I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster • Hacker News Board

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#21

Post by floor2 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #17

rozab wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pushing overpriced useless junk to emotionally vulnerable people? No. There is a necessary service of digging a hole and putting a corpse in a box into it, but the whole business of $10k coffins and embalming and such is both unnecessary and quite unique to the US.

Expensive funerals are far from "unique to the US". The US spends substantially less as a proportion of income than Japan, China, Germany, Netherlands, the UK, and New Zealand, and is within a couple percent of a half dozen other countries. [1] https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S...

Ha, I think the internet needs a new term like Godwin's Rule or Gell-Mann Amnesia or whatever for the constant claims of "This only happens in America" or "This problem is worse in America than anywhere else" and then the reality is that the US is in line with averages or norms in other countries or cultures.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#22

Post by coward76 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

Funeral industry needs an intervention, the way some states fight against pay day loan predators. These are people at their most vulnerable and are being taken for a ride.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#23

Post by wutbrodo » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

floor2 wrote: post #21

wutbrodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive funerals are far from "unique to the US". The US spends substantially less as a proportion of income than Japan, China, Germany, Netherlands, the UK, and New Zealand, and is within a couple percent of a half dozen other countries. [1] https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S...

Ha, I think the internet needs a new term like Godwin's Rule or Gell-Mann Amnesia or whatever for the constant claims of "This only happens in America" or "This problem is worse in America than anywhere else" and then the reality is that the US is in line with averages or norms in other countries or cultures.

Anything that's a cheap way to get midwit upvotes is an unsolvable problem as far as I can tell.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#24

Post by prirun » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

Maybe a new COO would have been a better move. Her figure of $5-10M for a crematory seemed way off to me - it's basically a glorified oven in a building - so I did a little research and found this:

https://howtostartanllc.com/business-ideas/crematorium

It says to budget $100-250K to get started, which seems a lot more reasonable than $10M.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#25

Post by rozab » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #17

rozab wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pushing overpriced useless junk to emotionally vulnerable people? No. There is a necessary service of digging a hole and putting a corpse in a box into it, but the whole business of $10k coffins and embalming and such is both unnecessary and quite unique to the US.

Expensive funerals are far from "unique to the US". The US spends substantially less as a proportion of income than Japan, China, Germany, Netherlands, the UK, and New Zealand, and is within a couple percent of a half dozen other countries. [1] https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S...

I did look this up and found slightly different numbers:

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-much-d...

https://nfda.org/news/statistics

But I would maintain that the invasive practice of embalming is unnecessary and unusual elsewhere in the world.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#26

Post by beaconstudios » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #5

Isn’t this someone has to do? Making profits are not a bad thing. It’s a prerequisite for sustainable, growing business that provides better services over time. Unfortunately, quality of the services provided has to correspond to payment received. If you are running a hospital , you are segregating patients into different rooms depending on money you get. This is not acceptable in education so we have government run…

Not everything has to happen via the medium of commerce or government. Funerals are something that is ideally suited to being a communal effort, or it would be if communal living weren't dying off.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#27

Post by twobitshifter » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

prirun wrote: post #24

Maybe a new COO would have been a better move. Her figure of $5-10M for a crematory seemed way off to me - it's basically a glorified oven in a building - so I did a little research and found this: https://howtostartanllc.com/business-ideas/crematorium It says to budget $100-250K to get started, which seems a lot more reasonable than $10M.

Did you adjust for LA real estate prices?

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#28

Post by twobitshifter » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #9

The headline is a lie, right? There no "Uber" part. I guess that's the point of the quote marks, to contrast all the bullshit lies and phony origin stories and pitch decks of the VC world , against the reality of the work your business does. There's plenty of room for ethical mortuary companies to make money providing value and distrupting a deeply exploitative industry. But maybe it can't be done with (ironically na…

Uber = you own nothing and use your digital platform to connect the people doing the actual work (cremation) with those that need it (grieving families)

Owning their own crematory as proposed in the end would have been much less of an “Uber for” business.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#29

Post by horstmeyer » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

You weren't a monster, just an effective capitalist.

Re: I made a $2M funeral startup and became a monster

#30

Post by crusty » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

jiofih wrote: post #12

lupire wrote: post #9

The headline is a lie, right? There no "Uber" part. I guess that's the point of the quote marks, to contrast all the bullshit lies and phony origin stories and pitch decks of the VC world , against the reality of the work your business does. There's plenty of room for ethical mortuary companies to make money providing value and distrupting a deeply exploitative industry. But maybe it can't be done with (ironically na…

The “Uber for …” came to mean any kind of service that you get by pressing a button on your phone. Hence the overuse. It’s just a startup trope now.

Or maybe ^that^ with a business model requiring it to be operated as a heartless, profiteering vulture for success. That's usually where my mind goes when I read "Uber" - not as succinct as Evilcorp but whatever.