121–130 of 216 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$9K (cost of Prim over the length of time it takes to get your money out of a washer & dryer) is too small to meter?
9K over, what, four years? Yeah. I wouldn't even notice that.
Still. $800 over 2.5 years vs $9K over 2.5 yrs.
Or, to be a tad more accurate, $0.76/load vs $25/load.
That's an interesting meter you have.
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Isn't that what will ultimately happen? Once a business has the financial incentive to optimize how it's done they will eventually get to automating it when that is possible/economical.
Only if people are willing to put up with having more servants in their lives in the interim. But if not, people will just keep doing their own laundry and the business will fold, or perhaps just reach a level where for some people it offers a slight improvement on existing laundry services. Whereas a laundry robot would be really quite the revolution, it would end up being a new mandatory home appliance after dishwa…
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Why didn't you get a small washing machine?
I'm going to guess because almost all grad students rent and don't own, so cannot install washing machines in apartments that don't have them.
You need to drop it off, and you need to pick it up.
My bag of laundry that I did for $15 ($5 washing Machine, $10 Dryer, on medium - so 1 Hr, would have been $10 if I had used it on High) - would have cost me $60 if they had washed it for me - And I had to both Drop it off, and come pick it up.
There was a very large queue of laundry waiting to be completed.
Prim should immediately look at expanding into Singapore - there is clearly a market for this service - and I have every expectation that something more convenient than having to drive your laundry over to a laundromat would be a big hit - at least with the people who drop their laundry off at Thompson Plaza.
My first thought with these services is always "that's cool!". I'll save time, won't have to bother with some boring task etc, no more inconvenience! Same reaction with Instacart. Then I questioned that reaction. The store where I buy all my food is roughly a 100m away from my apartment, and it takes me roughly 10 minutes to get there, buy food and get back. Yet I still find it inconvenient. And after I get rid of that inconvenience, there will be something else that will start to bother me, a smaller inconvenience than the last one, but still bothersome. So where does it stop? I always think of those kids you see around, whose life has been completely removed of all unpleasantness by their overprotective parents, and who are spoiled/irritating beyond belief. Will we all turn into that?
Expanding on that, we probably won't all turn into that in the near future, because the inconvenience that we'll have removed will be taken care of by another human being, who in turn will take on all the unpleasantness. So there will be a class of people who do all of the "boring" work so the top class can "do what they want". It's already long established in things like house-cleaning, gardening etc. And the argument I get into is, why do "we" get to do what we want, and "they" get to do the work we (and in most cases they) find a waste of time. The counter-argument I get is it's a job, people get paid, and people can make any work enjoyable for themselves, even if it's picking up groceries/laundry for others. And I argue that if they can make any work enjoyable for themselves, why the hell don't we make picking up groceries/laundry enjoyable for ourselves? Or is making a boring task enjoyable again reserved for that other class of people, who don't have the means to avoid it?
This is quite a tangent, and I still think it's a cool idea, we're all working on projects which serve to remove pain-points for people, and abstracted away, you could argue my points for any business in the world.
Still, I'd like a start-up that instead of shifting my inconvenience to other people, removes my feeling of inconvenience itself. Once someone teaches me that, I'll be set for life. Maybe we can revive Marcus Aurelius and give him a few million dollars.
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I'm sure it'll make money since it's exploiting the lazy. The folding is a nice touch, but it's essentially useless since it puts unwanted creases and wrinkles in clothes. They aren't following tag instructions, either. Based on this, here are the steps that are actually useful: 1. Separate white clothing from non-white clothing. 2. Place white clothing in washer and add soap. 3. Place white clothing in dryer. 4. Pla…
Let's say I'm an entry-level freelancer who bills out at $100/hr. It's 5PM on a Wednesday. I need to do the laundry because I have a client meeting tomorrow and they usually look at me funny when I wear crumpled tee shirts that smell kinda funky. I could do one of two things: 1. Work for an hour, generating $100, and spend 20% of that getting someone else to do my laundry. (Plus, I get to drink beer when I'm working…
For a single guy (which means probably everything is cotton and colorfast) it's maybe 10 minutes because nobody expects you to actually iron anything. For women (who actually think about their clothes and whose clothes are more complicated in terms of mixed fabrics, special handling) it's still only 25 minutes or so. That's the whole point of having a washing machine, it's a time-saving appliance. If you do go to the laundromat you may not be able to drink a beer, but on the other hand you can kick back and read.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with using a laundry service, which is why most laundromats offer wash and fold. But then again if it's 5pm on a Wednesday you have loads of time to just buy a new t-shirt on the way home from work.
Yet another startup that caters to the 20 something tech crowd with too much disposable income and too little free time on their hands. Do people in Silicon Valley ever leave spend time outside Silicon Valley?
So, hypothetical you, how frivolous would you rate this company, when it has just told you that you can probably now afford to send your eldest daughter to any school that will take her?
Next, we'll see the return of the milk man and we'll almost be in time for living just like exactly a century ago. These are not fresh, new ideas.
My parents (suburban middle class family) still use the service to this day.
How do they justify it? The milk is better quality then anything that's mass produced in the grocery store (and my parents still go to the grocery store regularly) and doesn't contain all of the growth hormones. I would argue it is very niche though.
Yet another startup that caters to the 20 something tech crowd with too much disposable income and too little free time on their hands. Do people in Silicon Valley ever leave spend time outside Silicon Valley?
These founders merely did what I advise every startup to do, build something for which they are initial market. So essentially you're complaining that the founders are members of the demographic group that they are. But that seems unfair; they can't help that.
Are founders overly homogeneous?