On-Demand Cleaning Company Homejoy Bites The Dust

The struggling on-demand home services startup announced it will shut down July 31 after failing to secure additional funding.

Homejoy founders Adora and Aaron Cheung

Homejoy

Homejoy — an on-demand home cleaning startup — announced today that it will shut down at the end of the month. Homejoy CEO Adora Cheung told Re/code that the company had failed to secure the additional funding it needed to continue operations, and attributed that to recent lawsuits that sought to reclassify its contract workers as employees.

When it launched three years ago, Homejoy was one of the first on-demand startups to enter the home services space. It operated in 35 cities in the US, Canada, UK, Germany and France, according to its farewell blog post. But it faced touch competition from similar services like Handy and, more recently, from tech giants like Amazon, in addition to a wave of lawsuits over the classification of on-demand workers.

Closing shop puts an end to rumors that the company was to be acquired. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in late May that the company was up for sale, and had been operating at significant losses. In addition, reporting by TechCrunch suggested that Handy was interested in buying the company.

Homejoy will formally cease operations on July 31.

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