every Y weeks and works for Z hours.
This is the key failure.
Anyone's whose regularly procured cleaning services knows the dance. You find a reputable cleaning service, they send out a cleaner. If you don't like them, you keep asking for a different one. When you find one you like, you ask them what they'd charge if you deal with them directly.
Why should they pay an app developer (or cleaning service) a cut of their profit when they can just show up and earn it themselves?
Most of the house keepers I've known did this until they'd built up enough of a consistent clientele that they could break out on their own....eventually building their own "crew".
Cleaning services are only good for businesses who require a paper trail for tax deduction purposes and who aren't as price sensitive as individuals.
So, is a "one time referral fee" business model the key to success?
This is effectively the yellow pages model, where cleaners pay for leads via advertising placements, and own the long-term relationship with the customer.
Probably, and for far more than just cleaning. For example, tutoring companies do all sorts of ridiculous things to try to prevent "disintermediation," but they take such massive cuts of a tutor's fees that a compatible student and tutor can split the difference (i.e. each take half of the company's 20% cut) and both benefit. Why on earth wouldn't they?
I dunno. My success rate was 25% at best. Found a few contractors I really liked and kept contact info for. And had a half dozen that only used the "deals" to try to land big remodeling jobs.
The business model was articulated above. You join a successful crew and scrub toilets with them for a couple of years until you know the business and have people who trust you enough to employee you directly. The they spread the word among their friends and you get more clients. Eventually you get more than you can handle yourself and find some people you trust to help you out.
Basically for every category you have to really try and figure out what the customer needs are, the service dynamics, how to put together a proposition, etc.
Office By Q is a good example of really trying to understand customer needs and putting a compelling proposition into the marketplace.
For in-home cleaning, there might be a middle-ground. I could see trying out a few cleaners to be useful and selecting a favorite. Or maybe 2 different cleaners with different specialties rotating. But for just scheduling the same person at the same time, you can't really count on taking an ongoing cut.
Yep. But then you've got to ask yourself whether you've really got a business model that supports a big global company, as opposed to a business model that works best when you're one person in an office who has personal relationships with every cleaner in town and a flyer on every lamppost.
My dad is a cab driver. I myself have a lot of experience managing cab business, I can tell you cab business works pretty much the same way. You can sign up with as many cab drivers you like and offer them as much business they can handle. Sooner or later they will find permanent paying customers and move on. Especially among elderly, kids and women.
Its the standard in every industry. Once you've built your ground, you never like to go through a third party.
No, that's wrong everywhere I've lived and traveled. With non-recurring trips (pretty much everything except commuting), you almost never migrate to a single provider. The advantages of tapping into a pool of providers is too great. In house-cleaning, there are no advantages to tapping into a pool, and in fact people are leery of it.
Consider the single largest market for limousine services: businesspeople traveling to and from airports. These people absolutely will pay extra for a reliable, no-surprises ride from a person they know, plus they know in advance exactly when they will travel. Uber offers little to no advantage for this group.
Uber's advantage comes from catering really well to ad-hoc, short-hop travel, but this is a different market.
Works for taxis too. An acquaintance of mine has regularly (once or twice a week) had to travel from his home to the airport, about a $100 fare each way. He's used the same taxi driver for about 10 years - knowing that either this driver (or someone the driver vouches for) will be on time every time.
(taxi expenses are covered by his work but personal car travel is not, so he doesn't drive, go figure)
I also know a good number of people who have a "regular" taxi driver. Mostly in southern Europe specifically, though. Sometimes it's because they have some connection to the driver (relative / friend-of-a-friend / friend-of-a-relative) so they want to give that person their business rather than a random driver. Other times it's just someone they got a recommendation for and like. Even some tourists do, if they're the kind of tourist who goes to the same place every summer (e.g. the same town in Crete).
Its not just paying commissions to the third party. If you are a good taxi driver, who keeps their car clean, provides bottled drinking water to customers, are punctual, polite, trustworthy etc you will get many people who would like to call you directly instead of going through a service like Uber. And along the way you would have met many customers who are exactly like you- polite, trustworthy and nice.
It becomes a natural fit.
Uber kind of services work because they are currently burning millions of investor money to subsidize your travel. Once they run out of money, you are back to the same thing again.
Which is why some times you must do extra work for free, because it keeps people around you happy and in return they are indebted to do something in return for you(Recommend you, tip you, hire you etc)
Taxi services are different though - you might be nowhere near your valued customer when they call. And they might be more inclined to take an "OK" driver rather than wait 30 minutes for you to get to them.
>>you might be nowhere near your valued customer when they call
Traveling adhoc without planning is only for single 20 year olds start up techies. People with families, elderly etc generally have to plan in advance if they decide to do something.
"In reality, inviting someone into your home is a very personal thing, and people much prefer to build a relationship with someone that they might pay a little more on a regular basis, than get a different person each time."
Yes, for sure. I've had professional home cleaners for nearly 10 years now. And over the course of those years, I've had many conversations with friends and neighbors who do as well (e.g. in giving/receiving recommendations). I can't imagine using a service that sends someone different every time, or even someone for whom I can't see reviews and receive references before the first visit. I think most of the people I've talked to are in the same boat. This is a service that requires putting a lot of trust in the service provider. I could potentially see myself using an app that helped me find a provider, but it would need to give me a lot of information about them up front, and let me choose from several. And then it would have to let me keep getting the same person every time. It ends up being more like an Angie's List than a Homejoy.
For something like a handyman, where the service is less intimate and less frequent, this might make more sense (though I have had enough horrible experiences with handymen that I also would want personal recommendations at this point)...
I gave Handy(Book) a try, and consistency in who arrived was my issue. The first person they sent was absolutely fantastic, send her every week!. Trying to book her again was a nightmare, the docs didn't match the application, and support pointed me back at the documentation. Finally a month later, after several support calls and emails, I had the same cleaner booked. Success!
The morning of my appointment I looked online and they'd switched my cleaner. The new person arrived 45 minutes late, did a poor job, and tried to get me to book her outside of Handy.
Finding someone on Craigslist is easier and cheaper. Answer a random ad, asses quality after their first visit. Either book them on a recurring schedule or move on to the next ad. The only difference is paying with a cheque rather than a CC.
Just had the same issue with Handy. They notified my girlfriend 20 hours before an appointment that our requested cleaner was unavailable, and when we canceled charged us $15 for canceling within 24 hours.
After 4 different attempts to cancel we gave up and called American Express. They blocked Handy from charging the card again and did a chargeback for every dollar we ever spent with them.
Yep. Same story here. Cleaner didn't show up and Handy refused to refund my cleaning fee because the cleaner had attempted to contact me. (Apparently Handy does not find it relevant that I never received a call, nobody ever came to my house, and I am paying for cleaning not a phone call.) Eventually, after much back and forth, their customer service people simply stopped responding.
Against my better judgment, I attempted to book through them again the next week. Cleaner didn't show up and would not answer his/her phone.
On numerous prior visits the cleaner was very late and/or did a very poor job. Handy doesn't care.
This is a truly terrible service--one of the worst experiences I've ever had with a company.
In real world, if your regular cleaner calls in sick, you don't pay for that visit. If you really need some cleaning done you talk to him to come a few days before the usual scheduled date. It is a 1:1 relationship and often with the cleaner in the stronger position.
Apps like Handy want to invert that, but in the case of Handy they basically failed to provide the consistent quality and a critical mass of cleaner to offset people reluctance to engage with cleaners like this. This lead to the kind of frustration the parent describe. The real loss for Handy is not the cancellation or even the loss of that customer for good, the real loss is that they lost the recommendation of that customer and recommendation is the main way your currently chose a cleaner.
Figuring that out is kind of integral to Handy's business model. they're essentially playing matchmaker between customer and service provider, which means their business begins and ends with customer service.
If you pay for Bob to come over and clean your kitchen because you know Bob does great work, it's perfectly reasonable for me to call you up and say, "Bob's sick today, can I send Jed over instead?" But it's also perfectly reasonable for you to say "no, so cancel my appointment for today." It is not reasonable for me to charge you a cancellation fee under that scenario.
Then, they shouldn't assign a cleaner and notify the customer who is assigned, as it essentially sets customer expectations that are inconsistent with their TOS.
Next, they make it worse by charging a fee for the pleasure of being disappointed. Pretty bad customer experience.
They may or may not. I don't know. But there is a means of requesting a specific person, and they obviously take it seriously enough to send notifications.
But it's not good customer service to notify your client that their request can't be accommodated when it's too late for them to do anything about it. If the notice was prior to the cancellation-fee period, then sure, charge the fee if canceled within 24-hours. But if you give me late notice, at least allow me to late-cancel in return.
If they let you book a Pro and that Pro cannot make it on late notice, it is absurd to charge a late notice cancellation fee.
At least Amex is great about not giving a shit about awful TOS. If you screw your customers over and accept Amex you'll soon find out that you won't be getting paid.
If they hadn't they wouldn't have been getting in touch to say that the particular individual wasn't going to make it. If anything, the OP should send Handy an invoice for a cancellation fee, not the other way around.
This text is on the form you use to choose an individual:
"We'll do our best to match you up again on your new booking, but please understand that as an independent contractor, it is up to the discretion of the professional to accept or decline your booking. In the event we cannot match you, another professional will be assigned."
If you don't like that deal, don't take it. But don't be all pissed off when they do exactly what you agreed to.
I'm not the OP and have no horse in the race, but it sounds like the Professional accepted the booking and then cancelled with less than 24 hours before the appointment. The OP sounds fully within common sense and again I applaud Amex for listening to reason over a grey area policy.
The reason the cancellation policy exists is because if you cancel the Professional doesn't get paid and it's too late to rebook them to someone else. According to Handy, the cancelation fee goes to the Professional who you cancelled on. In this case the Professional cancelled, why should they still get paid?
A cancellation fee makes perfect sense in many cases, but sometimes companies take their own policies by the letter even when it's infuriating and bad for everyone. A better tack is to instead think about what the policy's intent is and how to handle it like adults. Usually in these cases the customer just shuts up and pays the fee and will never use the company again, but at least this time they had the follow through to take their money back (and if there's one thing a company notices it is their merchant account sending money in the other direction). A win for the little guy, great job OP!
All of your "read the fine-print" logic can be applied to Handy and Amex just as easily as to Handy and the customer.
eg:
If Handy doesn't like the deal where an Amex customer can request a chargeback for inadequate customer service then they shouldn't accept Amex as payment.
It's not fine print. It's the basic service model. They are very upfront about it. I understand that lots of people in this thread would prefer a different model. But that's not what they offer right now. I'm not for or against it: just tying to add facts to the thread.
This is ultimately my same issue with Handy. I don't want a different person every single time. I think this makes it really hard to make it work.
That being said I have had Handy come and clean many times now and not changed it, so I think there is a slight convenience factor. It would be better if Handy just facilitated the direct communication with the same person to come every time. And instead of charging me a fee, charged the cleaner a kind of 'management' fee. I think that would better.
>I can't imagine using a service that sends someone different every time, or even someone for whom I can't see reviews and receive references before the first visit. This is a service that requires putting a lot of trust in the service provider.
The alternative is if Homejoy would have treated Cleaners as employees and properly trained them. A properly trained and paid Cleaner as an employee would have provided that trust you seek.
If I'm paying someone less than 100$ to come in to a place where they could walk out with $10K+ worth of electronics, jewelry, etc I either need to be there to supervise or have a long standing relationship with the person. Ideally I would like to know enough of their other clients that a single robbery doesn't make economic sense for them. Once the relationship exists the agency brings minimal value.
It also solved a problem that's more or less already solved. Uber is great because finding a taxi can be hard, and finding a good taxi can be really hard. Finding somebody to clean your house is really easy. I must get half a dozen flyers a week for cleaning services stuck on my door. If I don't trust that, I can just ask my neighbors for a recommendation.
> Finding somebody to clean your house is really easy.
Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy, sure, but finding someone who's 1) consistent 2) always on-time and 3) not $100/hr is next to impossible.
Perhaps in a large metro it's easier, but I've had basically no luck in suburban silicon valley.
The Silicon Vallex is in a large metro. It's still pretty dense and you have 8 million people around. I don't think the experience would be different in Oakland, Fremont, San Francisco...
"Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy"
Back in the day I had a cleaning service that I trusted and used regularly put a wet rag on top of a CSU/DSU [1]. Not something that I ever thought could happen. Ironically the spare CSU/DSU was sitting right next to that. (Cold and ready to be put in service if the main one failed.) There were of course vents on the top. That's where the rag went. And I was near the equipment at the time (I would never let a cleaning service in where there was sensitive equipment without being onsite).
Finding a taxi in a big city is very easy and has always been very easy. I don't use Uber because they charge $10 for a car seat and I've never waited more than 10 minutes for car when I just call. When my company needed to send people 30 miles round trip every day for 2 weeks, a car service will give you a deal, Uber won't. Uber also has virtually no competitive advantage over Lyft. I think that all this startup analysis is giving way too little credit to the benefits of being lucky.
In old-economy-speak what you just said basically translates as "you entered a crowded market".
When you're standing on an unknown, rainy street corner far away from home, a taxi's services are urgently required, and not abundant. When you're lounging on your sofa and start contemplating how it would be nice for someone else to bin the pizza boxes, it's the opposite on both counts.
Moreover, I don't see the money men being impressed by a founder who can put out a piece so toe-curlingly embarrassing as "Dear Future HomeJoy Engineer".
Me too dude. I actually <ctrl>-F'd it and was surprised I was the first. Then again it's 4pm in NY, let alone SF. The night is young...(if the HN algo doesn't tank the story, that is).
IMO they focused on the wrong parts of the chain. Like you said, anyone can start a cleaning service and if all Homejoy does is match you with a cleaner who might or might not show up then there's no reason for them to exist.
But there is no reason that an app-based cleaning service can't succeed, full stop. There's plenty of room to add value, just like there is in any other business where you can get economies of scale. Homejoy just didn't focus on those parts of the business.
- Instead of giving away supplies, raise the percentage of the fee that you pay out. Then buy bulk supplies and sell them to the cleaners at a discount.
- Partner with P&G and Unilever to get access to trial products that you can give to your cleaners to try
- Act as an agent to negotiate group rates on stuff like health insurance
- Provide business services if you book a certain number of appointments each year. Tax help, those kinds of things.
- Maybe you can provide access to events or something where Homejoy books a group of cleaners and since it's a business you can charge them good rates
- Find other way to book cushy jobs that you can give access to for your most used cleaners
Obviously there's a 1099 line that they don't want to cross but if you provide access and opportunities and tier it based on appointments booked then you provide incentives to stay on the platform.
Similarly for customers, do things like give away cleanings or discounts randomly. Use your partnerships from above to give customers free stuff or coupons. Sell cleanings in 10 packs or offer a monthly or annual subscription that comes with a discount.
Those sound like good ideas, but I'm not sure they solve the key challenge of there being more value in the connection itself.
That is, once a service provider has a customer, that customer represents the overwhelming majority of value to be had by the service. Likewise, for a customer who is happy with and trusting of a cleaner, discounts would likely have to be unsustainably large to move them.
Finally, with the middleman in the transaction, discountability is actually eroded. There is really little economies of scale to be leveraged at the cleaners' level and customers would probably come out better if cleaners simply passed the Homejoy cut to them.
I've used Handy a few times because they offer pretty aggressive pricing. Hit or miss as far as quality of cleaners. I do agree they have some borderline tactics. They make it impossible to find a contact number, force you into recurring bookings, and when I cancelled my last appointment they said they would give me a $35 credit to my account (with $15 penalty off $50 claning) but instead charged me an extra $15 and gave me a $50 account credit. Small thing but kinda shows the quality of their system.
On a side note, I wonder why the reporter bothered changing the name of the co-founder of Handybook in that piece. From the remainder of her description (e.g. the mention of a Harvard MBA and the experience at McKinsey) I was able to determine that "Ajay" was actually Umang Dua, after about two minutes on CrunchBase and LinkedIn.
All the more reason to name the co-founder. I disagree that a co-founder has the same right to privacy as an employee. Employees can claim that they're following rules or policies, and that any sleaziness on their part is due to the constraints they're operating under. A co-founder has no such excuse. He or she sets the policies. If the company behaves sleazily (as it did in this article), it's due to the policies and culture that they've created.
I don't know too much about it, but just from an initial glance it seems like it is better positioned, simply by offering things like plumbers, electricians, etc - again, they aren't services you fall into regular patterns with. They're very much on-demand when there is water leaking all over your apartment.
That said, I'm sure "doesn't seem to be struggling from what I can tell" could have been said about Homejoy, until it couldn't. Venture capital makes it difficult to tell who is succeeding, and who just has money to spend.
Yeah, Homejoy's demise took everyone by surprise. Unless the company is public, it's almost impossible for a casual observer to tell how healthy it is.
My first question when I heard of them is how they prevent cleaners from ever using the platform again. This seems to be the single biggest long term stumbling block, that they never really got close to solving.
Aside: I saw Adora at the London StartUp school hosted by YC. She really didn't come off that convincing to me. Then she said something really, really strange - "You don't fail until you give up", and I wondered why someone would say something like that.
I don't get what's the issue with that statement. Until you give up on the idea, you didn't fail. What other interpretation do you have in mind? It's one of those cliche way of saying failing is just the beginning of success.
The thing that convinces me is her determination. She worked as cleaner before starting the business, and understood some of the pain. She probably overlooked at the issue and probably overconfident like the article cited, but someone who was willing to cover cleaner to apologize for cancellation on Thanksgiving? That's very good for her (but unable to prioritize some critical negativity in the algorithm? that's just sad). Without knowing the full story (we are just hearing fragments from allegedly ex-Homejoy employees), I think the business model is not profitable. Maybe doing cheap is really hard, and doing fancy and professional is the only way out.
Handy's software is atrocious. I went to change a recurring cleaning schedule and they presented me with a modal pop-up to keep my cleanings at 50% off. I agreed, and my future cleaning pricing all showed up at $43/cleaning.
My next cleaning comes around, and I'm hit with a $101 charge. The receipt literally says "Price: $101, Discount: $58, Total Charged: $101". I end up having to go back and forth over Twitter DM because they refuse to respond to my emails and pick up their phone to get my charge adjusted. I ask if the remaining three cleanings that I was signed up for would honor the $43 price reflected in my account summary. They said yes.
The day before the next cleaning, I get hit with the same $101 charge. Again, I reach out to them and spend about three hours going back and forth finding out that the "last representative did not provide the right information", and that I need to "show the coupon code (I) used" (there wasn't one). I ended up getting my service cancelled for good.
Terrible. Never again. I'd rather pay a premium for a real cleaner to show up.
Handy's a terrible service, actually. Creepy automatic recurring subscriptions for house cleaning, no way in the UI to cancel the subscription (!), frequent site downtimes. Had to go to great lengths to cancel an appointment I didn't create in the first place.
Handy isn't the only one, and this ought to be illegal. If I can sign up online I ought to be able to cancel online.
These companies can lie to themselves and the public all they want - the exclusive purpose of making you call to cancel (or worse, visit a physical location) is to discourage cancellations. It compromises the notion of a free and voluntary exchange of money for services.
LA Fitness has this one down to a fine art. You have to send a form, -by certified mail- to an address. They will not let you cancel in person, on the phone, or online.
And if you send in the paperwork, but not by certified mail? They'll toss it, unactioned.
Was the cancellation form in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard"? :)
If you look into the ownership of major gym chains you'll find that they are owned by financial companies - more specifically billing companies.
It seems like providing the gym itself is more of a side hobby to the main business: find people to bill and keep billing them whether they like it or not, and build a core competence to avoid ever not billing someone.
I've used Handy with very varying results. I ended up ditching them because I couldn't get the same cleaner regularly. To use Handy, I would have to take the day off every time I wanted a cleaning, so that I could meet and vet the new cleaner.
One time, a new cleaner showed up, but I wasn't home. She didn't have the key, and so she couldn't clean. I asked for a refund and never got it.
Care.com is doing similiar things with housekeeping services, although they started with matching child care providers to parents and seem to just be expanding into new verticles -- housekeeping, pet watching, etc. I think it's a good strategy. I'd rather use one app to handle those types of tasks than have to manager a Homejoy, Petjoy, and Kidjoy account.
Rover.com is great for pet sitting, and care.com is great for finding a home care provider.
However both of these sites will have the same problem as Homejoy. I used rover.com to book pet sitting just for the insurance, but after a few positive experiences, I am now booking directly with the pet sitter. Same thing happens on care.com almost all the time.
These sites are more valuable as a craigslist or angie's list competitor: Use them once or twice per year, then don't visit the site again after you've found your provider.
They should focus on making money from listing fees, insurance premiums, and being the strongest market for their respective industries at all times, so that when I go back to the site in 6 months time, I can trust that it will be just as good an experience as it was last time.
I agree completely. I used rover.com once to find a pet sitter and found a great one. I don't need it anymore.
Furthermore, they're doing the typical thing that businesses resort to when they're desperate. They're asking you to review every single damn time you use their service. (I had the same sitter for 30 weeks in a row. Clearly I like her or I'd use someone different. Stop bugging me!)
They also try to steer you towards using their service more when there's no need for it. Every time I book a stay, they want me to look into other pet sitters on their site. Why would I do that? I'm completely happy with the one I found. If I ever need a change because I move or the sitter moves, or we have a falling out, I'll consider looking for a new one. Until then, get out of my face!
And on top of it, they're trying to push services I don't need. I never want someone to come to my house to walk my dog. I don't need strangers coming by my house. And I need an overnight maybe 3 times a year. (And I'll continue to use the day sitter I have as they also do overnights.) It's almost impossible to find a day sitter on rover.com, and they seem to be pushing everything but that.
Their whole model seems like it's living on borrowed time to me.
That's not true. The regulatory system surrounds day care centers, which is not care.com's business. care.com's business is in 1:1 care (nanny) where there is not regulation or quality control, except a bit of tax control.
For me it was price. I have three kids, so we do a lot of laundry. I simply wanted someone to fold and put away about twice a week...
Home joys minimum worked out to be about $75 per visit... So about $37.5 per hour... And I don't think folding clothes as a service worth $600 per month.
Just use the laundry on-demand apps, they've been working fine for me, they do much better job at washing AND folding clothes than me doing it for hours.
In general, in Western economies, personal services that don't benefit significantly from scale or automation are going to seem reasonably expensive unless you are in the very top tier of income. Consider that $15/hour is about the wage floor and you probably need to add transit time and other overheads for an independent contractor.
So, yeah, it's hard to see a couple of hours of work costing less than $50 or so. And, if this is a weekly or more frequent expense, that starts to add up. I have a housecleaner come in every few weeks and it does help to keep my place in some semblance of order, but it's definitely a luxury expense and I would probably be too cheap to have it done weekly.
The wage floor is way below $15/hour in much of the country, but I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that Homejoy's pricing was static and independent of location. Does it make sense for someone in a modest cost-of-living area to be paying San Francisco rates?
> The wage floor is way below $15/hour in much of the country
As a W2 employee, yes. If you're asking someone to work as a 1099 and eat their own self-employment taxes, transit costs, etc, that's going well below minimum wage.
Minimum wage W2 employees almost never get any sort of transit costs covered. If they have to live 2 hours away because that's the only place they can afford housing, then it's on them to pay for transportation there and back. They also get bottom of the barrel benefits.
Minimum wage can be as low as $7.25 for W2 employees. This calculator suggests that corresponds to only $10/hour for a contractor: http://www.rate-calculators.com/
I find ghaff's argument more compelling: people will pay more simply because they want someone they can trust in their home.
Minimum wage is less in general but I'm pretty certain that if I took an ad out on Craigslist to get someone to come over to my house to do some task, you'd be looking at $15-20 an hour at least. As you say, I'm sure it would depend on the area.
Homejoy had none of that. You rarely move home, and your cleaner rarely does either. Effectively, from transaction #1 you're in a perfectly replicable pattern - Cleaner X comes to your house every Y weeks and works for Z hours. No matter how great that initial app experience is, it's basically not needed afterwards.
There's also something interesting in here about the limits of the "gig economy". Arguably, by creating a marketplace of cleaners competing with each other for your money, they'd drive costs down for customers. In reality, inviting someone into your home is a very personal thing, and people much prefer to build a relationship with someone that they might pay a little more on a regular basis, than get a different person each time. It is a premium service, after all.