It also solved a problem that's more or less already solved. Uber is great because finding a taxi can be hard, and finding a good taxi can be really hard. Finding somebody to clean your house is really easy. I must get half a dozen flyers a week for cleaning services stuck on my door. If I don't trust that, I can just ask my neighbors for a recommendation.
> Finding somebody to clean your house is really easy.
Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy, sure, but finding someone who's 1) consistent 2) always on-time and 3) not $100/hr is next to impossible.
Perhaps in a large metro it's easier, but I've had basically no luck in suburban silicon valley.
The Silicon Vallex is in a large metro. It's still pretty dense and you have 8 million people around. I don't think the experience would be different in Oakland, Fremont, San Francisco...
"Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy"
Back in the day I had a cleaning service that I trusted and used regularly put a wet rag on top of a CSU/DSU [1]. Not something that I ever thought could happen. Ironically the spare CSU/DSU was sitting right next to that. (Cold and ready to be put in service if the main one failed.) There were of course vents on the top. That's where the rag went. And I was near the equipment at the time (I would never let a cleaning service in where there was sensitive equipment without being onsite).
Finding a taxi in a big city is very easy and has always been very easy. I don't use Uber because they charge $10 for a car seat and I've never waited more than 10 minutes for car when I just call. When my company needed to send people 30 miles round trip every day for 2 weeks, a car service will give you a deal, Uber won't. Uber also has virtually no competitive advantage over Lyft. I think that all this startup analysis is giving way too little credit to the benefits of being lucky.
