On-Demand Services: Lessons Learned From the Rise and Fall of Homejoy

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The news that on-demand home cleaning service Homejoy is shutting down at the end of the month wasn’t a big surprise. Here are a few key lessons that stick out in thinking about the company’s trajectory.

8 Things SMBs Should Consider Before Adopting Mobile Payments

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With 22.6 million people in the U.S. expected to make at least one mobile payment in 2015, merchants of all sizes are feeling the push to start accepting mobile payments. But whether every local business should jump on board is still a matter of debate within the hyperlocal community.

6 Strategies for Increasing Conversions in Mobile Food Searches

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Sixty-three percent of consumers use smartphones and tablets to find local businesses, and 23% of those local business searches involve restaurants. Here are six strategies that restaurants can use to help convert mobile search traffic.

Street Fight’s 10 Most Popular Stories From the First Half of 2015

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In the local space, the first six months of 2015 brought a deeper emphasis on local commerce and the connected local economy, new partnerships, and consolidation and restructuring at legacy players. Here’s a look back at the top Street Fight stories (at least in terms of traffic) so far this year.

The Conscientious Consumer: A Disruption Opportunity in Local On-Demand

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As innovators sacrifice worker interests on the altar of consumer satisfaction and gain market dominance, here are three growing vulnerabilities they should look out for…

#SFSW15 VIDEO: 3 Companies That Are Rethinking Brick-and-Mortar Business

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The web is not a just a place for offline business to wrangle consumers anymore. Increasingly, technology is changing the way we actually build businesses in the real world. Representatives from a trio of companies that are revolutionizing the way their industries do business in the physical marketplace came together at Street Fight Summit West earlier this month to share their success stories.

The Connected Local Economy: A New Way to Understand Innovation in Local

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As a new generation of local technology companies approach the public markets, it’s critical for us to agree on what “local” actually means today — and how that differs from the its definition a decade ago.

#SFSW15: How Partnerships are Driving the Next Generation of Delivery

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During a session at Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco Tuesday, executives from grocery ordering firm Instacart, food delivery startup DoorDash, and local logistics play Postmates came together to discuss the future of delivery.

Why the Home Services Market Suddenly Exploded in Startup Land

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Few things can be as tedious, time consuming and expensive as home improvement. Seattle’s Pro.com connects people with local home improvement professionals in a way that’s similar to ordering food or making dinner reservations…

Delivery.com CEO: Google’s Entry Into Food Ordering Was a Matter of When — Not If

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Street Fight recently caught up with Jed Kleckner, chief executive at Delivery.com, to talk about Google’s recent moves and handicap which of the other big tech companies may be interested in food delivery (hint: Amazon.)

Why Instacart Doesn’t Want to Kill Brick-and-Mortar

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Whereas Amazon and other ecommerce players have sought to bypass local businesses, Instacart has built is business on them — creating a company that investors now value at over $2 billion…

GrubHub CEO Thinks Data — Not Content — Is the Future of Restaurant Discovery

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Investors sold off shares of GrubHub Thursday on slimmer profits, but the rest of the metrics look solid. Meanwhile, CEO Matt Maloney says the company wants to put its data about hundreds of millions of orders to work to help pick your next meal.

Here’s How Reserve Plans to Make the Dinner Bill Disappear

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We’ve become used to the ability to make restaurant reservations with the click of a mouse or the tap of a screen, but what if the service didn’t stop there? What if it was extended to ensuring that every aspect of your dining experience was just as smooth and simple as making the reservation?

MyTime Raises $9.25M More to Push Into Back-Office Software

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In addition to funding, the San Francisco-based MyTime is announcing a deeper push into back-office software to compete with Booker, MindBody and others.

DoorDash Sets Its Sights on GrubHub in the Battle for Local Delivery

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Local delivery is a good space to be in right now — just ask DoorDash, an on-demand logistics company offering an ordering and delivery platform for dine-in restaurants without those services. DoorDash recently raised $40 million in venture capital and is expanding to new locations across the country to take on Grubhub and a host of other competitors…

5 Ways Starbucks Turns a Global Business Into a Local Brand

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When most people think of a local business, they imagine the neighborhood store or the mom-and-pop restaurant. But more and more today, global brands are positioned to use to digital tools to capture the relevancy and responsiveness that is at the heart of local businesses…

First Data Wants to Turn Its Payment Empire Into a Local Marketing Juggernaut

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First Data, the payment processing giant, wants to be more than just a black box on the counter. We caught up with Peter Karpas, global head of SMB product, to talk about moving beyond the payment business, the company’s acquisition strategy, and where the world’s largest payment process fits into the future of small business…

Survey: Small Businesses Still Not Sold on Apple Pay

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There’s no shortage of hype around mobile payments. Since the release of Apple Pay, pundits have claimed that your smartphone will soon replace your wallet. But a recent survey of small business owners suggests that it may some time before credit cards are threatened.

Tige Savage: Founders Need to Solve for Degrees of Freedom — Not Valuation

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In an interview with Street Fight, Tige Savage, managing director at Revolution Ventures, talks about what went wrong at LivingSocial and Groupon, why founders should solve for “degrees of freedom — not valuation,” and why the next big thing may not come out of Silicon Valley or New York…

Can Amazon Bring One-Click Purchasing to Home Services? Here’s What Experts Think

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Earlier this week, Amazon launched its widely-anticipated Home Services marketplace where you can book plumbers, painters and other professionals. We caught up with a handful of small business experts to breakdown the news and handicap Amazon’s chances of transitioning its dominant position in ecommerce to a complex and scattered service landscape…