On-demand smartphone technology has altered the way consumers book everything from cars to hotels. A spate of technologically-savvy companies now wants to use those same methods to transform the way we clean.
Adora Cheung and her brother, Aaron, used to spend marathon coding sessions in Aaron's San Francisco apartment, frantically working to build the next hot start-up. Finally, one day Adora looked around her - and realised the place was a disaster.
"We were basically coding 24/7 and his place just became a mess - I mean, he's a bachelor," she says with a laugh.
Unwilling to sacrifice precious work time to vacuum his floors, the two set about trying to find a cleaner - a process that they very quickly discovered was harder than it seemed.
"The cleaners would never answer the phone or the quotes would be really high - and then once we did find cleaners, it was hard to schedule," she says.
So the siblings started Homejoy in July 2012. It's a simple website that looks to better connect cleaners with customers, and to streamline the logistics of finding, vetting, pricing, and scheduling a home-cleaning.
