Adeola Adegbenro Turned a Product Mindset Into Luminae Home

For Adeola Adegbenro, finding a good house cleaner is a product problem. She has spent her career building digital products in healthcare technology, and she looks at home cleaning the way she would look at any product: from both sides of the experience. Luminae Home is the result.

Adeola Adegbenro is the founder and CEO of Luminae Home, a community-first home-services marketplace connecting homeowners with trusted, vetted independent cleaning professionals, starting in Gwinnett County, Georgia. A member of the Entreprenista League, Adeola is in Luminae’s early launch phase and learning from both sides of the marketplace in real time.

“You can protect your vision without building in isolation,” Adeola says.

The story of Luminae Home starts inside healthcare software, and and follows an unexpected path from there.

Years of building products in healthcare

Adeola has spent years in product management, mostly in healthcare technology and clinical research software. Her background spans product strategy, roadmap development, UX, software delivery, and leading cross-functional teams to bring complex digital products to market.

For most of her career, she solved problems inside established companies. Starting her own came from one problem in particular. “It grew from finding a problem I cared enough about to take the risk of trying to solve myself,” she says.

A better experience on both sides

The problem she set out to solve? Home cleaning. “Finding dependable home cleaning shouldn’t feel complicated or uncertain, yet trust and consistency are still major pain points for many homeowners,” Adeola says. Talented independent cleaning professionals, meanwhile, need better ways to connect with clients and grow their own businesses.

Her product training took it from there. “My product background made me naturally start thinking, ‘There has to be a better experience on both sides,’” she says. “Eventually, I decided to build it.”

Luminae is designed for residential homeowners, particularly busy families and professionals who want a convenient, trustworthy way to book reliable cleaning. It is also built to create meaningful earning opportunities for local cleaning professionals.

Marketing a marketplace, she has learned, means building trust and demand on 2 sides at the same time. Recruiting has moved more slowly than she expected, and that has pushed her to get closer to the people she is building for.

From an idea in her head to a real platform

“I’m most proud that Luminae has moved from an idea in my head to a real platform that people can see, experience, and give feedback on,” Adeola says.

She is building it around a full-time product career and 3 kids, which has stretched her in ways she did not expect. Some days the business gets more of her, and other days her kids do. “Building more slowly doesn’t mean you’re not building seriously,” she says.

Getting outside the founder bubble

Adeola spent much of the early building stage working in a silo. A recent win was getting outside her own founder bubble. She has started actively recruiting cleaning professionals, gathering real UX feedback on the product, and talking with other founders. Those conversations have turned into actionable marketing ideas and new ways of thinking about the experience Luminae offers.

Some of the most useful ones started as casual coffee chats. “I wish I had known how much value would come from reaching out and having one-on-one conversations,” she says. Her message to new members is to step off the sidelines: introduce yourself, ask questions, and connect with people.

Proving the model community by community

The immediate focus is launching Luminae in Gwinnett County, learning from its first homeowners and cleaning professionals, and building a strong local reputation for trust and quality. From there, Adeola plans to expand into more communities across Georgia and keep improving the technology behind the marketplace.

Longer term, she wants Luminae to become a trusted destination for home services, built by “proving the model community by community.” She is taking the same measured approach to funding, building and validating Luminae before she chooses a path. “You don’t have to raise simply because you’re building a startup,” she says. “The funding strategy should support the business model and the founder’s goals.”

Her advice for anyone sitting on an idea is to start talking about it. “Don’t wait until everything is perfect before you start talking about what you’re building,” she says. “Share the idea, ask for feedback, talk to potential customers, and let other people into the process.”

You can follow Adeola on LinkedIn and keep up with the Luminae Home launch in Gwinnett County at luminaehome.com.

Adeola’s story is a reminder that some of the most useful feedback on a business comes from a casual coffee chat with another founder. The Entreprenista League surrounds you with women founders who are ready for conversation to share what they're learning. Learn more about the Entreprenista League right here.