Homejoy says goodbye - <AUTHOR> http://blog.homejoy.com/homejoy-says-goodbye/ <comment><USER2> I run a company similar to HomeJoy in Japan, and I disagree with most comments here.

1\. Those who claim cleaning is not a "skilled job" should get off their keyboard, spend a day cleaning their moms house, and get back to me when they learn they are 3X slower than a pro and destroyed something with bleach-based spray.

2\. It feels like nobody here actually read Adora Cheung's quotes about multiple lawsuits coinciding with investment timing. That is obviously the reason they shut the doors.

3\. Those who claim flaws in matching business model are to blame are making non-quantitative assumptions. Just ask yourself, how high of a percentage of users sharing direct phone # would cause a growing company to collapse? Also the supply side risks losing stable income or insurance coverage.

I do quite a number of things much differently than HomeJoy, and quality control being a major one. There are certainly a lot of challenges and operational complexity to keep my team innovating. Japan has the highest customer service standard in the world (and hardest to satisfy customers), which is great for building a more solid foundation. If any hackers are leaving HomeJoy and want to move to Tokyo, I'm hiring!

<comment><USER3> _1\. Those who claim cleaning is not a "skilled job" should get off their keyboard, spend a day cleaning their moms house, and get back to me when they learn they are 3X slower than a pro and destroyed something with bleach-based spray._

x100. There is a lot more variance between two cleaners than say two Uber drivers.

<comment><USER4> Due to the regulations needed to drive. Put someone with no experience driving behind a wheel and you'll quickly see how skill based driving is. Just, unlike good cleaning, we have a lot of training and experience with good driving.

Or if this is too extreme of an example, look at what happens when you give a driver who has only driven small cars a big truck pulling a loaded trailer. They'll definitely be slower than the driver's with skill.

<comment><USER5> There's a great place to see this in action in SF: the Anchor Steam brewery in Potrero Hill.

The truck drivers turn around 18 wheelers in an impossibly tight space there and it's jawdropping to watch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wanted HomeJoy to work and tried to use the service a few times. What the failure came down to:

1\. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is manual labor.

2\. People don't want to let just anyone into their home to clean. Especially for those that have valuables, you want someone you trust who is going to hopefully be your maid for years to come. I wouldn't want someone new every time and for that reason, I used HomeJoy only at our office but even that wasn't enough due to poor quality.

Someone on this thread further explained this well, which is that HomeJoy is at a high level, a match making service. Once you find a match, why do you need HomeJoy? Connect directly with the maid and have them come on your own schedule for a fraction of the price.

I used to feel the same way about Uber. If I found a good driver back in the day I would get his phone # and take him exclusively to the airport. Uber solved this with UberX and by having a wealth of seemingly skilled drivers that made it a true on demand service. Having to book an appointment like HomeJoy seems like it is not a true OnDemand service, just a nicer UI than any other maid connecting service.

AirBnB I feel had a similar problem. For frequent business travelers, finding the right place at the right price is awesome and I would usually try to stay at the same place and connect with people directly. AirBnB solved this with overwhelming demand for the service (the place I like may not always be available) and with their insurance policy and scheduling tools for renters.

In any event, I don't feel like HomeJoy failing is indiciative of a bubble in the On Demand economy. There were inherent principles of this business that made it destined to fail that others in the space won't have a problem with.

<comment><USER7> > the lack of passion from the cleaners

I doubt cleaning other people's shit is anyone's passion.

<comment><USER8> You'd be surprised.

My Parents use AirBnb to rent out an in-law apartment they have at one of their houses (they each had a house prior to getting together). They're retired and they now treat it like their job, despite it only bringing in around $30k/year. I've recommended that they find a local cleaning person since I think they can find someone good who's willing to do it for the cleaning fee they charge ($50), but they're finicky about it being done perfectly and value their star rating (full 5 stars). So they do it themselves before every new renter arrives. Sometimes this involves driving 1.5 hours in each direction just to go up there and clean, but they insist on doing it anyways.

Similarly, I used to have a cleaning person come once a month. She was an immigrant single parent who had built up a large number of loyal, repeat clients and was making enough to send her daughter to college. Doing our dishes and vacuuming our floors probably didn't provide much enjoyment, but you can bet your ass she did it passionately because of the larger context in which she was working.

You're probably right about the actual act of cleaning...almost everyone won't have a passion for that. But your comment is incredibly myopic and shows a complete lack of understanding of human motivation.

<comment><USER9> > ...you can bet your ass she did it passionately...

Hmm. I would be more comfortable with "professionally". Frankly, I think that's the far better word to use here. In your comment, you even go on to doubt that almost anyone would have a "passion" for cleaning.

Professionals do an excellent job where an excellent job is required. Passion is not a factor in the quality of the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used Homejoy and I liked it's ease of use. But after the cleaning lady they sent me was done, she offered me her direct phone # and told me I could contact her directly for any future cleaning needs.

I always wondered how this business model was going to work if Homejoy's contractors could just give out their phone # at the end of their first service and the customer could just contact them directly for any future needs, instead of going back through Homejoy for any future bookings.

<comment><USER11> A prediction about "sharing economy" companies. Almost all of them are tacking on a thin rind of web/mobile UI and smart dispatch technology to an existing service. The long-term winners will be companies like Flywheel that recognize this and focus on providing that service to existing operators, much like payment processors. This, of course, is perceived as a smaller market since they can't count revenue the same way.

EDIT: on the other hand, an advantage is they don't have to worry about acquiring customers, drivers, etc, nor the regulatory overhead of the underlying business, but instead just focus on customer experience, schedule/dispatch, etc.

<comment><USER12> > The long-term winners will be companies like Flywheel that recognize this > and focus on providing that service to existing operators, much like payment > processors.

I don't think this creates a very big moat - that's essentially what Uber started out as (dispatch for private driving companies that already existed); they started letting anyone drive in order to meet demand.

If all the services are interchangable (and now, at least for ridesharing, it seems like they are), the winner will be the app that's used by default.

<comment><USER13> Uber is different than Homejoy.

You would use the same house cleaning professional over and over again but you will likely never ride with the same Uber driver again. This means that the Homejoy house cleaner can bypass Homejoy but the Uber drivers/users can't do without it.

<comment><USER14> > you will likely never ride with the same Uber driver again.

In theory, having your "own" driver would not be a bad thing. But the main difference is in scheduling.

With taxis and Uber, you want a car to show up in 10 minutes at any time of the day without advance booking. This requires a large pool of drivers on standby and a middleman to handle the communication.

A cleaner can visit pretty much any time during the week, and is usually pre- booked for every week indefinitely into the future. This doesn't need a middleman, since you can arrange the details directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I get the sense that many of the people involved in Homejoy are well- intentioned and hardworking. But I can't say that I think it's a bad thing that tech startups are finding it difficult to monetize unskilled labor.

The technology that most companies like these offer (with the possible exception of Uber) is a commodity. The real asset they have is the network effect. Which makes the balance of power between the tech company and the "1099 contractors" deeply suspicious. What are these companies doing for the laborers that makes them valuable enough to be skimming returns from the work?

<comment><USER16> It appears from this article that recent worker classification lawsuits also had a part to play - [http://recode.net/2015/07/17/cleaning-services-startup- homej...](http://recode.net/2015/07/17/cleaning-services-startup-homejoy- shuts-down-after-battling-worker-classification-lawsuits/)

<comment><USER17> From the article: > Homejoy was able to raise funding, but not enough to grow > the company as big as its founders and backers had hoped. > "We declined those investments because it wasn't enough, and > we wanted to stay true to our vision," Cheung said.

I'm sorry but shutting the company down because the round you could raise wasn't as big as you hoped feels like wimping out. Alive beats true to your vision and dead. In "The Hard Thing About Hard Things", Ben Horowitz coins the term WFIO (pronounced wiff-e-o) for that "We're Fucked, It's Over" feeling that entrepreneurs get on a regular basis. Lawsuits spooking investors is certainly bad but hardly even qualifies.

Given how big an issue the worker classification issue is for the whole economy, I could see the regulatory issues getting sorted out over the next few years. Quitting seems like a premature move to me. How do the investors who put $40m into the company feel? Who's going to invest in this team again? Who's going to go work there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So Forbes named Homejoy one of the hottest startups of 2013 (and they make a 30 under 30 list). They raise money from top-tier VCs and angels. Adora does quite a bit of speaking (it seems) on growth, regional expansion, and startup inspiration. They expanded to 30+ markets.

But they were really just selling cleaning services for below cost–on the backs of 1099 workers. It's a worse model than Groupon and I can't fathom how the founders or investors thought it would work.

It all feels icky to me.

<comment><USER19> Exactly this. I always felt that this was just another doomed startup that couldn't possibly survive. Curious how we'll revise our views on the company and Adora.

I guess this is the playbook, right? Doesn't matter if you build a sustainable company or not. As long as you raise crazy amounts of VC $ you're considered a success.

<comment><USER20> I thought about this. Someone made a reddit article outlining how to do this and the profit margin depended on skirting the 1099 rules. This isn't a scalable business. Technology doesn't change the basic factors of the business in any meaningful way. I setup plans, bought a domain, had a partner but, never ended up doing it. My partner was disgusted with it as we were planning and over time convinced me.

Home cleaning is a well established business. The market is well served by multiple traditional companies. A Bootstrap 3.0 website and mobile app aren't really going to change that much. It's an uphill battle and trying to take the Uber model of skirting worker protection laws is your only real source of competitive advantage over time.

<comment><USER21>
      Technology doesn't change the basic factors of the business
      in any meaningful way.

I think this is the key point. Add to it the loose coupling with the workforce may make the sharing economy model rattle. One exception I can think off is AirBnB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Higher prices, questionable convenience, and poorer service.

The quality of the cleaning had deteriorated over time and the price was higher than independent cleaners I later found through personal referrals.

I had 4 different Homejoy cleaners. The very first one was _awesome_ and I thought, "Wow, this is great". Then every single cleaner after that was terrible. Two of them started wet mopping before vacuuming or using a dry swiffer, thus pushing wet dirt around. Another one let the toilet brush sit in the toilet in a way that the entire brush, handle and all, fell in. When I came over to oversee her, to make sure she doesn't do other things like that, she got angry and refused to work until I went into another room.

As other's have said, the model sucks. In order to make money, you need to charge above market rates to get your cut. In order to justify that, you need to offer something to both sides of the market. The customer expects convenience and high quality service. If you cannot provide both those things, why would people use Homejoy? And of course, what are you offering the service provider to stay on your platform?

Lastly, there was no Android app and the web app had so many bugs that even the sign-up flow was hit or miss. The sign-up flow! Logging in from my phone never worked and I always had to use a laptop. Unreal.

<comment><USER23> >she got angry and refused to work until I went into another room.

I would have kicked her out. Yikes.

<comment><USER22> I was tempted. The atmosphere got very uncomfortable. I canceled all my recurring appointments after that cleaning.

I had a cleaner through a personal referral in Seattle, who for $60, cleaned my place so well that I'd be happy just coming home to the neat and spotless apartment. When I moved out of Seattle, she packed up my stuff for $160. Movers would have charged >$700. Needless to say, I paid her a lot more than the $160 that she was asking for. When you have had service professionals like that in the past, the crappy and rude service from Homejoy contractors feels even worse.

Someone else wrote a similar thing about a cleaner who took 45 minutes to clean the bathroom floor and then got angry when the customer asked them to move to the next room to clean.

Another person wrote how they suspect the cleaner attempted to steal their jewelry.

<comment><USER24> Can you refer me that personal cleaner? I am in that same situation. Used to use Homejoy but looking for someone good. Can provide references to you if you don't trust an anonymous HN guy! Thank you.

firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER22> Hi icelancer,

I will see if I can dig up the contact info for that cleaner. It was over phone and I left Seattle three years ago. Will try!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I never used the Homejoy service, but I was in the audience for the Startup School Europe talks last year where Adora gave a fantastic speech (Notes: [http://theinflexion.com/blog/2014/07/26/notes-from- startup-s...](http://theinflexion.com/blog/2014/07/26/notes-from-startup- school-europe-london/#adora_cheung_homejoy)) about going through so many ideas and working so hard to get to Homejoy. The talk's ending had a 'And look, we made it, so you can too' feel, and I had no idea that they were doing anything but crushing it after all those years of grinding work.

Its hard not to be disheartened when a pair who seem to have worked as hard as they have still don't make it with an idea. I just hope they keep going.

<comment><USER26> The question that comes to my mind is: should an entrepreneur really "fake it till you make it"?

<comment><USER27> Yes. Especially in a game where you are dependent on raising capital, you always need to have an air of confidence about you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I never used Homejoy, as they were pretty pricey. I have cleaners charging me 1/3 of what Homejoy quoted.

That being said, I talked to several (10-15) people who used Homejoy at least once. The responses I got from most of those people was that the cleaners weren't professional. In fact several of them mentioned that cleaners didn't know what Homejoy was. They were sent for cleaning by their contractors. In other terms, the cohort I talked to had a really low NPS for Homejoy.

I think Homejoy wasn't able to nail down that user experience of their real product (i.e. Cleaning) no matter how amazing their on-boarding/booking experience was.

It must be very disheartening for the founders and the team. All the best to the their next adventures!

</comment><comment><USER29> At the end of the day, this is a lesson in unit economics. If you want to make a successful startup, your unit of sale better be super profitable.

Most successful technology companies sell bits, with high fixed costs but very small marginal costs. This means if you grow really big, your fixed cost growth will eventually flatten out but your profit can continue to grow. Facebook, Google, AirBnb, Uber.

If you are selling something in the real world, especially if you are owning the whole process, then your marginal costs are going to be pretty high, which means your profit margin is going to be lower. This is completely fine and a ton of businesses run like this, but these businesses have to be very careful with their fixed costs. You can't grow like your average tech startup because this model is different than most tech startups.

The exact reason they are going out of business is less important than the fact that a business with high marginal costs is very fragile. A slight increase in a high marginal cost can destroy your profit margin, whereas if your marginal cost is extremely low then you are much more resilient.

High fixed costs + low marginal cost = Good

High fixed costs + high marginal cost = Be careful

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They've raised almost $40M in funding:

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/homejoy](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/homejoy)

<comment><USER30> I wonder if they will be returning any money to investors and if so how much.

<comment><AUTHOR> If they shut down due to lawsuits, don't debt holders (plaintiffs) get priority access to remaining cash?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My problem with Homejoy/Handy etc. is the high degree of unpredictability in the quality of each cleaning. My conclusion is that for something like home cleaning, you want to find a regular person -- not someone new each week.

Our regular cleaner(which I found through nextdoor) recently had to quit. It was enough to upset me for a bit because finding a quality _and_ consistent _and_ affordable cleaner is very hard. Luckily I was able to find another promising cleaner from nextdoor.

When looking for a regular cleaner, one of the things I have learned is that you want a "career" cleaner. You don't want someone who is doing it as a past time to make some extra cash. That might work with Uber/driving but it doesn't seem to work with cleaning that well. If a non-serious Uber driver cancels the ride, you just call another one. If your cleaner doesn't show up, you can easily lose a day before finding a replacement(and hoping he/she delivers).

<comment><USER31> > You don't want someone who is doing it as a past time to make some extra > cash. That might work with Uber/driving

Until your Uber driver takes a left turn onto Shoreline Boulevard without looking, and nearly kills you.

<comment><USER3> That is hardly an Uber problem. In fact, professional cab drivers are famous for dangerous driving. Example: [http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc- crime/taxi-driver-in...](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/taxi- driver-involved-fatal-crash-loses-license-officials-article-1.2158133)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Homejoy was (at least at one point) the fastest growing company in YC history according to PG[1], and if you go back and read the press, particularly around its funding, it was treated like it was already a success.

Its rapid demise is a good reminder that growth isn't profit, and funding from top tier investors doesn't actually signal that you are building a sustainable business.

Incidentally, I have pointed out the employee misclassification issue numerous times[2][3], and wrote last year[4]:

> It's going to be very interesting in the coming years to see which of these > on-demand companies continue to thrive because I personally think it's > inevitable that many of them are going to be forced to reclassify their > workers as employees. I suspect some investors aren't giving this enough > consideration in their due diligence.

If investors are now doing their due diligence (gasp) and realizing that many of these portfolio companies are not going to be able to effectively defend against misclassifcation class actions, Homejoy is _not_ going to be the last of these highly-funded on-demand companies to literally hit a wall.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/1uyr6...](http://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/1uyr6r/homejoy_is_the_fastest_growing_company_in_the/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489834)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8468863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8468863)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709632)

</comment><comment><USER33> As tptacek said, I'm sure many of the people who created and work for these businesses are well intended and hard working, and we have to applaud them for that.

However, the writing is on the wall for any "sharing economy" service that is simply a technology wrapper for non-SSN'd workers in the US. A couple of challenges that aren't solved by technology:

1\. Many unskilled labor positions, especially those that incorporate illegal immigrants, are paid in cash.

2\. The price points are absurdly low to create any sort of margin to sustain a business (I can only assume most of these companies are doing < 10% gross margin)

3\. Response of workers turns sour when they realize the system inevitably becomes indentured servitude.

4\. "Rigorous background checks" \- I have yet to see how technology has made background checks any more "rigorous" or how this has allowed companies to scale the quality of workers.

5\. Scaling quality - many of these services (moreso for services like Thumbtack) start by hiring skilled people (usually MBA students, aspiring actors, etc) who are looking to earn a few extra bucks for fairly unskilled activities. People enjoy the service since they not only get a higher quality service but also because "it comes with a smile". There is only a limited pool of these type of workers, which inevitably means the supply side of the business gets eliminated at a certain scale.

I think there might be a place for these type of businesses, but perhaps not in the venture world.

<comment><USER34> Cofounder of thumbtack here. I think you misunderstand our business model. We don't hire anybody; we're just a marketplace. A request comes in, we connect it with qualified professionals, and then they bid directly on the job.

At no time have we gone out and hired "MBA students or aspiring actors" to fill our provider directory. From day one all of our providers were actually working in their industry prior to signing up with us.

Further, I would say that we don't have the same quality problem that Homejoy does. If you submit a request on our site, you'll get a choice between several providers at different price points and quality points. You choose the provider. Poor providers will get low ratings and will either have to lower their prices or exit the system.

<comment><USER33> Fair enough, thanks for clarifying. I'm having a hard time finding the article but I believe a FastCo/Wired/etc (one of those sites) did a longform article about how many of those type of workers (students, actors, etc) existed on Thumbtack, which was further backed up by someone who had interviewed with you. That was the basis for my conclusion.

Out of curiosity, given you're a marketplace how do you handle reoccurring work then? Or do you focus entirely on net new business?

<comment><USER34> Interesting. I haven't seen the article, but if it says what you say it does then I think they've got it wrong.

To be clear, I'm not saying that an MBA student or an aspiring artist can't decide to start a home cleaning business and sign up with our service.

I'm no longer with the company, but I will say that the entire time that I was there, at no point was our business model based on recruiting/training unexperienced people to fill our verticals. In fact, our biggest worry was getting enough high-quality experienced providers.

I'm not privy to future plans, but currently any recurring work is just an added benefit to our service providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Their HQ was a mess. If your business is cleaning then you should have cleaning in your blood and dream about pine sol when you sleep. I get the sense that the company was started for the sake of starting any company. In doing so they created a company without any vision.

Look further into the company and you see things like the founders saying working on Christmas Eve is ok. Presentations where they say luck is irrelevant and working hard and smart are the keys to success. That's some American Psycho sh*t.

<comment><USER36> The holy grail of success isn't working hard, vision, or values. The holy grail is understanding the competitive environment so well that you impose a sustainable competitive advantage that isn't easily copied and a strategy that executes like hell. This is why Musk, Jobs, Buffett were/are so successful. This is also why Uber is absolutely crushing any other competitor in the U.S.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> And the recode story ([http://recode.net/2015/07/17/cleaning-services-startup- homej...](http://recode.net/2015/07/17/cleaning-services-startup-homejoy- shuts-down-after-battling-worker-classification-lawsuits/)) which has a bit more clarity. Trying to fund raise a sharing economy business just after Uber gets a bad court decision on the employee/contractor question is hard. It is almost like having your company go back to being a 'seed round' level risk for some investors.

It also lends credibility to the 'not a bubble' discussions if stage C investors are showing restraint but that is a different discussion.

<comment><USER32> > It also lends credibility to the 'not a bubble' discussions if stage C > investors are showing restraint but that is a different discussion.

Yes, It's Not a Bubble(TM) if companies with significant and _obvious_ legal risk are only raising $30+ million Series Bs but not $100+ million Series Cs.

Oh wait[1][2].

Employment class action attorneys couldn't have designed companies more vulnerable to lawsuits if they tried. Some of these VCs should have just written checks directly to the class action attorneys.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/instacart- raised-220-million-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/instacart- raised-220-million-2015-1)

[2] [http://time.com/3748438/instacart- lawsuit/](http://time.com/3748438/instacart-lawsuit/)

<comment><USER38> I agree 100%. The VC should have put all the class action law firms in this area on a retainer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Homejoy customer here. For me, they succeeded in making home cleaning accessible to a guy in his early 30s who clicked a few buttons past a Facebook ad to schedule 2x/mo cleaning - a big stress reliever and quality of life improver. I never used a cleaning service prior to Homejoy.

Where they failed was in providing an adequate supply of cleaners (no one available for weeks on occasion) and last-minute cancellations without substitutes.

Never did a cleaner solicit me to hire direct, but I DO think Homejoy should leave their customers with a way to reach the cleaners I did like for rehiring. Why not, after all?

</comment><comment><USER40> There is a ton of analysis in this post about what went wrong. As someone who runs a service marketplace business, I know how hard it is scale this type of business (scaling quality, managing a remote workforce, supply churn, repeat usage and all the other things...). The founders had worked long and hard to succeed (knowing them first hand). They also happen to be incredibly nice people - always willing to help others. All the best to Adora & Aaron. I look forward to seeing what you launch next!

</comment><comment><USER41> For a house with 4 roommates, this service worked great as a solution to the "tragedy of the common [space]" problem. We've been using them for a year or more now and I'll be sad to see them go. I hope they follow through on putting people in touch with the actual cleaners.

<comment><USER42> How are you not in touch with the person who cleaned your house for a year?

<comment><USER41> (1) It was a different person every time, and (2) all booking is done online, with SMS interactions piped through Twilio.

<comment><USER43> Not necessarily for #1. After my first cleaning was good, I requested the same cleaner for all following appointments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I really loved the idea, and maybe I'm just being cheap, but no way I was going to pay $250+ a month to have my 1296 sq ft house cleaned. That's a $150/month value at market rates in my area. $100/month for a bit of convenience was not worth it at all to me.

<comment><USER45> I had the same experience. I signed up but, when it came time to actually make a reservation I did some comparison shopping and found many cheaper alternatives. I think Homejoy's main challenge is simply the vast pool of available labor out there, much of which is also bonded and insured, like Homejoy, and that is already quite accessible to customers. The added layer of technological ease that Homejoy brought to the table was welcome, but ultimately not worth too much monetarily. For me, the real barrier to hiring a home cleaning service is the awkwardness and trust problems of having a stranger cleaning my house. And the technological mediation that Homejoy and similar services provide actually heighten this feeling of alienation, if anything.

To make matters worse, I then got an almost comically confrontational phone call from a Homejoy rep demanding to know why I hadn't completed my booking. This is probably an isolated case (maybe the rep was just having a bad day?), but it certainly didn't make me feel like I was missing out on much--all the more so since this experience was so at odds with the rest of the Homejoy brand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> A lesson to take away here is that a startup which faces legal/regulatory threats to their existence has to be small enough to be ignored or huge enough to change the rules.

Uber is probably the first company you think of, with their absurdly large investment rounds, or maybe PayPal, but don't forget YouTube. They went from a little video portal with everyone else's stuff on it to a protectorate of one of the world's largest businesses so quickly the copyright holders had no chance to deprive it of existence.

The danger zone is in the middle. Homejoy didn't expect to be in this kind of trouble, but once they were, it made finding a huge round of funding both necessary and impossible. So this is the rational decision.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm surprised they didn't offer to transition/sell their customers to Handy... that's prolly mid-tens of dollars in lead-gen fees off an active customer list of... thousands of customers probably (as well as a less-active list prolly in the tens of thousands range)?

<comment><USER48> Yeah, cost of acquisition is a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is this the beginning of the end of the on-demand bubble?

<comment> why-el There is a qualitative difference between this and other on-demand services such as Uber in that you will never see the "here is my phone number" phenomenon in Uber.

<comment><USER49> Uber will be the eBay of this "bubble", which I think is limited to on demand startups but not startups as a whole. It'll be one of the few co's to survive, imo

<comment><USER36> I can see Postmates and Uber as the only eventual survivors in 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I once asked Adora why they are not a marketplace instead. She replied that the branding and bonded/insured cleaners would be more attractive to customers.

Obviously easy to say in retrospect what mattered in the end, but I'm wondering what is a method to test this kind of assumption?

I go by my own use case - I really only care about price, and I build trust by the person and not by the company. I prefer to stay home while it's being serviced as well.

<comment><USER51> I had the same thought about making it a marketplace, which of course means you have to provide value to both the buyers and the sellers. Some ideas on how you might do that: 1) allow cleaners to set their own prices / times / availability at short notice 2) have users give reviews -> encourages quality 3) provide the bonding / insurance as an optional service to the contractor, not the customer, but make clear on the listings who is and is not bonded / insured. 4) only have reviews from current customers be easily available (or maybe bad reviews live for ever, good reviews only show if from current customers ??), so there is an incentive to stay on the platform, as it represents your marketing channel 5) take a fixed, smaller percentage

It seems like there is a problem in the market when you have an overwhelming supply of people willing to clean, but low actual demand due to high price:value ratio. You can interpret the difference in price between the cheapest 'craigslist' cleaner and the professional cleaning service as the 'price of ignorance' regarding the honesty and quality of the cleaner. It seems that Homejoy was trying to control quality, and then claim that price premium for themselves (as does every other professional cleaning company), while pretending that their cleaners were contractors, not employees.

I think they might have been more successful if they tried to build tools that actually reduced that price premium, by making it easier for people to judge the quality of cleaners, in turn making it easier for the better cleaners to charge more, and driving the bad cleaners out of the market. You would expect the average quality/price to go up due to competition and better information, which would raise volumes, and you would still end up making money, just a smaller percentage of a much bigger market.

I recall the story about how Ms Cheung spent some period of time working as a cleaner, to learn about the cleaning business. I suspect she learnt a lot about the mechanics of cleaning a house, but not necessarily what it is like actually trying to survive for several months only on the income generated as a self-employed cleaner: I wonder if Homejoy's relationship with its' cleaners and its' business model might have been different if she had?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Problem A: good cleaners bypass your service, using you as a cheap referral service.

Problem B: paying cleaners as contractors is legally problematic.

The solution to _both_ those problems is the same: hire your cleaners as employees. Then you can prevent them from free-lancing on the side in a competitive business. In states where a non-compete isn't enforceable (like California), I believe that you can still enforce it while they are employed by you.

<comment><USER53> So, the solution is to be Merry Maids. Which is great (and, you know, exists already), but not exactly the kind of disruptive model that attracts VC money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think the key differentiator between successful "uber for X" companies and unsuccessful ones will end up being the customer experience in the industry each company attacks.

Before uber, getting a taxi _sucked_. Talked to anyone who traveled extensively before uber, and they'll have plenty of stories about cabbies who tried to rip them off.

AirBNB is having similar success because getting a hotel also sucked - it was often overpriced, and the quality of the room often sucked, and as a consumer you didn't really have any feedback into the system.

But home services? Most people I know are able to mine their personal network pretty easily to find good home cleaning and home repair services. Or at least, it's a lot easier for them to do that than not get ripped off by a taxi driver.

These companies won't win in every industry "just because". In order for these companies to be successful, they have to bring some improved experience to the table that customers simply won't be able to live without once they've tried it.

Sad to see things come to an end for the team, though. I hope they find great success in whatever they pursue next.

<comment><USER52> My experience is the opposite: finding a good cleaner is harder than finding a taxi or a good hotel.

Sure, you can ask all your friends for recommendations for cleaners, but the good ones are always fully booked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Posting with a throwaway to address a few realities:

1) I used Handy to book a cleaner for the first time -- I loved her, she did a great job, and I immediately cut out the platform and hired her directly. I felt a little bad about it, but not enough to not do it. Handy got a single transaction out of me, for what is now approaching a year of work. Transaction-fee marketplaces work best where there isn't a natural inclination towards an ongoing relationship (Uber, AirBnB, eBay).

For example, on AirBnB, I'm actively looking for a different adventure each time, so it's hard to cut out the platform. When I'm traveling on business, it's the exact opposite, I'm looking for a reliable, consistent experience with no surprises. That's why hotel chains try very hard to ensure a completely consistent experience between stays, and even between hotels -- so that I can book a Westin anywhere in the world and know that I will be getting the exact same bed: [https://www.westinstore.com/westin-heavenly- bed.aspx](https://www.westinstore.com/westin-heavenly-bed.aspx)

2) Homejoy is at a disadvantage because they cannot hire illegal immigrants, and cannot pay them under the table. Under-the-table payment, and illegal immigrants, are common in all cash service business, this is no exception (My cleaner is not an illegal immigrant, since she was able to work through Handy, but she always shows up with a different partner, and very few of her partners speak any English -- I suspect that at least some of them are not licensed to work legally). I also suspect that she does not report everything, or anything, on her taxes.

3) Home cleaning is a high-trust business and one where I'm likely to want the same cleaner each time. The marketplace is interested in sending me a different cleaner each time. The company's needs are in conflict with its customers needs.

</comment><comment><USER56> As a former customer (have not used in years), I actually felt uncomfortable with the cleaners. Not because of anything they did, but because you could just tell they were low income and being paid very little by Homejoy (I think less than $15/hr). It didn't feel right, and I stopped using them in part because of that.

<comment><USER57> You felt uncomfortable that they made less than $15/hr and solved that by making sure they never got any business from you again?

<comment><USER56> Not just that. Uncomfortable with Homejoy's relationship with the cleaners. From everything I read, including Glassdoor reviews from the cleaners it sounded toxic and demeaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Cofounder Adora Cheung is worth following. The story is a great example for founders. Check out her lecture at Sam Altman's startup class: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP176MBG9Tk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP176MBG9Tk)

<comment><USER30> This was a good talk but I can't help to think that she should have spent more time working on the business than doing these types of speaking engagements (because she had done quite a lot of them, not just this one).

Though the time spent doing these engagements and preparing, maybe that was worth it for the advertising? Not sure but they don't sit right with me.

<comment><USER59> One of the primary responsibilities of a CEO is building (and maintaining) relationships with external parties, such as prospective clients, partners, or even potential employees. Speaking engagements are a great way to do that because it gets you in front of such audiences _and_ helps you demonstrate authority, which builds trust.

So I'd say that she was simply doing her job.

<comment><USER36> She was involved in a lot more speaking engagements than any of her other on- demand counterparts though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Pretty interesting analysis around how the funding in the sharing economy is drying up after the "they are employees" decision by California.

<comment><USER61> I read it as: We had 3 years to exploit a loophole with $40MM in the bank and couldn't build a real business, so we're using California's law as a scapegoat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Having recently spent a bit of time finding a roofer, an all purpose handyman, a drywaller, a cleaner and a yard guy, I finally have a good personal team I can use. But my god it took a couple years to assemble them. And there were quite a few duds along the way. I went through 5 roofers just to get one small job done and finally had my handyman just go rent some ladders and do it.

It sounds like such a first world problem, but finding quality people and reasonable prices to do this stuff is such a pain. I didn't use homejoy to find these folks, I just worked my personal network until I got them, but I can definitely see a market for something like homejoy.

It's a really great idea and it's a shame it didn't work out.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have a hard time understanding this. The markup and demand is extremely high. Were they just overvalued so couldn't meet expectations?

<comment><USER63> If you believe the reviews on Glassdoor, internal management was a major problem:

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Homejoy- Reviews-E686596.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Homejoy- Reviews-E686596.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is the same company that posted the infamous Christmas Eve job opening ad to HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956)

</comment><comment><USER65> This one's interesting to me, because it seems like they had done all the right things, had a real product, and worked really hard (I think I remember Graham saying she worked as a cleaner part time during YC).

Without knowing any of the specifics, this seems to be a good correction of a couple threads of thought. Most notably, startups are not a science, and not every business that is technologically lagging will be drastically changed by a modern tech platform.

It really comes down to value. Seems so simple but I think the startup community would do well to incorporate the importance of creating value in their pedagogy.

</comment><comment><USER66> Looks like Google may have picked up some of the team: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9904483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9904483)

So not ALL that bad.

</comment><comment><USER67> _1\. Those who claim cleaning is not a "skilled job" should get off their keyboard, spend a day cleaning their moms house, and get back to me when they learn they are 3X slower than a pro and destroyed something with bleach-based spray._

Finally someone said it. Some moron posted ITT that 'no one is passionate about cleaning someone else's shit', which I find ironic as this website is populated by many people who clean up other people's shit _online_. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it seems to think the only job with subtle nuances is your own. Thus far in my life, I have done construction, plumbing, lawn care, film, 'fixing', security, and professional driving (not chauffeuring), and I always thought it cute how the pros in each of those vocations could go for hours about the skill and attention to detail required to be proffecient, then in the same breath speak of another vocation like it is simple. I think it is safe to assume that if someone is willing to pay for a service it probably requires some level of skill.

Full disclosure: in my "unskilled", workaday life I am constantly explaining the immense amount of time, effort, and skill required to make internet fix.

</comment><comment><USER68> When I hear about companies like this going under, I always think how odd it is that I've never previously heard about them.

Then I realize, that may have been part of the problem.

<comment><USER69> This is surprising to me. I'm INUNDATED with Homejoy ads all over the internet. I've never used them (which also might have been part of their problem). Perhaps you just live somewhere they don't provide service to yet? :)

<comment><USER68> I don't know.. Google confirms they covered my area. I really don't look for house cleaning services, so maybe I just didn't get targeted for ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I saw them on How to start a Startup. Was a good lecture. Sad to see they closing the doors.

</comment><comment><USER71> How can they raise $40m and fail so quickly? How did they burn through that much cash? I hope they actually explain why they failed so others can learn from it.

</comment><comment><USER72> I live in SF and the few times I used the service I was relatively happy. I certainly thought the cleaning was done better than Handy, but Handy got them beat in pricing. I also thought their UI was much friendlier than Handy. With Handy there is no way to terminate a recurring cleaning without contacting customer service.

In busy places like SF traffic and parking seem to me to be a major hinderance for services like Homejoy. Perhaps if they provided shuttle service of some kind for their cleaners it would solve that problem.

Also there is a lot of customization when it comes to cleaning vs Uber for example. With Uber you just go from point A to B, a pretty well defined problem. With cleaning services it's a bit more complicated, do you clean the light switches, door knobs, under the sofa (what if it's a 1 ton sofa?)... I think people have vastly different expectations to what it means to have someone clean your house. Sure, with Uber you care if they driver is not rude, plays your favorite music and doesn't drive like a lunatic, but there isn't a hundred others things that would significantly influence the experience, with Homejoy there is.

<comment><USER24> >I certainly thought the cleaning was done better than Handy, but Handy got them beat in pricing.

I've heard this a few times on this post. It is not remotely true in Seattle. I just checked, Handy is 20%+ more expensive. Weird

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I think the problem here is low quality and lack of adequate screening. This seems to be a problem with a lot of online businesses. In a different way it was a problem for PayPal when they started. They were overrun with fraud and had to find clever ways to control it. Anytime you interact with the general public, especially people with out a resume doing cheaply paid work and with the general public internationally you are going to have, among the quality people, a bunch of bad apples, people with mediocre talent and weirdos, disgruntled and otherwise. The value that a sharing economy online service adds is screening out all that and delivering high quality.

When moving into a new area it takes a while to figure out who the trusted providers are. Sometimes the top guy on Yelp is outrageously expensive and overbooked and you have to ask around the neighborhood. Then when you've found the right people you trust, you form a relationship and use them forever and they take care of your stuff. The problem is that once I find my trusted guy for X I just stick with him. Homejoy seemed to be turning that experience into a dice throw.

</comment><comment><USER74> Could they operate as small business and/or flip the company as a running small business? I imagine home cleaning is sort of loyalty space, where they must have a good number of regulars?

It's also interesting that they are managing a workforce of around a 1000 cleaners, and they burnt through $40 MM. That's the amount of seed Elon Musk needed for SpaceX.

<comment><USER75> I'm assuming they folded before burning $40m. IMO, it would be hard to go through that much money when you have (hundreds of?) thousands of customers and (should have) a decent profit margin. I'm more inclined to believe that HomeJoy was sold to investors as the beginning of a platform, and when it failed to hit traction, or growth potential seemed to stall, the investors decided to cut their losses and move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> "Unfortunately, we cannot process any refunds or credits at this time."

Ouch. What would cause them to not be able to offer refunds?

<comment><USER77> I reckon running out of money -- money which is also needed to employ those who process the refunds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Any type of business that based on being intermediary between buyer and seller run the risk of "losing" customers. This holds especially true with service business. I ran a nationwide lead generation service which basically matches POS/Payment processing companies with retail/restaurant business which was purely performance based. No initiation fee, no monthly fees to enroll with only 5% commission on the closed leads. And guess what; even if i sent the business tens of leads (averaging $7000 value with at least 40% profit) per month they resorted to either not pay or simply became incredibly sloppy on follow ups so i required to be in the loop. I may have not bring in any additional value to acquirer of the service, but for the service provider i was offering them a qualified business opportunity which they would not otherwise obtained.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like Google is hiring the Homejoy engineering team:

[https://recode.net/2015/07/17/google-hires-homejoys- technica...](https://recode.net/2015/07/17/google-hires-homejoys-technical- team-to-build-its-own-home-services-marketplace/)

<comment><USER18> Interesting considering Google Ventures was an investor in 2 rounds

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> They were also sued. [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/startup- workers-s...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/startup-workers-sue- to-be-recognized-as-employees-not-mere-contractors/)

</comment><comment><USER80> I tried using Homejoy multiple times but decided against it each time. The reasons varied from their cost, to not getting specific enough services, etc. I think they lacked in implementation, at least a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER81> I thought HomeJoy was an awesome idea at first, until I started reading about the experiences, and tribulations, of their ...contractors? Not even sure what to call them, other than hardworking people who, when you balance it all out, weren't making that much. I'm sure the CEO and her brother made a killing, but house cleaning is tough work, even for people who do it professionally every day, for a living. I think those people should be employees, they should be given job protections, and they should be treated (and paid) a lot better than they are.

</comment><comment><USER82> Rather than looking at it from a purely business perspective, I think that HomeJoy accomplished a lot in its tenure. It set an industry standard and a format that I'm sure will stick for a long time. It made huge strides in quality control and tackled a lot of the problems in the industry, if not completely solving them. You can only hope that Google keeps that spirit alive, and having met her, I have only amazing things from the impression that Adora Cheung left on me. I'm sure whatever she chooses to do next, she'll do it well.

</comment><comment><USER83> I can very confidently say that Handy is headed in the same direction Homejoy. Handy is facing a myriad of class action suits in Boston and is facing a number of legal battles with exempt and non-exempt employee suits. I've seen the cash burn in the space and it is very unfortunate senior leadership doesn't pay attention to it. It's all about making it look like hockey stick growth to investors. The cleaning professionals working on the platform are all very unhappy too.

</comment><comment><USER84> HomeJoy seemed OK, but I never seriously looked at them because I have always been so happy with ServiceMagic (now HomeAdvisor). When you have a solid competitor who has been in business since 1999, you need a strong differentiator. HomeJoy was/seemed more focused on cleaning, HomeAdvisor on repairs and improvements... but it always seemed to me that they were trying to re-invent a wheel that didn't need re-invention.

</comment><comment><USER85> I literally just had my place cleaned yesterday by HomeJoy. I have a small studio apartment in SF, and it cost $110 total. While it was expensive, the cleaner actually did a really great job, though it was a bit difficult communicating (she is Chineese, and not fluent in English).

I honestly never saw this coming, as I assumed HomeJoy was doing awesome. It will be interesting to see how Exec/Handy handle things moving forward.

The startup game is tough!

</comment><comment><USER86> I met someone who worked for homejoy and was stupidly compensated, before homejoy he had worked at groupon. Verbatim he said to me: "I never want to work at a company that is profitable."

I had horrible experiences with their service, and I believe that multiple factors contributed to this shutdown, but I can't shake that quote from someone being paid a quarter million dollars a year by homejoy.

</comment><comment><USER87> Benjamin Harrison said this circa 1890s:

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment will starve in the process.

My sincere question is - Why not just make them employees? It does increase the cost of the service from 20$ to 30$ an hour, I would still have the service but use it at half the frequency. But I will be glad knowing the cleaner is treated fairly.

<comment><USER88> Because if they were employees then it wouldn't be a "platform" and it would just be a maid service company with an app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> "I used Homejoy and I liked it's ease of use. But after the cleaning lady they sent me was done, she offered me her direct phone # and told me I could contact her directly for any future cleaning needs."

I used Airbnb and the host told me the same thing, he said book 3 nights and the other 20 pay me cash or transfer the amount to my account and avoid the Airbnb fee

</comment><comment><USER90> I actually just had my home cleaned yesterday through this service. I'll be sad to see it go =(

</comment><comment><USER91> As happy customers & friends of the company I'm sad to hear this news today. I wish everyone on the team all the best.

I'm curious to one day read a post mortem on the company, and especially about these last few months.

Our last appointment is scheduled for Monday.

Thank you Homejoy.

</comment><comment><USER92> what happened?

<comment><USER93> Many stories about their problems, but here's one: [http://fusion.net/story/142578/homejoy-uber-for-x- startups-m...](http://fusion.net/story/142578/homejoy-uber-for-x-startups-may- be-in-trouble/)

And maybe the main one: [http://recode.net/2015/07/17/cleaning-services- startup-homej...](http://recode.net/2015/07/17/cleaning-services-startup- homejoy-shuts-down-after-battling-worker-classification-lawsuits/)

<comment><USER94> If Homejoy cleaners were going to be classified as employees, entitled to minimum wage and subject to being verified as citizens or legal residents, then this seems like the right move. I can't see how they would ever be able to compete on price with all of the independent outfits out there that employ undocumented workers.

It's one thing to sell your services at a loss while you're growing. In the home-cleaning business, though, there will never be a shortage of undocumented immigrants willing to work for less than minimum wage, quite possibly at a higher quality level. There would be no way to ever raise prices to fully cover costs without immediately losing out to that competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> I'm surprised. I don't know much about Homejoy but I read once that it was the company in the YC portfolio that has the highest growth, so I thought they would become a unicorn at some point. What happened to them?

<comment><USER96> You can always spend dollars to buy quarters. It's very different to flip that and the folks at Homejoy couldn't. I believe the key problem is that you can't train a housecleaner and still treat them as a contractor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The service was getting increasingly terrible in my market. I am not surprised at all to see it go the way of the dinosaur. Too bad, this type of service has a lot of value to busy professionals and people with families.

<comment><USER53> > Too bad, this type of service has a lot of value to busy professionals and > people with families.

 _Housecleaning_ service has a lot of value to professionals and people with families, to be sure. But that service existed long before Homejoy, exists in more places than Homejoy ever served, and was served by plenty of providers not working through Homejoy even where Homejoy provided services.

I'm less convinced that Homejoy brought indispensable new value to the table for customers or cleaners.

<comment><USER24> I only started using housecleaning when Homejoy came around. The ease of use of the platform was a significant value-add. Also the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> I really REALLY wanted to use Homejoy -- but only for the folding/ironing of laundry. (I have three kids - so a house of five produces a lot of laundry)

$25/hour with a several hour minimum... Wow - no thanks...

</comment><comment><USER98> Sorry to hear this guys. Know you guys worked hard on this. Best of luck

</comment><comment><USER57> When I first heard of this company, I thought, "Too small a niche to grow-- they'll never survive". This is a service for a very limited market--rich people who don't already have a housekeeper and can't manage to keep their houses clean. Nobody I know socially would actually pay someone to clean their house for them.

Yet, so many customer testimonials here on HN. Are there really that many people so busy/well-off that they can't take a few minutes once a day or so to pick up after themselves and rather pay someone more than their mobile phone bill to do something so trivial? I guess I was wrong about the market size but damn...

</comment><comment><USER99> What was the added value over other smaller cleaning services?

</comment><comment><USER100> This serves as a strong counterpoint to the infamous "Dear Future Homejoy Engineer" HN job posting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956)

Working as a family on a holiday may not be enough to save a startup.

<comment><USER101> Not only that but apparently "this is not an overnight venture; we know it'll take a long time, and we're all committed to it." Appears to have been exactly a 204 day "commitment".

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." seems apt.

For job hunters, be alert and suspicious when hiring and marketing overlap.

Best of luck to the ex-HomeJoy engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> There are a lot of these types of on demand startups creeping up in Europe so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

</comment><comment><USER103> That's surprising considering how heavily marketed they were. I think everyone assumed that they were going to be a success.

</comment><comment><USER72> What is the urge to hijack scrolling so high? Is it because people who those developers work for have shitty mouse/trackpad?

</comment><comment><USER104> Crap... really liked this service.

</comment><comment><USER105> What? I had no clue this was comming. I'm surprised there wasn't more signs

</comment><comment><USER102> I also wonder what their exit strategy was supposed to be?

</comment><comment><USER106> best of luck to the founders on their next venture

</comment><comment><USER107> This really bums me out :( -- My girlfriend and I have been making use of homejoy a lot lately, and it has really been helping us keep up with the house.

</comment><comment><USER108> This is a pretty big company going under right, a billion + ?

<comment><USER58> They've raised $40M. I'd be surprised if they were valued at more than $400M when they raised the last $38M, but I don't think that was public. [http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/homejoy-38-m/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/homejoy-38-m/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Rough landing...

</comment><comment><USER93> No surprise there. Tone-deaf marketing and there was a horror story a few years ago about the culture.

<comment><USER110> Was this the company that posted their ad directly onto HN talking about how happy they were to be working on Christmas eve (or whatever holiday it was)?

<comment><USER111> Yes. Someone else linked it earlier in the comments, so here you go.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956)

<comment><USER112> From the post: "i wonder — how am i so fortunate to be the ceo of a startup where people are so driven?"

Wow, that woman sounds incredibly obnoxious. Talk about a humblebrag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> _We're determined to support you to keep your homes humming and business buzzing, so we will do our best to ensure partners and clients who want to continue to work together get a chance to do so independently of Homejoy._

Is this why they had to terminate their operations because clients and partners managed to cut them out of the loop and to do business independently of their platform?

</comment><comment><USER114> I remember listening to her talk way back when there was sam altman's startup video series.

I thought it was very cool that she worked with her brother. You don't see sister/brother as business partners usually. She was also a hard worker from the impression, reading quarterly statements to find 'gems'. Lot of doing this and that. It really sounded like they were doing great, she and her brother knew what they were doing. $39.7M in 5 Rounds from 15 Investors seem like a pretty good winner.

And then suddenly this. A shift in the industry or inability to be profitable and sustainable ( I don't know why homejoy failed). Cleaning houses to find out what home services would be like (lean startup approach) and YC branding (quit your job and lets go) with 5 rounds of funding and still did not emerge as a winner. In hindsight it looked like they were doing everything out of the YC/lean textbook without really forming their own ideas. It's probably comfortable this way.

It appeared like they did everything right and they probably were but it did not produce success from the investors point of view. I think what we can learn from this is that just because somebody or something looks like they are doing everything right or talk like they know what they are doing it may not be the case.

I wonder had they bootstrapped and operated as a small business catering to a focused market instead of trying to expanding to different markets with easy capital flowing to SV, they could have ended up with a cash flow positive and recurring source of income.

I wonder if the bubble is popping and the skewed flow of capital is forcing stakeholders to operate outside of their means or comfort zone and resulting in failure. It was valued at $130 million dollars apparently. Who else out there YC or not, have unsound valuation? Surely, there will be similar stories in the future.

[http://wpcurve.com/homejoy-adora-cheung/](http://wpcurve.com/homejoy-adora- cheung/)

Reading that article it is the same type of very logical and well rounded writing found on YC that shows expertise but then in this case it wasn't enough. What I observe to be interesting is that it mentions 'from failure to $XX million dollar in funding'. Perhaps raising a ton of money feels like success and that gives false confidence and incompatible strategies.

I find it really hard to swallow that it took 50 million dollars to figure that out where investing 150k in airbnb would've yielded immense return. Back to my original strategy of avoiding piling up positions on a single bet no matter how certain you are it's a winner and instead making numerous limited bets across large number of startups. Sell half of your equity to the guy investing $15 million dollar in the next series round in case it fails.

</comment><comment><USER115> I'm just so glad they didn't say it was an incredible journey.

<comment><USER116> Evidently we'll be exposed to the phrase either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> It looks like they have taken the Steve Miller Band approach [1] to users who are also creditors: [http://blog.homejoy.com/faqs/](http://blog.homejoy.com/faqs/) . Hope you didn't have a gift card!

[1] i.e., hoo hoo hoo, go on, take the money and run

</comment><comment><USER118> If your company cannot afford to stay in the black with real employees (as opposed to contractors), you need to re-evaluate your business model.

Edit: and the downvotes are rolling in! Would anyone who has downvoted this comment care to share why?

<comment><USER119> The labor force participation rate is at its lowest level in 40 years. When companies like Homejoy come in and make it easy for people to pick up gig work, they are making real and substantial contributions to human welfare.

<comment><USER118> That's a much more complex issue, which involves how many people simply give up trying to find work after six months or so, as well as companies replacing employees with automated robots and such. I would be much more in favor of Homejoy using contractors if they also allowed them to become a full time employee if they desired to, after meeting some requirement (like working there for 3 months).</comment></comment></comment>


Research Libraries Rebuff Offers from Google and Microsoft to Place Books on Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/technology/22library.html?ex=1350705600&en=675a42b83786f587&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> so paul buchheit leaves and they start being evil.</comment>


Amazon Execs Addressed Concerns About Rekognition/ICE at All-Hands Meeting - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/amazon-all-hands-facial-rekognition-ice <comment><USER3> I watched the all hands today. I just want to comment on the journalism here. For one, whoever this employee is that email buzz feed news is taken as representative to general feelings for all of Amazon employees which is ridiculous. Also the article makes this assertion "Though the company-wide Q&A was not meant to only address concerns about Amazon's facial recognition deals with law enforcement, it was a major topic on employees' minds.", which it has no data to back up. One question at the tail end of a 90 minute all hand does not make it a major topic.

<comment><USER4> News should only be taken with a grain of salt in 2018

<comment><USER5> More like, news from certain sources should be taken with a grain of salt.

There are plenty of good journalists with high reputation that you can certainly take more than a pinch of salt with.

<comment><USER6> Even reputations are hotly debated in this climate. I think a good habit is to read from as many sources as possible, including controversial ones, and making a private determination as to how to weight reporting.

<comment><USER7> There are enough sources supporting any worldview that there's a real risk that you'll just end up supporting whichever one you started with. I have no idea how you can do better though.

<comment><USER6> I struggle with confirmation bias, myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > we feel really great and really strongly about the value that Amazon > Rekognition is providing our customers of all sizes and all types of > industries in law enforcement

Translation: "We are making so much money that we have entirely sold our ethics and will continue doing whatever makes us more money."

<comment><USER9> I mean, yeah. Amazon's been doing that for a long time.

Back in the day, Amazon was very fond of repeating over and over that customer trust and customer loyalty was the very most important thing. Customers absolutely had to know that if they ordered something on Amazon, the right product would arrive on time. A data leak would be seen as an existential crisis. Shipping the wrong product was a customer service emergency.

Then Amazon found out how much money it could make from being a third party marketplace and mostly just giving up on quality control. Now nobody has nearly the confidence that the thing they're buying is a real thing. Is that USB-C cable gonna work with your phone? Who knows? Amazon doesn't. But they'll be happy to sell it to you.

Turns out that whole "customer first" thing was more of a temporary tactic more than it was any sort of moral grounding. It was a great tactic. It got Amazon to #1 from an era where nobody trusted eCommerce. But they dropped it once they didn't need it.

Remember, Amazon's the place that kicked a political organization off of their cloud with no notice because Senator Lieberman placed a quick phone call to Jeff Bezos and suggested it'd help him win GovCloud if he did.

<comment><USER10> This generalization is a bit over dramatic. Not everyone has problems just because hackernews has articles about mixed lots and other quality concerns. If it was as bad as you say they would not be pulling in the amount of revenue they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree with Andy. It's not up to the company to protect civil rights through limiting the use of their product -- that's the job of the government. If Amazon stopped allowing law enforcement to use their products, someone else would literally just resell their products, because there is no way you can enforce every use, and you've just kicked the can down the road.

If Amazon really wanted to take a stand on this, they would use their massive size and lobbying power to lobby the government to put in new rules and laws about the use of facial recognition technology.

Not only would that help everyone at once, but it would also protect their profit margins because then every company has to play by the same rules, thus allowing them to justify the expense to their shareholders. It's a win all around.

<comment><USER12> > It's not up to the company to protect civil rights through limiting the use > of their product -- that's the job of the government.

People and companies have a responsibility to behave ethically, whether the law specifies that or not.

<comment><USER13> Is there anything inherently unethical about facial recognition technology or does the concern lie in the potential for misuse and profiling by law enforcement?

AFAIK Rekognition just takes in a face and spits out an ID that you can use to identify an already known face. This doesn't seem inherently bad to me. Any misuse or profiling in this case is designed, managed, and implemented by law enforcement and the moral responsibility lies with those who create the policy, not a tool that they use to enforce it.

<comment><USER14> First off, I disagree. Any scientist should be aware of what they are building.

Second, they actively market to law enforcement.

<comment><USER15> So marketing to law enforcement is unethical? What about all the database vendors that sell to law enforcement -- Oracle, Microsoft, or Postgres? Can't you see the nuances in that?

Law enforcement is the tool designed by the society to maintain the law. That inevitably lead to conflict with civil rights and abuse of power. A healthy democracy needs to protect human rights while giving the law enforcement the tools they need to effectively do their job. Constitution, legal framework, and freedom of expression are essential.

<comment><USER14> > So marketing to law enforcement is unethical?

Yes. The police state is unethical and doing anything to further it is unethical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's bizarre how many people pick ICE as their hill to die on.

<comment><USER12> It shouldn't be that surprising given the family separation fiasco.

<comment><USER17> ICE != CPB

I'd expect people so fired up about this issue to at least understand the basic facts.

<comment><USER18> Both of them are under "Homeland Security", and their 'mission' often overlaps, sooo perhaps it's more accurate to say 'homeland security.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I for one think Andy's response is articulate and well explained. The technology does have a lot of potential to do good, and it seems that everyone is focusing on the bad side of it.

"Rekognition is actively been used to help stop human trafficking, to reunite missing kids with parents for educational applications, for security and multi-factor authentication to prevent theft."

Can it be used for evil? Yes. Should Amazon do its best to prevent it? Sure. But at the end of the day that is the responsibility of the government.

</comment><comment><USER20> Who's the marketing genius that chose to spell it with a "k"? That just screams authoritarian dystopia to me.

<comment><USER9> "Let's call it 'Cloud Vision.' Oh, shit, somebody took that? Fuck, that was my big idea. Okay, no worries, we'll call it 'Image Recognition.' What, IBM has it AND it's a generic term? 'Cloud Sight'? No? Shoot, the meeting is in 10 minutes. Let's just go with Recognition, but, like, make it different. eRecognition? No, recognitionly? No. Re:cognition, like thinking! Yeah, now we're cooking! Josh, we're naming it Re:cognition!"

10 minutes later, Josh gets his kerning wrong in PhotoShop, and Re:cognition becomes rekognition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't get why everyone is so riled about Amazon's service. At this stage, the tools to do it are widely available and have been simplified to the point that building a rudimentary facial recognition system is a novice programmer project.

It's too late to put this technology genie back in the bottle. Legislation would be our only salvation.

</comment><comment><USER22> > "I don't think Amazon leadership addressed the concerns brought up in the > question, and I don't think a Q&A session at an all-hands meeting is enough > or suitable for addressing the concerns appropriately," an Amazon employee, > who requested anonymity, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

The response given by Jassy during the all-hands meeting doesn't really answer the underlying question, which is "how are you going to stop this technology from being abused". It starts off with "oh, but look at all the good it can do; of course we can't just stop" and then just drops the issue and says "the ToS will fix it".

</comment><comment><USER23> I just searched for Rekognition and found it interesting that two days ago BI wrote this post:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-workers-confront- jeff...](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-workers-confront-jeff-bezos- facial-recognition-software-2018-11)

> ... preparing to confront Jeff Bezos

Sounds like that went quite swimmingly.

</comment><comment><USER24> > There is no way to hold leadership responsible in comparison to, say, a > letter or email from HR to all employees where a statement is written and > more concrete

Wouldn't the answer be to just leave your job? Don't support the company if you don't like what they are doing...

<comment><USER25> While I don't want to back up this terrible buzzfeed tabloid article, your argument holds absolutely no water. If the answer to all company injustices was to "just leave your job" why do we need any worker protections/wage regulations? In the real world many, many, many people don't have that option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > He added that he thought it was the government's responsibility to help > specify regulations around the technology.

That's true but it doesn't absolve them of responsibility. They are choosing their actions willingly, and with full knowledge of the potential consequences.

This sort of behavior is inexcusable. It's just wrong.

</comment><comment><USER26> What a non-issue. Snore...

</comment><comment><USER27> If the intersectionalists had it their way, they'd ban Amazon from selling any and all services to _all_ agencies and people whose politics they disagree with. They're yearning to stop serving Republicans and conservatives - <USER2> 50% of the population.

That's OK, just as long as these intersectionalists are the first to go when revenue declines from their extremist philosophy stops supporting Amazon jobs. I think they should take their activism to it's logical conclusion and start cannibalizing both revenues and operations with their manufactured outrage and activism - only then will this reach fever pitch and force management to openly call this group's hypocrisy out.

We really need center of the aisle, common sense to be popular again in this country

<comment><USER28> The logical conclusion of your arguments basically Fascism - putting profit above people, which isn't remotely close to common sense. Nor is labelling those who oppose locking children in cages as "extremists".

Shouldn't businesses be free to serve who they want to?

<comment><USER29> > The logical conclusion of your arguments basically Fascism - putting profit > above people

Fascism is about putting profit about people? I thought Fascism was commonly associated with National Socialism which doesn't sound very pro profits.

<comment><USER17> On the contrary the entire philosophy was built around the idea that every sector of society -- business, labor, churches, and so on should serve the end goals of state and more abstractly the nation/race. But today ignorant people use the term "fascism" to mean "something I don't like". It's a _shanda_.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MyTrades.io – rapid crypto-trading data - <AUTHOR> http://live.mytrades.io/?pair=BTC_CNY <comment><USER2> Are people doing HFT or some latency arbitrage on bitcoins?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure about HFT at bitcoin exchanges but there are definitely a lot of bots trading by arbitrage strategy.</comment></comment>


Reddit's IAMA is back as mods state they will no longer work with site admins - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3c0hcz/welcome_back/ <comment><USER2> One of the top posts there right now:

Ellen Pao Fired Reddit Employee Because He had Cancer "...Because of our discussion, you are too sick to properly fulfill your duties as Community Manager"

[https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3c0idl/i_am_dacvak_for...](https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3c0idl/i_am_dacvak_former_reddit_employee_and_leukemia/csr6avi)

Come on this is getting ridiculous...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious, for the subset of Redditors who visit HN: What is your ideal outcome for this whole debacle? How would you like Reddit changed?

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity, not fishing for the "omg fire ellen pao" people.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Better built-in mod tools. Right now, you have to use one or two extensions to effective moderate a subreddit (Reddit Enhancement Suite and "Toolbox").

2\. More transparency/communication. The main reason this all started was because the Admins didn't tell the /r/IAmA moderators about an important admin's firing. If they talked to the moderators more, then this whole issue could have been avoided/

3\. Listening to user requests. People have been complaining about changes to the search page that Reddit has been testing via /r/Beta, but Reddit implemented it anyway. This post would explain it better than I could: [https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3bvkf0/stop_throwing_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3bvkf0/stop_throwing_beer_cans_on_my_lawn_while_im)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody else read this as Reddit firing Victoria so they can monetize through kickbacks for AMA requests? I say that because that inability of the mods to verify that that isn't happening seems to be the kicker here.

<comment><USER6> Definitely looks like they're trying to monitize the AMAs and Victoria was against that

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe the Reddit strategy is to cut traffic to reduce costs. Makes at least as much sense as any other guess</comment>


The Battlefield After the Battle - <AUTHOR> https://acoup.blog/2019/10/18/collections-the-battlefield-after-the-battle/ <comment><USER2> >will either have been recovered by the victorious army or looted by the local population

This phrasing, with different terms for the army and the local population doing the exact same thing, reminds me of the famous Onion take on Hurricane Katrina:

>NEW ORLEANS—Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing AfricanAmericans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African- Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.

<comment><USER3> > This phrasing, with different terms for the army and the local population > doing the exact same thing

The victorious force does own captured movable state-owned equipment and are acting within the law when they take it and are not looting - rule 49 of customary international humanitarian law, which has ancient precedence and is reinforced implicitly in both the Hague Regulations, Geneva Conventions, and pretty much any state's own military laws.

The local population have no such right - that's what makes it looting when they do it.

<comment><USER4> > movable state-owned equipment

Since when are products in stores or the stores itself property of the state? Or personal property inside and outside houses?

<comment><USER3> > Since when are products in stores or the stores itself property of the > state? Or personal property inside and outside houses?

I don't think they are. Why do you think they would be? The laws of war specifically exclude personal property.

That paragraph in the article is referring to for example 'musket, sabre, bayonet or ammunition pouch' on the battlefield. They're state-owned and aren't personal property. (Well, historically an officer's equipment might be personal purchase but I don't think the law would interpret any fighting equipment as being legitimately a personal effect.)

<comment><USER4> I don't think that is a list of things they took, IMHO it's a list of notable things missing on the battlefield which should be next to the bodies but aren't. They probably took everything, not just these listed items, and they probably did not loot just these, but also stuff from houses, etc.

<comment><USER3> I don't really understand what you're trying to say. You're just making a wider point that some people do sometimes loot other things off the battlefield? Yes and that's illegal.

But the examples specifically given in the article from the battlefield aren't looting, and that's why the article doesn't say they're looting. But I won't keep arguing.

<comment><USER4> I am saying that the list is examples of notable things missing on the _battle_ field (thus missing weapons are interesting), not a list of things that they took most of the time, or notable things they took. They took everything of value, most of which was personal property, so speculating about the word looting or legality seems weird, because their actions were mostly not legal, not the other way around, and you can't really separate the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a few reasons that I won't get into, I grew up around Portuguese bullfights, which are fought on horseback. The bullfighting arenas are empty most of the year, and they actually naturally grow grass in the pit, but they usually clear the grass with tillers before bullfighting season starts. I've seen people ride in grassy pits before, practicing their bullfighting maneuvers, and it is actually pretty amazing how quickly the grass turns to mud. The key thing is the type of maneuvers they do. They start and stop alot, but they also do this thing in the middle of a charge where the horse alters its momentum sideways using its hind legs. After about 20 runs or so, the outer part of the ring is muddied, and after about 50 runs, the inside of the ring is muddied.

Also of note is soccer fields. Note where the most worn areas of the field are: the two areas where the goalies stand. The thing that the goalies do on the grass that the rest of the players do not: they jump, and most often laterally. Again, movements that change direction quite quickly.

I can understand why grass doesn't turn muddy on modern battlefields where guns are the primary weapons. But I wouldn't doubt for a second that a medieval battlefield would be a muddy mess. It may take a long time to get rid of the grass by marching or walking, but try fighting on it with horses while ground forces collectively stampede each other. Those aren't normal movements on the grass...they're going to dig in and uproot grass quite easily. And since guns aren't involved, physical proximity is closer, and therefore the impacts are more localized and intensified.

<comment><USER6> Did anyone ever get caught by surprise when training on grass and doing the actual bullfighting on the mud that remained after training and initial fights?

<comment><USER5> If you're a bullfighter that is at a level for public performance, I would imagine it being a little risky to have conditions changing on you. The people I saw were very entry level and we're riding slower and more deliberately, so they probably never got to a point where they had to worry about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd just like to throw in that as a wargamer for decades, and military history buff in general, this blog is absolutely worth every post.

The Gondor and Sparta collections that have been posted were both very illuminating and I look forward to browsing more posts for the sheer curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER8> This historian's blog is a massively geeky, fascinating time suck. Reminds me of filfre.net, which I also discovered through HN

</comment><comment><USER9> Unmentioned is the remarkable tendency of defeated but not wounded soldiers, for example after Waterloo, to group into large tight mounds when flight isn't easy. I would guess this would be less likely pregunpowder. There's at least one good book only about what the aftermath of Waterloo was like.

</comment><comment><USER10> I do like this blog, the series on Sparta was pretty great and was entertaining reading.

What I find a bit distracting though is the author's overuse of parentheses. For example:

> (Obviously, I don't mean just Flanders, but rather World War One generally, > but since I am writing in English, and we are generally thinking about > fiction produced in English (if not always by native English speakers), the > experience of the BEF in Flanders tends to dominate the memory of the war.)

It seems like every 1 in 3 paragraphs is parenthesised, and it unfortunately disrupts the overall flow of the post.

<comment><USER11> I kinda like it — reminds me of a class taught by an erudite professor who has to constantly reign himself in from following tangents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wasn't the problem in The Witcher 3 the necrophage infestation that prevented anyone from looting the corpses? That is why you were given the task of clearing them out. I remember spending far too long looting there on my play through.</comment>


O'Reilly closes its events business - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/LauraABaldwin/status/1242517013878071296 <comment><USER2> A sign of the times.</comment>


Eschewing Zshell for Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/eshell-fun.html <comment><USER2> One thing I _really_ like about Eshell is how you can make the whole buffer editable. Printed too many lines by accident? Just mark the whole region and do M-x delete-non-matching lines. Other fun things to do include using output redirection to insert text straight into buffers! One last cool thing is that Eshell comes with it's own little pseudo-devices like /dev/kill and /dev/clip, you can probably guess what they're for.

Although as awesome as it is, there are still some places where I have no choice but to use a real terminal. This is mostly curses-like interfaces and stuff.

I find it funny that the author omitted one of the biggest missing features in Eshell: input redirection, you just can't do it.

Here's further reading for anyone interested in Eshell, I think this is the most comprehensive little guide out there:

[http://www.masteringemacs.org/article/complete-guide- masteri...](http://www.masteringemacs.org/article/complete-guide-mastering- eshell)

<comment><USER3> I have tried to like it, but the lack of input redirection is just pathetic. Worse, rather than just calling a real shell when it detects attempted input redirection, it chastises you and refuses to do anything.

Plus, while Emacs' "M-x command" completion is great, Eshell was still about as good as mid-90s Bash the last time I tried it. And then there's the cost of learning yet another slightly-different shell syntax. While this could probably be done right, it hasn't been in the 10+ years of Eshell's existence, so I'm not holding my breath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have tried. And I can't. It's just too slow when working with tons of output (which is common in my work). (term-mode is no better.)

Emacs is one of my favourite tools on a computer. I love Lisp (even Elisp, which is getting closer to Common Lisp as time goes on) and I love the interaction, but Emacs is not good for serious terminal/shell work and it, sadly, is pretty annoying as a tiling "window" manager.

Maybe with multi-threading it will get better, but until then, I can't see a compelling reason to work exclusively in Eshell.

<comment><USER5> >Emacs is not good for serious terminal/shell work

I am interested in this aspect of Emacs (since there're very few things traditionally done by Emacs that Emacs is too slow at), but confused by your comment.

My first guess was that the tons of output take longer to get inserted into an Emacs buffer than they take to get inserted into the buffer of a good terminal-emulation application.

But surely you realize that multi-threading wouldn't help with that, hence my confusion.

Can you give an example of a program that produces too much output for Emacs to keep up with?

Does the program generating the tons of output do a lot of cursor addressing (like, e.g., the progress bar of homebrew or curl does)?

Have you tried shell mode as well as eshell mode?

<comment><USER6> I've run into similar issues. It seems to be the draw speed that is very slow. Each 80char line takes a good 10ms to render, which when working with a fast command that outputs a lot of text... The command will have been done for thirty seconds while eshell is still sputtering along showing output.

This is especially noticible with my on-modified-run-tests script - if there is a long stack trace, often times it's faster to kill the task and start it again rather than letting it finish.

<comment><USER7> If the output is getting parsed in some way then it can get _really_ slow. For example, automatic highlighting of matching-parenthesis is great 99% of the time, but can hang the process for several minutes on large outputs (eg. a MySQL dump of serialised PHP objects).

On a related note, the "clear" function at [http://www.khngai.com/emacs/eshell.php](http://www.khngai.com/emacs/eshell.php) can help speed things up when your buffer gets large; it's basically like "reset" in bash. The reason it's useful is that the shell prompts in an eshell buffer are marked as read-only, so trying to clear a region containing prompts will fail. I'm sure there are other workaround for this, but running a "clear" command is easy enough :)

<comment><USER6> Nah, no automatic highlighting or anything of that sort - just the raw, default, eshell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Eshell works, but it does not use term.el, and so has terminal compatibility problems with many utilities (the progress indication of curl or homebrew, for example). I have found it much more practical to stick with zsh, but use ansi- term or multi-term to launch the shell from inside Emacs windows. Performance in situations when the terminal wants to spit out a lot of output leaves much to be desired, but the convenience of staying inside Emacs outweighs the drawbacks.

<comment><USER9> Another option is to run Emacs as a daemon, and then "live inside" tmux while moving between terminal-mode emacsclient , zsh/bash, etc. running in tmux sessions, windows and panes.

My personal workflow moved that direction about a year ago and I've never looked back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've tried living in eshell but zsch auto complete is just too damn good. Is there really good auto completion for eshell?

<comment><USER11> I seem to be getting some good completions for files just from Company-mode. I typed "/us" and got a list including /usr/, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, etc.

Also, tab-completion seems somewhat good. I typed /u and TABbed, and got /usr/.

/usr/bin/l _v_ gives me /usr/bin/leave on first TAB, then cycles through /usr/bin/llvm-g++, etc. on subsequent tabs.

Globbing: ls __/ *.js did what you'd want within a directory whose subdirectories contain a lot of .js files.

It looks like someone added completions for git (and bzr, hg, if you care): [http://tsdh.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/eshell-completion- for-g...](http://tsdh.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/eshell-completion-for-git-bzr- and-hg/) Works pretty well.

I wonder if there's a way to provide a bridge with zsh's completions, such that if you have completions for zsh, you have them for eshell.

<comment><USER12> I have all kinds of extended globbing turned on in my ~/.zshrc like so:

        #Superglobs
        setopt extendedglob
        unsetopt caseglob

I haven't used eshell, and I see no need to with zsh. This lets me glob 'ls */.txt', etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, please! Not another one!.....</comment>