

Exec (YC W12) launches cleaning service in 4 new markets around the U.S. - justin
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/13/exec-cleaning-service-expansion-pack/

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alttab
I fail to see the draw here, maybe someone can explain it to me. Generally,
Exec is building a match making and scheduling service. They are taking
cleaners/maids (which it sounds like they dont employ directly?) and matching
them up with people who want to clean your house. Its like craigslist
personals for maid services, with a fee off the top to wet Exec's beak.

First off, a clean apartment at the end of the day is a clean apartment.
Meaning, they can't really charge more than the rest of the maid industry. So
that sets an upper bound on price.

Then, maids aren't going to work for dogshit simply because the appointment
was made online - so theres a lower bound to what you can pay a good maid.

The software supposedly automates the match making, scheduling, and
coordinating (billing, etc), which really just helps increase the margins on
what is otherwise a national cleaning service.

Now, it seems like the Exec execs and investors believe that "once they have
it figured out" they can essentially add a city for free with minimal
additional capital expense and almost no operational expense. Yay! Sounds like
we have a national brand with crazy margins! If we just get 1% of the maid
industry we will be set!

Problem is, those "margins" only pay off if you get the business. Unless the
maids do a better job, or dance for you, there's a good chance if you have a
maid service already scheduled there's little incentive to take the risk to
try a new service. For Exec, if the cleaning service is the same (the
innovation doesn't seem to be advertised as the cleaning aspect of the
service) the only other value proposition for the business is ease of
scheduling a cleaning visit (anyone can build a "reserve now!" function on
their maid service company website), or price. Considering the first anyone
can do, the second starts to eat into those investor-attracting margins.

The only way to not budge on the margins is to build a brand, which takes a
lot of money. Who cares if your margins are 20% higher than industry average
when you are burning all that money into acquiring customers?

Unless the business has a clear acquisition strategy, I can't see this
business being competitive in enough ways that matter to the customer for
their "technology" to be worth the headlines. Right now, it looks like their
value prop is the automation of making a cleaning appointment. Unless that
appointment can be made 10 minutes in advance and done perfectly by robots I
don't see the competitive advantage. Maybe they have IP that is worth
licensing to any maid service that would want to lower the operational
expenses of managing a fleet of cleaning teams and inbound requests. That
said, I can't envision a novel solution to this "problem" that is worth
protecting with IP that another team couldn't solve differently.

To me, Exec seems like a fancy cleaning service that touts online reservations
in a market already defined by what people are willing to pay for service and
what price maids are willing to accept for their work. Since they don't
control their margins, any race to the bottom on price better be made up with
Amazon-scale sales volume. Which gets us to the crux of the point - I'm not
sure that maid service logistics is the same type of problem as ordering goods
ala Amazon. You can't build a business by pretending you can order maids
online like you can a DVD.

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jamiequint
> "Unless that appointment can be made 10 minutes in advance and done
> perfectly by robots I don't see the competitive advantage."

Have you recently tried to book cleaning? I had to do it for my place in
Brooklyn and it probably took a couple hours of research plus multiple phone
calls to book times. There is a lot to be said for taking something this
annoying and making it easy.

Look at Stripe for example. They didn't revolutionize anything about how
payments work, they just took an extremely painful and annoying process and
made it easy.

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alttab
Exec makes scheduling an appointment easy. The problem you've described sounds
more like "trying to find the right service."

The only way Exec would solve the problem you describe is if it tapped into
all local maid service's schedules and helped fill in un-scheduled times at
pre-approved services. This makes sense, as its classic "middleman" American
entrepreneurial spirit. OTOH, I can't imagine cleaning-service agency is a big
enough problem to automate, but maybe it is. Either way, it sounds like Exec
is hiring their own cleaning teams or I'd imagine they'd have larger local
coverage areas (per other people's comments on this thread).

With Exec positioning themselves as "a super easy cleaning service", they make
the "hours of research" harder, not easier. So really, they are only saving
you 10 minutes on the phone call.

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timjahn
Says they include Chicago but apparently that means downtown only, as they
claim they have nothing for my zip and I'm on the northwest side.

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loganfrederick
To provide anecdotal support, I live on the northwest side of Chicago (Zip:
60647) and they did have results. Not a lot, but some opening dates for the
next few weeks.

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timjahn
Ah, that's comforting. So many times these types of services launch in X city
and really, they mean just the 10 square blocks of downtown in X city.

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bradleyjg
They say NYC, but they don't cover my zip code in Queens.

Manhattan south of 96th street + trendy Brooklyn != New York City

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timjahn
Same with Chicago. I live a whopping 12 miles from the center of downtown, IN
the city of Chicago, and they told me they don't have people out "that far"
yet.

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superchink
In Los Angeles, their rate is right about 200% of what I pay today to clean a
2 bed/2 bath. I'd really want to try this, but it's tough to justify THAT much
of an increase.

Edit: Maybe that's why there is a 200% guarantee? Oh, and I notice there are
two people, not one, but ultimately if the end product is the same…?

