Nearly every day brings another article on lawsuits against Uber or “Uber for X” companies on whether or not their business practices fit into one of our country’s two labor classifications (i.e., W2 vs 1099) which were never designed for such technologies and approaches. Just earlier today, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Uber and Lyft drivers will need to obtain a business license to drive in San Fransisco.

Referring to this on-demand economy, US Labor Secretary Tom Perez said a few months ago that “Our current law provides a useful framework for understanding the rights and responsibilities of workers…

There are millions of blogs on culture; this is not a general post on the broader topic. This post is about my personal experiences that shape my perspective on the culture we’re working to build at Super, embodied in three words: intelligent, respectful, and curious.

1) TRILOGY’S MANTRA: “OTB” (ONLY THE BEST)

I started my career at Trilogy. If you were on campus at a top university during the Internet bubble, you probably know Trilogy. Founded by a Stanford dropout, the business recruited an amazing set of people. FounderDating recently ranked Trilogy the second most entrepreneurial community, above Google, Facebook, and Paypal. There have been over $4…

Everyone knows how competitive it is to recruit in Silicon Valley. After we closed seed funding, recruiting felt like a daunting task. How could we compete against all the established players with longer track records and bigger wallets? And then add to that the pressure to keep a high bar and find only the best candidates? Even more daunting.

A year later, we’ve never lost a candidate to a competitive bid.

No, we don’t overpay in cash or equity. Our investors gave us advice for market rates; we kept strictly within those guidelines.

No, we aren’t the first or only…

$600 billion. That’s the size of the US home services sector. Coming from ad tech — with a US market size of $60 billion and 1800 companies fighting for those marketing dollars — I was amazed by how few technology companies in home services there were.

As a first-time home owner and long-time renter, and just realizing the pains of home ownership, I gleefully jumped into the home services sector for my next business, seeing all the consumer pain first-hand. That’s the story for a lot of entrepreneurs who got into the space. …

A few years ago, if you were a mixed martial arts fan, you might have been watching a tournament on a major cable television network. This particular broadcast featured the World Welterweight Championship, and as part of the undercard, they hosted the amateur regional finals, presumably with competitors aspiring to headline in the future. More than 10,000 people attended ringside, with another half a million watching from home.

One of the lightweight competitors that evening won in two rounds with an arm-triangle choke. He was paid $3,000. Five years later, he was standing in my home, servicing my heating system.

…

Smart home products were inescapable at this year’s CES, with endless sensor-filled electronics that will soon be invading your home. According to Gartner, the falling cost of adding sensing and communications to consumer products will mean that a typical family home, in a mature affluent market, could contain several hundred smart objects by 2022.

Reading the post-CES predictions, you would believe 2016 is the year for
smart home. 45% of Americans either own or plan to own smart home technology this year, according to survey data from Coldwell Banker. And ABI Research predicts global sales of smart home technology will…

In my last posting, I jumped straight to my latest venture, Super. In this post, I wanted to share what brought me to this business, experiences that shape my point of view, and some of what I’ve learned along the way.

I started my first business with a friend in high school. It was a non-profit focused on increasing volunteerism rates. I raised my first seed funding for the business as a sophomore in college from the then-current CEO of Merrill Lynch. We did good work, eventually organizing events years later with over 150,000 volunteers nationwide. …

Hi everyone. My name is Jorey. I’m very happy to launch Super and share what we’re doing. We’ve been operating in stealth for a while because we believe we are bringing a solution to market that is both unique and needed.

Our business comes out of a personal experience that is quite common for entrepreneurs who have looked at the home service sector. After my last business was acquired, my fiancée (now wife) and I moved cross country to take advantage of opportunities in the Bay Area. …