How HUX is helping people approach and hire Housecleaning Services- Startup Story #20

Housecleaning is tough work – you don’t want to do it and neither does your family. Finding a good housecleaner isn’t any easier – a chore in itself. As many freelancers and micro-business owners experience, marketing and outreach to clients are challenging, mostly relying on word-of-mouth.

James Loper and Stanley Vergilis wanted to bridge the gap between customers finding a quality house cleaner and Housecleaners who wanted to increase their client base – thus, Hux was created. Through the Hux website, customers can easily schedule a quality housekeeper who has been reviewed and rated by the Hux customer base.

We spoke to James and Stanley to get a more in-depth look on Hux:

Q1.Tell us a little about Hux and your personal motivation for starting this business?

James Loper and I started Hux because we were unhappy with local service providers. I tutored high school students and James was a phone/computer repair technician. We found it extremely painful to manage our micro-business and it was even more painful for new customers to find and book us. We talked at length about a marketplace that would make it easier for customers to connect with local service providers. After a particularly passionate conversation at Taco Bell, we shook hands, dropped out of college, and started building Hux.

Q2.Can you give us a rundown of how Hux works?

Let’s say you want to book a house cleaner. First, you enter your zip code and a few details about your home on our website. Hux then shows you a selection of vetted house cleaners in your area with the total price for your job, reviews from previous Hux customers, an aggregate rating, and a live schedule. Choose a provider and time, enter your payment info and you’re immediately confirmed. There’s no back and forth communication and the Hux provider will arrive at the time you choose. You are only charged after your service is completed. We are currently focused on house cleaning with ambitions to expand into a wide variety of services soon.

Q3.Who are your key stakeholders and how are you offering them value?

As a two-sided marketplace, we cater to our customers and providers. Customers love Hux because it’s convenient, affordable and they get to choose their service provider. Because providers compete for your business, Hux customers enjoy high and consistent quality. Providers love Hux because they have full control over their micro-business. Hux providers set their own hours, choose their own rates and select which areas they serve. We take care of everything for our providers so they can focus on delivering high-quality service.

Q4.What is Hux’s biggest achievement to date? How did you go about accomplishing this?

We’ve grown to a million-dollar run rate on a $20K investment in just over a year.

Q5.Could you shed some light on the technology and tools used to build Hux?

Hux is coded in vanilla javascript and PHP on an Apache server. It’s designed and built by our two developers. We are outgrowing our current product and transitioning to Meteor with MongoDB.

Q6.What was technically the most challenging part of developing Hux?

Almost every feature on Hux affects both the customer and provider in the real world. If we’re not careful, a provider could end up at the wrong customer’s house for an appointment or not have enough time at a job. Thankfully we haven’t had major problems yet. The real-world impact of our features requires that we are extra careful when we deploy new features.

Q7. There are definitely a lot of companies similar to Hux floating around right now. What are you doing that differentiates you?

We are an “end-to-end” marketplace. This means two things 1. you can choose your provider 2. you can instantly reserve an appointment with no back and forth communication. Additionally, providers have full control over their micro-business: they set their own prices, schedule, area served, and the types of jobs that they want to take. As a public-facing marketplace, Hux providers enjoy recognition for their work and more business if they deliver high-quality service. Our model promotes competition and encourages quality service. We know it works because Hux currently has 5 stars on Yelp.

Q8. Where do you see Hux in five years?

Expect Hux to be available across the United States with a wide variety of services.

Q9.If you had a chance to go back, what would you want to do differently?

When we started we had ambitions to tackle a wide variety of services simultaneously but quickly discovered that focusing on a single service ensured that we deliver a high-quality service. After we master one service, we’ll move on to the next.

For more information about Hux, please visit their website: www.hux.com

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