You never get the same taxi driver. Uber hosts a transactional market.
But a handyman is a hiring decision not a transaction.
All the good marketplaces from Ebay to Amazon to Uber seem to help you do what retailers have always done — see good quality options, pick the one you want today, get it done conveniently, with a good price, with some service if things go wrong.
The ones like Taskrabbit and Handy seem to fundamentally suffer from helping you hire someone and trying to take a cut repeatedly.
“However, the other core problem revolves around perpetual platform leakage. That is, these platforms are all adding a ton of value making that initial introduction between client and pro in high-quality ways.” (-A post reflecting on the failure of Homejoy)
Even the Wework office space approach – it’s a desk you keep, but the flexibility to move or grow or shrink is the reason you don’t want an old-school lease.