Apply HN: Hire local students for simple chores like mowing your lawn
Problem: About a year ago I broke my leg temporarily, which led to two things - my wife gifting me a macbook and the realization that now for simple chores like mowing my lawn, I needed to hire somebody. I tried the usual way first - looking on online classifieds and trying in vain to schedule time. I did not want to waste money by signing up somebody for the full season. Somehow, I finally found a "professional" who came out, saw my broken leg and the long grass growing, and quoted me an insane price which I declined. Luckily for me, a student knocked on my door asking if I needed my lawn mowed, and he did the same job very happily for $15 (I added some tip as well of course). Here is the tough question now -- how do I regularly find local students to do odd chores for me, on-demand ?
Solution: I used the MacBook to learn and train myself and heck built and published this app on both iOS and Android. My leg was broken, not my fingers and my brain, and I coded a solution for myself with "Runnr". It is an app through which people can find and book neighborhood students who can simply walk over to their house to mow their lawn, tutor their kids, walk their dog or a whole range of other simple chores. The cost stays low as this is not mortgage money for these kids and they are not travelling across the city for these jobs. Runnr provides them with an app to manage their time and their jobs, along with suitable marketing tools to help them promote this within their own neighborhood. This is their own "lemonade business".
Happiness would be in: Free/sponsored chores done for elderly/physically challenged which count as community credits for these students. Ensuring the students get 100% of the price advertised to the customer. Turning this into a global on-demand work platform where anybody can turn on the app and make him/herself available for work.