Adora Cheung Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015

Homejoy Growth Metrics and Timeline

• Launched from zero to 30 markets in under six months.
• Scaled headcount from zero to 200 employees in approximately one year.
• Expanded operations to five global offices.
• Has served hundreds of thousands of homes over 2.5 years of operation.

Three Prerequisites for Scaling (Order of Operations)

• Product-Market Fit: Validation that the product solves a genuine need; Homejoy addressed the opaque booking process for customers and the inability of independent cleaners to scale their businesses.
• Market Opportunity: The home services market represents a potential opportunity in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
• Timing: Three specific trends validate the current timing:
  • Universal internet access facilitating the shift of offline behaviors online.
  • Increased consumer willingness to outsource tasks for convenience (trading time for money).
  • Growth of the freelance economy and flexible work arrangements.

Scaling Product: Growth Strategies

• Sticky Growth: Focus on retention and recurring revenue by ensuring a high-quality user experience that drives activity.
• Viral Growth: Leverage word-of-mouth acquisition; Homejoy utilizes referral programs (e.g., $10 incentives) to generate organic growth without paid acquisition costs.
• Paid Growth: Use with extreme caution; purchasing users via ads or sales teams risks bankruptcy if the payback period exceeds the lifetime value of the customer (e.g., spending $100 to acquire a user generating only $19).

Scaling Product: Tools and Automation

• Automation Principle: Humans should be reserved for complex tasks; repetitive, mindless tasks must be automated or outsourced.
• Third-Party Tools: Avoid building custom infrastructure unless strictly necessary; Homejoy previously failed by building a proprietary phone system which generated more support tickets than actual customer calls before switching to specialized third-party tools.
• Founder Product Oversight: Even as CEOs scale, they must maintain personal obsession with the product quality; the speaker dedicates 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM daily to reviewing metrics and reading every customer and service provider review.

Scaling Organization: Recruitment and Team Building

• A-Plus Players: Founders must be obsessive about recruiting, treating candidates as customers to ensure a superior candidate experience.
• Founder Involvement: Founders must physically invest time in recruiting (e.g., traveling to a candidate's hometown for dinner) to demonstrate commitment and sell the vision.
• Communication Evolution: Communication protocols must be reinvented at every stage of growth (e.g., moving from weekly all-hands meetings to internal tools for asynchronous announcements when scaling to global offices with time zone differences).

Scaling Organization: Mission and Core Values

• Mission Alignment: Every employee must know the mission verbatim to ensure decision-making is unified.
• Unique Core Values: Values should be specific and operational rather than generic; Homejoy's six values include:
  • No job is above any other: Enforced by requiring all new hires to perform cleaning duties to understand the product and respect all roles.
  • Temporary brokenness is better than permanent paralysis: Prioritizes speed and decision-making over debate, accepting failure to iterate quickly.
  • Risk local maxima to achieve global maxima: Encourages bold, high-risk decisions for exponential growth (50-200% improvements) rather than marginal 1-2% iterations.

Scaling Organization: Managing People

• Coaching Requirement: Founders must prioritize managing team growth and career development despite competing product demands.
• Underperformance Handling: Addressing misaligned employees early through continuous coaching to ensure termination decisions are evolved rather than sudden, even for friends or early contributors.

Scaling Yourself: Founder Management

• Support Systems: Founders must build a network of 2-3 other CEOs for advice to normalize challenges and avoid isolation.
• Stress Management: Adopt a mindset that two bad events will happen daily; acknowledging this reduces stress and prevents emotional reactivity.
• Time Protection: CEOs must enforce "no meeting" blocks (e.g., 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM) to secure time for strategic thinking and problem-solving.

Closing Metaphor and Perspective

• Scaling a startup is compared to an awkward race where a founder drives a junkyard car at 200 mph, fixing and replacing parts mid-flight to arrive at the finish line with a Tesla.
• Despite the daunting nature of the journey and constant battles, the process is characterized as a fun and impactful opportunity to build careers and realize a vision.