Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

blog.agrawals.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#11

Post by [deleted] »

zem wrote: post #9
hammock wrote: post #7

Loopt seems like a democratized version of group purchase organizations (GPOs), which have been around forever and are used, for example, by groups of hospitals banding together to get bulk discounts on the things they regularly buy. If you got ten of your friends together and put in bids on Loopt for a few different pizza places, it's not too different from the GPO process. You are basically saying, "I am willing to…

nope, mtkd nailed it when he cited the "passing off" laws. they're not just banding people together to get bulk discounts, they're implying that the businesses in question already support their model, and are using those businesses' brand recognition to add legitimacy to loopt.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#12

Post by zem »

[deleted] wrote: post #11
zem wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope, mtkd nailed it when he cited the "passing off" laws. they're not just banding people together to get bulk discounts, they're implying that the businesses in question already support their model, and are using those businesses' brand recognition to add legitimacy to loopt.

[deleted]

the original post cited it - their advertising made it look like bi-rite had already bought into the deal

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#14

Post by sama »

We're trying something new and innovative, and of course we'll have to iterate on it. We're moving as quickly as we can to fix this and make it work for consumers and businesses--obviously, it doesn't work for us unless it works for both of those groups. We have a chance to really improve local commerce, and I hope we do.

As soon as a business wants to opt out, we block them permanently in the system and remove any pending deals. We're changing the product right now to make the language more clear, and we're not going to use any trademarked images until the business approves the deal. We're going to make it really clear that a business hasn't approved a deal until they do.

We've certainly gotten negative feedback from a few businesses, but in general people seem excited about this--word of mouth is a great referral, and businesses understand that. The promise of u-Deals, if it works, is that your best customers become your big advocates.

Should we have gotten this right from the beginning? Yes, and I'm sorry we didn't. We've gotten things wrong in the past, and we're going to get things wrong again. As always, we'll try not to get the big things wrong, we'll do everything we can to make it up to our users, and we'll get it fixed as fast as possible. That's the nature of trying new things, and it's how the world gets better.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#16

Post by rdl »

chailatte wrote: post #13

First airbnb, now loopt. Something evil has infiltrated the house of ycombinator.

What "evil" has AirBnB done? Yes, they're disruptive to the hotel industry, and you might claim that hotel taxes are a major and legitimate source of cost-recovery (although I'd be perfectly happy if AirBnB negotiated to collect occupancy tax and then pass it on to the city). That's approximately as evil as Amazon or any other online merchant, though.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#17

Post by chailatte »

rdl wrote: post #16
chailatte wrote: post #13

First airbnb, now loopt. Something evil has infiltrated the house of ycombinator.

What "evil" has AirBnB done? Yes, they're disruptive to the hotel industry, and you might claim that hotel taxes are a major and legitimate source of cost-recovery (although I'd be perfectly happy if AirBnB negotiated to collect occupancy tax and then pass it on to the city). That's approximately as evil as Amazon or any other online merchant, though.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603844

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#18

Post by hammock »

zem wrote: post #9
hammock wrote: post #7

Loopt seems like a democratized version of group purchase organizations (GPOs), which have been around forever and are used, for example, by groups of hospitals banding together to get bulk discounts on the things they regularly buy. If you got ten of your friends together and put in bids on Loopt for a few different pizza places, it's not too different from the GPO process. You are basically saying, "I am willing to…

nope, mtkd nailed it when he cited the "passing off" laws. they're not just banding people together to get bulk discounts, they're implying that the businesses in question already support their model, and are using those businesses' brand recognition to add legitimacy to loopt.

It's more than banding together to get bulk discounts. Loopt is facilitating group buying - that's the "democratized" part of it.

Re: Sam Altman will clean your house for $5

#19

Post by rdl »

sama wrote: post #14

We're trying something new and innovative, and of course we'll have to iterate on it. We're moving as quickly as we can to fix this and make it work for consumers and businesses--obviously, it doesn't work for us unless it works for both of those groups. We have a chance to really improve local commerce, and I hope we do. As soon as a business wants to opt out, we block them permanently in the system and remove any p…

I think there is something one or two steps away from what you're doing now which will be a success. Especially if you can figure out a way to lower marginal costs to deliver a service through this kind of shared pre-buy (for instance, it's only worthwhile for a business to open late at night if customer demand exists; this way customers could prepay for midnight meals at a place which normally closes at 9pm on weeknights).

Or really any service where a business might be capital constrained and where economies of scale exist.

Post reply on HN