Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Venture Capital: "On-Demand Cleaning Service Handybook Raises $30 Million"

I'm probably missing something because I don't usually think of the cleaning biz as an impulse buy.
From recode:
Handybook, which helps people book home services — primarily cleaning — has raised $30 million led by Steve Case’s Revolution Growth.

The New York City-based company currently operates in 26 cities. “We’re changing how people buy local services,” said co-founder and Oisin Hanrahan. “We’re trying to get as local as possible as matching service pros — eventually that’s how this game is won.”

There was a meeting of minds with Revolution, whose team led AOL back in the day. “AOL won the game because they got more local phone numbers than anyone else,” Hanrahan explained.

Today, living in a on-demand and smartphone-driven world, most bookings on Handybook are for cleanings 24 to 48 hours in advance. Service providers can accept jobs directly using Handybook-provided phones. “It’s like an ATM in your pocket,” Hanrahan said.

The co-founders of Handybook, whose big parallel competitor is the San Francisco-based startup Homejoy, say they’ve learned from Uber the lesson of building a well-known brand....MORE
Mr. Case was a co-founder of AOL who was able to bag Time-Warner with the property, so he does have some success in his background.

I recall reading that Andre Agassi was into crystal meth and apartment-cleaning binges so there may be either a target market in the meth-head community.