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Home-cleaning startup Handy wasted no time recruiting cleaners in the wake of the demise of competitor Homejoy. It is offering $1,000 signing bonuses to Homejoy cleaning professionals who register now for Handy. The reward offer will last through the end of September.
“With the recent news of Homejoy’s closure, we commend Adora, Aaron and team on what they built,” a Handy spokesperson told Re/code. “We hope that Homejoy professionals take us up on [this] opportunity.”
Bonuses are a popular tool in the on-demand and gig economy wars, so Handy’s move isn’t surprising. Uber and Lyft pioneered the method in their attempts to poach drivers from each other.
It’s tough to generate enough supply to meet demand in the home services marketplace; Handy was in talks to acquire Homejoy in part so it could onboard Homejoy’s cleaners. Handy has bought smaller companies before for this purpose, snapping up Exec, Mopp and Unsully to help it grow quickly. Homejoy was next up to bat, but the talks deteriorated recently; both companies declined to say why.
Although Handy grew faster than Homejoy and was able to raise more funding for its business, it faces its own operational challenges. A former employee told Re/code that the company’s high burn rate and lack of worker and customer retention were cause for concern. That said, with over one million bookings completed and over 10,000 professionals (compared to Homejoy’s 1,000), Handy was able to raise another $15 million in funding in March from private equity firm TPG to continue growing.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
