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.
Instructing founders to build products based on themselves as the initial market sounds like good advice, but it worries me slightly that if this advice were taken universally in tech circles, we would innovate in a fairly egocentric direction. Then again, I agree that people work better on problems that they're intimately familiar with, so I don't know if there's a good way around this.
I think that's already true, and seems to be the single biggest (albeit poorly articulated and somewhat nebulous) complaint people have about the valley. Ideas are created in the bizarro vacuum of that specific locale and fail to meet the needs or wants of the populace as a whole. But -- given the easy flow of capital the last several years -- it's easy to argue that everything is going swimmingly and there is no problem. It's takes quite an ego to align oneself with either extreme, imho.
It's only the initial product that should be for oneself. E.g. Microsoft started out making Basic interpreters for hackers, but eventually they made software for everyone.
That advice creates startups that are more likely to work, yes, but also seriously narrows the range of different startups likely to occur. You’re optimizing for reliability—not surprising, you’re an investor—not for where the need is greatest.
Perhaps once you’ve made a lot of money you could afford to optimize for where the need is greatest instead of reliability and fund tech startups tackling problems less familiar to their founders or founders from different backgrounds. This will probably be more risky but greater needs should produce greater rewards, right?
I'd rather try to make their idea more scalable. Prim is super unscalable, it takes ages until they have critical mass in another city and before they can scale there are already a dozen competitors --> Not a billion dollar company.
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. Place non-white clothing in washer.
5. Remove white clothing from dryer.
6. Place non-white clothing in dryer.
7. Remove non-white clothing from dryer.
That's all they're doing for people besides giving them a little soap. It's about 5 minutes of work, so around $300/hour if they're efficient, assuming one bag per customer. This is a scam YC if I've ever seen it.
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 at my desk, and I don't get to drink beer at the laundromat.)
The whole concept crystalizes what I never liked about living in big cities. The tiny apartments with no amenities and the endless expenses to get basic stuff done.
My scenario, since I own a house with a washer and dryer: It's 5PM, I realize I need clean clothes for the next day. I spend 2 minutes gathering them up and putting them in the washer, then go back to my beer, or whatever else I'm working on. An hour later, I spend 60 seconds loading the clean clothes into the dryer. 30 minutes after that, give or take, I spend 5 minutes folding them and putting them away.
No scheduling. No waiting for SMSs and pickups. No giving strangers keys to my home. $25 still in my pocket (and given the time I spent, I paid myself a $180/hr rate in that savings).
But hey, if they can make a business out of it, more power to them. Doesn't hurt my feelings any.
Basically, $2/1000 gallons of water & $0.10/kWh for electricity (I did not bother calculating for gas dryers) were the most recent US averages I could find, and that was rounding up (e.g., electricity was actually > $0.09 but < $0.10).
I used this calculator[2], and plugged in appropriate values where I could find most current data.
There are actually some nice 2L washers, which you don't even need to install, just plug in. jmduke might prefer the laundromat, but it's not needed even if you live in a big city.
Dude, it doesn't take an hour to do the laundry, that's like arguing that you could pay someone to wash you at your desk instead of taking a shower.
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.
This is what I get for trying to make cogent points about articles an hour after I've read them. Leaving my comment unedited to better bask in my own shame.
If you have your own washer/dryer, you could also just spend a few minutes doing the laundry while you still work or play or do whatever you want.
Also, there's more to life than money, although I understand how one could become obsessed with it if people making $100+/hour can't afford a place with their own washer/dryer in-unit.
It's 5PM on a Wednesday. You need to do the laundry because you have a client meeting tomorrow, but you decide to use Prim. They have an average return time of one day, so you end up going to the client meeting naked, since they didn't get your clothes back in time.
