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Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

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Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#111

Post by bobwaycott »

jes5199 wrote: post #58
wiml wrote: post #2

I'm under the impression that pick-up-and-drop-off laundry has been a common business in larger cities for the last, oh, century or more? Is this just a "...yeah, but this time it's on the Internet!" business model?

The crazy thing is, I kinda need a laundry service, but I have no idea how to find one. Do I just go on yelp? It's a form of business I've never used, so it makes me sort of anxious to try it. Startups that make interactions with businesses less anxiety-provoking tend to get my money. Take Uber for an example: there are Taxis all over SF. But hailing one is intimidating . So I'd rather push a button. The difference i…

$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?

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#112

Post by icebraining »

physcab wrote: post #48
marknutter wrote: post #10

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?

I disagree with this. When I was a poor grad student, laundry was the greatest time sink of my life. I spent many Sundays trucking loads of laundry between my apartment and my laundromat a mile away. $20 was definitely a reasonable sum to have that time given back to me. And I'm sure many of the other people I met there (often mothers who were disciplining unruly children) would have said the same thing. If you think…

Why didn't you get a small washing machine?

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#113

Post by bobwaycott »

Felix21 wrote: post #107
marknutter wrote: post #10

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?

Mark What world changing startup have you built? Its really unfair to for anyone on the sidelines to criticize the man in the arena. Be the change you want to see in the world: if you feel they are solving the wrong problems, go solve the right ones.

Not defending the comment to which you replied, but offering valid and helpful criticism does not carry the requirement of having a 'world-changing startup' on one's resume.

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#114

Post by bobwaycott »

icambron wrote: post #56
marknutter wrote: post #10

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?

I don't understand this response at all. "Businesses provide services to people that require those services and have the money to pay for them? Living in a densely-populated area gives you access to such niche services even though they wouldn't work where I live? Madness!" I'm sure that living in Peoria is a fine choice, but you can't expect the world's startups to cater to you there. And that's OK.

This kind of sounds like referring to SF startups like Americans refer to baseball championships--'world's' startups ... 'world' series.

I don't think the commenter was remarking on the lack of personal catering he experiences from SV startup land.

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#115

Post by Lewisham »

icebraining wrote: post #112
physcab wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this. When I was a poor grad student, laundry was the greatest time sink of my life. I spent many Sundays trucking loads of laundry between my apartment and my laundromat a mile away. $20 was definitely a reasonable sum to have that time given back to me. And I'm sure many of the other people I met there (often mothers who were disciplining unruly children) would have said the same thing. If you think…

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.

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#116

Post by gfodor »

First-world problem? Sure. It's pretty hard to not laugh at the image of the surely brilliant Stanford engineer doing laundry for hipsters in the bay area burbs instead of out curing cancer.

But, think about what happens if this actually works out. Think about the amount of time that will be returned to people, at scale. Think about the amount of capital that will be freed up. Think about the amount of resources that will be more efficiently allocated. Having a washing machine in every household, if you step back, seems more than a little wasteful. Imagine giant uber-laundromats, akin to Amazon's fullfillment centers, that squeeze the last bit of efficiency out of the problem of ingesting dirty clothing on one end and spitting out freshly pressed, super-clean items on the other, and the logistics therein.

It's only a first-world problem because it costs $25 a load, which is absurdly expensive for most families. But what if it were $2.50? $0.25? Free if you watch an ad on your TV? Then it becomes truly disruptive.

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#118

Post by enraged_camel »

marknutter wrote: post #10

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?

There were two inventions in particular that contributed to the empowerment of women: refrigerators and washing machines.

The former made it so that women no longer had to go to the market once per day. Instead, they could do one week's worth of shopping and store everything in the fridge.

The washing machine made it so that they no longer had to spend hours everyday washing clothes.

With all this free time, they could now start working outside the home. So they joined the workforce.

Bottom line: Do not be so quick to dismiss an idea. Things are often more complicated than they seem on the surface and can make a much bigger impact than you think.

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#119

Post by jacquesm »

gfodor wrote: post #116

First-world problem? Sure. It's pretty hard to not laugh at the image of the surely brilliant Stanford engineer doing laundry for hipsters in the bay area burbs instead of out curing cancer. But, think about what happens if this actually works out. Think about the amount of time that will be returned to people, at scale. Think about the amount of capital that will be freed up. Think about the amount of resources that…

Trucking laundry around, having another worker load/wash/unload/iron and then the sorting / tagging / customer service issues associated with that seems pretty inefficient. It just adds overhead without removing any of the original work. It may be that the washing machines can be more efficient at scale but for that to be the dominant factor the process as a whole would have to be super efficient as well and that is very hard if you start by adding a huge amount of overhead over the original problem.

Having the ability to do your own laundry (especially with small kids) is pretty basic.

Re: Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

#120

Post by jes5199 »

bobwaycott wrote: post #111
jes5199 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing is, I kinda need a laundry service, but I have no idea how to find one. Do I just go on yelp? It's a form of business I've never used, so it makes me sort of anxious to try it. Startups that make interactions with businesses less anxiety-provoking tend to get my money. Take Uber for an example: there are Taxis all over SF. But hailing one is intimidating . So I'd rather push a button. The difference i…

$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.
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