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Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

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Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#251

Post by lazyasciiart »

feifan wrote: post #50
lazyasciiart wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toilet paper. By far the biggest market out of those listed above, bulky and inconvenient to pick up at the shops while doing other things or to stock up on, catastrophic not to have. You'd need two/three levels of comfort, probably.

You don't just order toilet paper from Amazon, subscription or not? (Although I'd imagine toilet paper usage rate is pretty consistent, so that would be easy to set up a subscription for)

No. Amazon subscriptions have been really frustrating for me - not enough flexibility around amount and timing, so either I subscribe to just less than I need and run out anyway, or just more than I need and have it piling up.

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#252

Post by jchallis »

black-tea wrote: post #217
jchallis wrote: post #23

The biggest stockout problems in my life are those where an inconvenience turns into a big mess. If you can expand your thinking to that problem, I'm very interested. Specifically: Toilet Paper Diapers Diaper Wipes Paper Towels Cat Litter Laundry Detergent Sanitary Napkins / Tampons Auto-coffee refill is something I can avoid. Diaper stockout -- the horror!

Use reusable diapers.

When I was a baby, my parents used a diaper service to exactly do this - cloth diapers laundered off-site. Here's an idea for a social-local-mobile business : bring back the diaper service.

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#253

Post by subpixel »

shostack wrote: post #243
subpixel wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who ran a retail e-commerce operation for a decade I strongly advise against building a company to serve customers with such exacting requirements unless your unit economics are way better than you will see selling any variety of bean.

I was just sharing stats because I happened to have the spreadsheet up. I'm a data nerd so I modeled out my coffee consumption to prove it paid for itself to drink better coffee at home. That said, the convenience of having a bag of beans of my choosing delivered right when I'm about to run out, but not so far in advance that they start hitting that 2wk+ staleness threshold (I don't need it to be as exact as I stated…

I didn't mean my comment to sound critical of you. But when it comes to coffee, you will be hard to please, and hard to please customers are tough customers.

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#254

Post by jumbopapa »

wtvanhest wrote: post #174
function_seven wrote: post #162

My initial reaction to this post was very dismissive. I was ready to jump into the comments and nod along with everyone else shitting all over it. But, I don't want to be like CmdrTaco and the iPod, or whoever thought an rsync bash script could replace Dropbox. If you prove this out with coffee, and work on making it for all "constant" foods in the home, this would be awesome. Milk, butter, cheese, eggs, soda, cereal…

You should check out his invest like the best podcast. This will likely be a big business.

Thanks for recommending that! It was a great podcast and I'm excited to listen to some of the others because this is the first I've heard of Invest Like The Best.

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#255

Post by wtvanhest »

jumbopapa wrote: post #254
wtvanhest wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check out his invest like the best podcast. This will likely be a big business.

Thanks for recommending that! It was a great podcast and I'm excited to listen to some of the others because this is the first I've heard of Invest Like The Best.

Yes, I have a friend who recommended it. He said 'Ignore the name'. Wow was he right. Its the most enjoyable podcast I have ever listened to.

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#256

Post by kkarakk »

Grustaf wrote: post #231
kkarakk wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coffee aficionados tend to have lots of random bulky objects in the kitchen anyways. coffee makers,coffee implements, temperature sensors etc etc it quickly becomes a hassle to stow it all away everytime so you end up chucking it all in one "space"

Coffee aficionados don't want to be restricted to buying from a single, web-based company. Unless this company stocks hundreds or thousands of varieties.

anecdotally i'd say that coffee people tend to buy excessive amounts of the one coffee brand they like, they mess around and buy a lot of samples/get gifts but they only have one or two blends that they really like

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#257

Post by mrkurt »

teawrecks wrote: post #103
mrkurt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I waste way less coffee using Bottomless than I did before. Cheaper for me, better for the environment. Real world doesn't have to mean "huge".

I don't understand, how/why do you waste coffee without this product?

Ooops, not sure you'll ever see this, but my main method of getting coffee has been subscription services. I invariably get way too much coffee using normal subscriptions.

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#258

Post by alphagrep12345 »

3into10power5 wrote: post #74
sna1l wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question is what is stopping Amazon/Instacart/etc from copying this model? Presumably Amazon Go shops have this capability and it could be modified to suit end consumers in their homes?

This question gets asked for every company. The way it works is that Amazon and Instacart. may copy. But walmart and target will be slow to respond. At some point, Amazon will be ahead in the game and Walmart is in a hurry to bring something similar to buy. Then they will acquire Bottomless Another way, even if Amazon introduces it, they have to make $x billion from it to be viable. If Bottomless makes $100M per year…

Why does Amazon need to make $x billion to make it viable?

Re: Launch HN: Bottomless (YC W19) – Coffee Restocked with a Smart Scale

#260

Post by LeifCarrotson »

seizethecheese wrote: post #182
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #170

I think the business case with the same idea and tech, but a lot better market cap, would be providing a restocking service to businesses who are using tens of thousands of dollars of consumable shop supplies than the small audience of people who are willing to buy coffee from a subscription for $3/mo. To make the pain point that I'm familiar with on a daily basis crystal clear to you: I'm an engineer at a small, sho…

Thanks for laying out the use case! I’ve previously worked in restaurants and there’s an analogous problem there. I think this tech will be everywhere someday. I’mcurious about your insight on the tech. Could you flesh that out a bit more?

Sure.

Essentially, the parent article was discussing how they broke out the soldering iron and learned about wireless integrated circuits. At a large enough scale, it makes great sense to do this engineering work: design a PCB with power supplies and analog circuits, figure out connections to peripheral sensors, put that PCB and sensors into an injection-molded piece of plastic, add fasteners and brackets to mount sensors, install connectors and terminate wires on the sensors and boards, write assembly and C code to make them all talk to each other ...taking on all the overhead.

But for a lot of small runs of equipment, this doesn't make sense. Buy the strain gauge already in an enclosure with standardized interfaces and built-in amplifiers, get a small computer (PLC) that's already in an enclosure and has terminals to connect to those sensors, write code in a high-level language designed for talking to sensors, and ship it.

It's like somebody wanted to build a website, so they started digging into network protocols. There's a place for that, but it should be approached long after you've fired up a Wordpress instance.

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