Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

I'm one of the founders of Homejoy. I'm still very passionate about the home service space. After leaving Homejoy, I started FlyMaids, where we're exploring a few different angles on the space.

We recently acquired the customer and service provider data from Homejoy.

We're a small team that has been focused on moving quickly while bootstraping. We tried to quickly test different approaches, but we realize now that we did so in an unclear manner. We recognize the need to use the data we acquired responsibily. As a result, we're taking the site down, and we're going to do a better job with our testing moving forward.

In my experience, life is easier when you admit your mistakes without business speak, and just take the blame (for example: "I" instead of "We"). I've written a lot of mea culpas for mistakes which impacted customers, and the more direct and transparent I was, the better responses I always got.

You made a mistake, you know you made a mistake. Admit it, apologize, and move on. Your excuses or context probably aren't going to help your cause.

When that mistake might be very costly litigation-wise, and anything you say/do might be brought up in court, it's time to break out the business speak and obfuscate like there is no tomorrow.