HomeHero
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
HomeHero was a Santa Monica, California home-care marketplace founded in 2013 by CEO Kyle Hill. It used technology to match families with in-home caregivers for seniors (its "heroes"): by summer 2015 it had onboarded 1,200 caregivers and expanded from Santa Monica to Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco, raising $23 million in venture funding.
02 / HomeHero FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Regulatory changes forced HomeHero off its winning model. After building its advantage on an independent-contractor (1099) structure — charging families 30-40% less than the industry average while paying caregivers about 25% more — the company was effectively forced in 2016 to terminate 95% of its 1099 caregivers and adopt a W-2 employment model. That stripped away its price, speed and scalability advantages, leaving it unable to compete with entrenched agencies that had strong relationships across the health-care system. The company ceased home-care operations in February 2017 and later rebranded the remaining business as Harvey, a virtual integrative-medicine company.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
HomeHero decided to cease all operations and remove itself entirely from home care; in Q1 2017 shut down all home care operations and transitioned clients to local agencies. Home Health Care News: company closing its doors after regulatory shift from 1099 to W-2 model destroyed unit economics.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Founded in 2013 in Santa Monica as a home-care marketplace matching families with caregivers.
- 02
Onboarded 1,200 caregivers by summer 2015; expanded across Southern and Northern California; raised $23 million.
- 03
Forced in 2016 to switch from 1099 contractor to W-2 employment model, terminating 95% of contractors and losing its price and scalability edge.
- 04
Ceased home-care operations in February 2017 (the recorded 2017 shutdown); later rebranded as Harvey.
- 05
No reliable realized loss figure was disclosed.