YC
Adora Cheung Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015
@ Y Combinator
02/24/15
Takeaways
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Homejoy connects people with home service professionals in the easiest and most convenient manner.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
In just two and a half years, Homejoy launched in 30 markets and grew to 200 employees, establishing five offices worldwide.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
You don't need to scale anything until you find product-market fit, which means confirming that people actually want the product or service you've built.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
The opportunity in home services is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and you must believe in the potential of your startup's market.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Timing is crucial; you need to assess if it's the right time to build your business based on current trends.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Three trends make it the perfect time to build a home service platform: pervasive technology, increasing comfort with outsourcing, and the rise of the freelance economy.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
To grow your startup, focus on three types of growth: sticky growth, viral growth, and paid growth.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Sticky growth means creating a product that users want to return to repeatedly, driving both activity and revenue.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Viral growth occurs when users have such a great experience that they recommend your service to others, leading to organic growth without additional costs.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Be cautious with paid growth, as it can be risky; if you pay for users who don't generate enough revenue, you could run out of money.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
If you pay $100 for a user who only brings in $19 over a few years, your startup could face bankruptcy due to unsustainable costs.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
As you scale your product, it's essential to build tools and automate repetitive tasks to improve efficiency, allowing humans to focus on complex tasks instead.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
At Homejoy, we learned the hard way that building our own phone system was a mistake, as it led to more complaints than actual customer calls. Instead, using specialized third-party tools improved our customer service experience significantly.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
As a CEO, even though you may be pulled in many directions, maintaining an obsessive focus on your product is crucial because you have the vision and are best equipped to make significant decisions.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
I dedicate the first couple of hours each day to reviewing metrics, revenue numbers, and customer feedback to identify areas for improvement and guide my team effectively.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
As a founder, you must recognize that you can't do everything yourself. It's vital to build a team of A+ players who can specialize in different areas of the business.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Treat recruiting like a product, where candidates are your customers. Be actively involved in the process to show your commitment to potential hires.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
It's important to communicate your company's mission and core values clearly, as everyone should know them by heart to ensure alignment in decision-making.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Core values should be unique to your company and serve as a hiring framework, guiding the recruitment process when you can no longer interview every candidate personally. At Homejoy, nobody is above any job, which means I seek people who respect others regardless of their roles, from contractors to engineers.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Every employee at Homejoy must clean a home in their first few weeks to understand the product and embody our core value of respect for all roles.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Temporary brokenness is preferable to permanent paralysis; in a startup, we need to make fast decisions, learn from mistakes, and move forward quickly.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
To achieve significant growth, we must take risks and make bold decisions rather than just seeking small incremental improvements.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
As a founder, managing people is essential, even if it feels less exciting than working on the product; you can't build a company alone.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
It's crucial to create a support system as a CEO to avoid feeling isolated and to gain perspective on common challenges faced by leaders.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Expect that on any given day, two bad things and two good things will happen; it's important to manage stress and maintain perspective.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
As you grow, protect your time by setting boundaries for meetings, allowing yourself space to think and address business challenges effectively.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Scaling a startup is like racing with a junkyard car that you must fix and upgrade while driving at high speed; it's a challenging but rewarding journey.
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Adora Cheung
02/24/15
@ Y Combinator
Building and running a startup is a long and daunting journey, but it can be enjoyable as you create memories and make a significant impact.