The art of pivoting - Homejoy in its current concept was literally the 13th idea we fully built out and tried to execute on and tried to get customers for. And so a lot of the questions I get are," How do you even get to that 13th idea, and how did you decide when to move on?" The best guidance that I can give on that is the kind of look at these three criteria, which is once you realize that you can't grow, and despite building out all of these great features and talking to all of these users none of them stick, or the economics of the business just don't make sense - then once you make that realization you just need to move on.

Adora Cheung, How to Start a Startup; Lecture 4

They worked hard, but at the end of the day this is really hard to execute on because it is a luxury item, not very sticky, has no urgency and the barriers to entry are virtually non-existent. Uber is a good market maker in an analogous indutry, however they have some pretty key differences.

* Extreme urgency. If I need to get to point B, it is likely important that the quicker and easier I can get there from point A is important to me. I can probably wait to have my room cleaned, but I definitely need to be at work by 9 all the times it is a weekday or I have to be there.

* Bigger market. There are more people who, at some point during the day, find themselves needing to go somewhere that isn't where they are. Probably more people travel over a mile a day than need their house cleaned.

* Cheaper and more efficient. Uber is much cheaper than Taxis in many situations, and often a higher value prop. You can save money taking a subway and a bus to many locations, but of these things do not go to the destination in an acceptable schedule, Uber will, and it will do it cheaply and there aren't too many options although there are certainly some. If you need your house cleaned, you can google like 10-4000 providers.

* Labour is more attractive. This one is big, maybe biggest. While Uber has been slashing prices, and not offering a great value prop to drivers in many cases (based on conversations with a few drivers) they are still held in relatively high esteem by society, and the work itself is of (for many) more desirable than cleaning houses. Given the option for equivalent wages, I would rather drive around and pick people up than clean someones house.

At the end of the day Uber and Homejoy are information arbatrageurs. The delta between knowing where all cars that would be willing to take a fare are as well as where all the people who need to travel are, is a lot more valuable than knowing how to contact all the people who are willing to clean houses is.

editII: unpredicatability. I can't predict that fucking bank of america would cancel my credit card at 5:00am in the morning when I was leaving the bar to get a cab. I needed a ride and 10 minutes prior had no idea. I can however, pretty regularly predict when I need my house cleaned making it quite easy to evaluate options and make those arrangements.

* difficulty to complete by user. I could, if I was some sort of heathen or proletariat type punter, clean my own house. However, it would be more difficult for me to travel somewhere far away. Granted, cleaning a dirty house would take a long time, but if we just assume an average uber is like 4 miles, most people would pay like 6.00 to not walk 4 miles which would be about an hour. However, many people would spend an hour cleaning their house rather than have a complete stranger come over and do it for them for >6.00 while they waited.