Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome | Hacker News Reader

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

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100 pointscaoxuwen207 comments

Scott Wiener came to Google and gave a talk about pizza in NYC [1]. It was an interesting talk but one thing I remember was this: he said that you can't just cut up a sell a pizza by the slice and replicate what you have in NYC.

The point of this is that pizza by the slice is a culture that comes about and continues to exist for historical reasons, namely that Manhattan (in particular) is densely populated and people walk a lot, which has a bunch of other consequences. You can't just replicate that.

Also in NYC we have wash and fold laundromats. I walk five blocks to work and pass four of them on 8th Avenue. They're open 7 days a week (one from 7am-11pm every day). They will pick up your laundry and drop it off or you can drop it off and pick it up yourself.

Typically you pay $0.60-1.00/lb (plus something per load) for this and drop it off in the morning you get it back the same day. There are historical reasons for this but again it survives due to cultural and infrastructure reasons.

So something like this doesn't really work in low density car-dominated locales like the Valley.

I'm a little confused by Prim because ultimately they're just a courier service for clothes that subcontracts the cleaning to local laundromats. Okay...

But I question the demand for this given the economics and different culture.

This also highlights to me the benefits of living high-density as lots of things become possible. Effective public transport for example.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mayGAx9ngvo

It's true, when you break apart the business model, it is a 3rd party delivery/courier service for a niche market. This is not sustainable and has no barriers to entry.

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.

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.

No kidding!! With two toddlers I do laundry daily, and frequently the cycle is "remove clothes at bath time and put them directly into the washing machine".

If only because if you don't wash it right away it tends to start walking around all by itself, and a few days later it will talk back to you.

I washed my toddler daily and still started walking all by himself and talking back to me :)

That's a warranty issue ;)

I actually don't think that's right. The benefits to the planet of removing 1000 small (household) washing machines and dryers and replacing them with say 10 commercial ones is very very substantial and more than offsets the "work" that's wrapped around providing this as third party service vs doing it yourself.

> The benefits to the planet of removing 1000 small (household) washing machines and dryers and replacing them with say 10 commercial ones is very very substantial

That's not a given without running the numbers. Whole picture statements like these get complicated in a hurry. Manufacturing 1000 small household washing machines creates jobs and so on.

The work to me seems to be such a big factor in this story that all other things being equal you're going to have to make the case either by ignoring a huge number of factors or you're going to have to go by a model that just focuses on the major component of the operation itself (washing).

Household washing machines last quite a long time (10 years or more), are relatively cheap, maintenance free and two steps away from the point of origin of your washing.

Commercial machines are expensive, require frequent maintenance due to increased use, may or may not be more energy efficient and require trucking around washing.

I don't think you can say that the commercial machines are more efficient due to their reduced number because that may not be where the majority of the expense is located.

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?

If you've ever done any business travel, you know that a week's worth of laundry (Two Pants, five shirts, six pairs of t-shirts, socks and underwear) through the Hotel - usually goes for about $200-$225. If you are thrifty, and order a service, and are willing to wait for a week's delay, you can get your laundry done for about $100, but then you need to juggle logistics of actually getting your laundry to the service and back (and then worry about having to leave early, and stranding your laundry in a remote city)

If you are a freak (like me) - you actually track down a local laundromat, and burn a couple hours on a Saturday Morning doing your laundry to save the company $200, but 95% of business travelers just throw it on the company tab.

My advice to Prim - If they haven't already, reach out to Casto Travel (Typical corporate travel agency) - and every similiarly focussed travel agency, and see if they can get traction with the business travel market. You won't make any friends with the Hotels, but when I see a $250 laundry invoice for a single bag of laundry, I can't help but think that's a market ripe for disruption from below.

In NYC, you can drop off a bag of laundry at a Wash and Fold, and pick it up the next day clean and folded for $20.

Where is your $100 going for getting your laundry done?

Profit, I presume? I'm not sure I understand your question.

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.

pg, please allow me to try another tack to that complaint:

Are founders overly homogeneous?

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.)

2. Do the laundry.

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.

It may surprise you to learn that people in cities were able to get laundry done before Prim started.

Also, it costs me about $2.50 to do a load of laundry (washer + dryer), which is basically what it costs you (see: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/laundry.html). And it's in my building.

So I'm not sure which concept crystalizes this notion for you, but it's not one based in reality.

"I'm not sure which concept crystalizes this notion for you"

Because the parent commenter implied it takes an hour of full time work to do laundry, which implies having to go to a laundromat.

But yeah, plenty of apartments in cities have washer/dryers.

Using national averages for electricity and water, it only costs $0.76 to complete a load of laundry (washing & drying).

What figures were you using? I'd like to put the current New South Wales, Australia electricity price into the equation.

My calculations are here[1].

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.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107020 [2] http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/laundry.html

Sorry, I missed your initial comment.

Even with lowball estimates, my cost for washing is double yours - 30+c/kWh... sigh.

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.

> it doesn't take an hour to do the laundry

Context switches are expensive. Moreso for some of us than others. Laundry can easily kill an hour of my productivity.

Let's say I'm an entry-level freelancer who bills out at $100/hr. ...

1. Work for an hour, generating $100, and spend 20% of that getting someone else to do my laundry.

I know you're just an entry level freelancer, but $25 is actually 25% of $100.

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.

You're only right if he would be doing laundry every hour.

Let's say he works 8 hours a day for $100/hour. That's $800 a day. For 5 days a week, that's $4000.

Let's say he does 2 laundry a week, that's $50 which is 1.25% of his salary.

No brainer.

rdouble: thanks. I hope I can learn from your "expertise".

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.

>> Let's say I'm an entry-level freelancer who bills out at $100/hr.

Where is $100 an hour entry level? Wowsers...

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.

Right... "exploiting". I guess that's what every business that charges money for something the customer wants to obtain is doing.

Yes. The big laundry scam.

If it makes you feel better: pretend you and your wife are immigrants to the United States, speak little English, are raising three children, and work long hours at a laundromat. The Internet, which you're pretty sure one of your kids has on that phone with the white earbuds, calls and tells you that it can offer you $3,000 of business. A month. For the forseeable future. No catch: they just want to pay you money to do that thing that you customarily take money to do.

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?

Except the overall effect of this startup will be the opposite of what you just describe. Prim isn’t creating more dirty laundry, it’s consolidating the laundry jobs into batches that will be performed by fewer businesses than would otherwise overall.

If you happen to own one of the laundromats that Prim doesn’t want to use you will see a reduction in your business. There is a saving grace for that situation however, you could apply for a job at Prim.

I think they're probably competing with non-consumption rather than with their suppliers. Note the market segmentation and markedly higher prices, for example. (I have some accidental knowledge on this due to previous HN threads attempting to value laundry services as a perk from Big Daddy G, so I happen to know that weekly laundry pickup costs about $800 a year in SV, which is a sizable discount relative to this.)

To put it another way: they don't have to create more dirty laundry, they just have to successfully sell people on "You've always thought that poor people use the laundromat, middle class people use their own washer, and rich people have hired servants, but guess what, people just like you can actually outsource laundry without any of the squicky associations you have with hiring domestic help. It's as easy and natural as ordering a pizza."

I've "outsourced" most laundry since I was in college.

The problem these guys are going to have is that the quality of third party wholesale laundry is poor, always. Generally, what I see happening is that you have a mom & pop cleaner business who operates for years doing their own stuff. Then they grow / have equipment troubles / retire and bring their kids into the business / etc and move to either a centralized laundry plant model or outsource some or all of the cleaning.

Once that happens, your shirts get lost, buttons get crushed, etc.

So you have a premium service dependent on third parties for service delivery -- who usually suck. Hopefully they'll find a solution to those issues.

Yes I agree with patio11 here. What they're essentially doing is "growing the market" for commercial laundry. In theory 80%+ of the laundry they're processing would otherwise be done inside the home. If they hurt anyone via disruption it's the kid at Sears selling washing machines and dryers.

Presumably they'll choose the companies who can/do service them best. I work for a contract manufacturing company and the same thing holds true for us as a $6b corporation with a presence in 25 countries. Customers pick the partner who provides the right mix of cost, quality, communications, timeliness, location and alignment. Depending on the customer's own business goals and performance, the list of eligible partners ebbs & flows over time. Generally speaking, though, the cream always rises to the top.

So inventing scenarios so we can feel better is the solution? These middlemen businesses make their money by controlling the sales channels and giving as little as possible to the actual producers. It's basically cultural imperialism.

My father is the facilities manager for a huge industrial laundry facility (tons a day). I was trying to figure out how you'd keep everybody's clothes separate as they went through those gigantic tunnel washers and other equipment.

I never even though to just outsource to existing laundromats / dry cleaners. Ha!

This is the "minimum" of "minimum viable product." A lot of startups like this are started/validated by the founders and their friends doing the equivalent of picking up peoples' laundry, driving it to the laundromat in their hatchbacks, tweeting about the service while the clothes spin, returning the clothes with a smile, and hoping the customers tell their friends!

Indeed. In this case though, I think the small, nimble approach is the only one. The mega-laundry that I was talking about has no capacity to track articles through the process, and is built to handle a set grouping of article types (each with a specific type of automated folding machine, press, etc). It'd break down miserably trying to handle N types of garments from N different people...

You forget to pretend we add a middlemen into a business where it is completely unnecessary. Now pretend that this middlemen will take a big cut, can drop you anytime they like since I guess there will be little or less strings attached/contract, or close their business because the founding hipster has another 'brilliant' idea of disrupting something that does not need to be disrupted.

As fellow (hopefully that's a safe assumption) an outsider looking in, I have to agree with this.

It also just generally frustrates and disappoints me that so many brilliant young developers and entrepreneurs spend their time fixing textbook first world problems instead of addressing the poverty, disease, crime, and unrest which still plagues the world.

entrepreneurs look for problems with money in mind. philanthropists look for money with problems in mind.

I really like that.

As rising high school senior, I often struggle with this -- the question of whether to get rich any way I can and then make my mark on the world (a la Bill Gates), or whether I should strive for my money-making to also be genuinely (in my opinion/worldview) beneficial for mankind.

Why not both?

After making his fortune, Bill is now working to better the world by using it to power his charitable foundation. If you're really confident then both tasks are within your reach. Don't listen to the nay-sayers who'd rather we all work as volunteers for the Peace Corps

Well I think "both" is the first alternative described: get rich any way you can, then use the money for real good. I think Bill's Microsoft was definitely not very interested in "Don't be evil" -- monopolistic practices, stealing ideas and technology from Apple (who often stole themselves), trying to kill free software (see: home brew computer club), etc.

Don't get me wrong. I have tremendous respect for Bill -- I look up to him and give him a LOT of credit for his recent work and humility. But I don't think Bill did "both". He definitely fell squarely into the first limited category: being a ruthless capitalist to get rich, and then trying to figure out how to actually bring some tangible good into the world with that money. (See also Andrew Carnegie)

You should look into Effective Altruism, Earning to Give and 80,000 Hours.

"Well maybe once everything in our country is automated, we'll have time to worry about others' automation, digital divide, and poverty."

Having just Googled that quote, I'm going to assume it was meant to be a paraphrasing of my comment/a (sarcastic?) response to it, rather than an actual quote.

In any case, I didn't really mean other countries in my comment. There is a great deal of crime, starvation, poverty, and disease in this country.

"Charity starts at home."

It wasn't sarcastic, it was a realist based comment pointing out the fact on how much we focus on our country's automation before moving on to other countries. I agree, eventually, after solving our digital divide issue, we'll worry about real problems. VCs invest in these services to bring what rich people had for years to the masses, and that is a maid and servants to free up your time to do what you really want to do. The economic recession has allowed numerous of people willing to do your laundry, these people picked up on that, I wonder what's next. Will there be a service to wash my dog?

The last time there was widespread starvation North America was in Newfoundland during the Great Depression.

I live in the valley and I still have to agree with this

I don't have any of the problems or any perspective or any idea of how to solve them with technology since they seem to be largely social problems.

Hatin' from the mid-west. Listen, I don't know about you, but I despise doing laundry. Their pricing is actually cheaper than the laundry mat down the street from me here in SF. It is a win! Plus, I get the tech; SMS when the driver is in route to pick-up and deliver. Time is critical for people working here, and shopping (InstaCart), chores (TaskRabbit/Exec), and now Laundry (Prim) are things I am willing to pay for.

It is true developers/entrepreneurs might have more disposable income here in SF than other cities, but we also have a startup for anything you need. I like the ability to pick and choose what I am willing to pay somebody else to do. Startups should make people's life less shity; I'd say Prim accomplishes that.

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.

When the PC first came out, it only catered for the rich. Same with cell phones, cars, etc.

How about restaurants? Why should people eat out when it's cheaper to cook at home?

If founders listen to people like you, nothing will be built.

To be fair, in places that aren't the Valley wash-and-fold services are a dime a dozen, the product is heavily commoditized, and availability is high. You wouldn't need a high-tech web-based provider of laundry, because there's a perfectly good low-tech one already doing it, doing it cheap, and doing it well.

This is not a case of a new product being upmarket before working its way downmarket. It's a case where something that exists at rock-bottom prices everywhere else is being introduced to the Valley at a premium, because for some crazy reason the SF/Bay hasn't figured out laundry by now.

This feels like a business that solves a Bay Area Problem. The question is how many other geographies are there where there is sufficient demand, insufficient development of local alternatives, and the income level to support this kind of pricing.

I think it's safe to say that this sort of service doesn't stand a stone cold chance in hell in a place like NYC, where laundromats are everywhere, pick-up-drop-off services a dime a dozen, competition fierce, prices low, and being VC-funded with a cool mobile app doesn't earn you many (if any) points.

It's really nothing "tech" about this business at all. The only reason it's on HN is because it's a YC company. All the challenges are basically business challenges. SV seem to have created a culture were you can ride on the merits of technology without any actual substance.

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 this is purely an entitled tech worker problem, you've never spent significant amounts of time in run-down laundromats.

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 don't need to install them; portable washing machines just need to be plugged into a faucet and a wall socket. They take small loads, but it's plenty for a single person.

Do you have a particular model on Amazon that you can recommend? I always thought that the only kind of washing machine is the big $600 kind that my parents had.

Sorry, I don't know the model, I just know it's a 2Kg, top loader machine. I think they're commonly sold to RV owners.

Considering that they mention a service in Los Angeles and the very specialized and expansive market in NYC (that serves WAY more than a privileged 20-something tech crowd), your characterization seems a bit unfair.

When they launch in Peoria, let me know.

That's funny you should mention Peoria because my parents live in Peoria. We may launch there sooner than you expect :)

Non-tech New Yorker here. I have a laundry unit in my apartment, but I drop off my laundry for wash-and-fold at the laundromat. It costs me about $15 every one-and-a-half weeks, on par with lunch.

You find having someone else do your laundry ridiculous. That's fine. I find every dwelling having its own laundry infrastructure similarly silly.

Given that there is already a robust wash-and-fold industry in New York which, to a large degree, already offers delivery, this start-up appears to be doing what tech does best. It has found an existing, de-centralised value chain and is using technology to make it work better.

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.

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

Startups in SV are a subset of startups in the world, and my argument applies to most of them (perspective: I don't live anywhere near SF/SV). Targeting a demo with a need and means makes sense no matter where the company is founded. If Prim had started in NYC or London or Hong Kong, would that change any of the logic here? Or do you think the commenter above would say, "oh, targeting the 20-something tech crowd with too much disposable income is OK, as long as you're not in Silicon Valley"? My point is that it makes perfect sense for Prim to target the demo it does-- nothing to do with SF. That the commenter thinks this is a problem specific to a certain region doesn't affect the argument that it's not a problem at all.

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

He's certainly complaining that a certain demographics (which I'm guessing includes him, though I am not sure, and it's not really relevant) don't get catered to by SV startup land. My point is that this isn't a good reason for bitterness.

The connection between criticizing targeting certain demographics with disposable income for completing a chore vs not catering to him (your original charge) is not made, despite your clarifications.

The original commenter was neither complaining about the world's startups, nor about lack of personal catering.

I suppose I read your comment as far more specific than you intended.

You're focusing on the negative.

What if you found out that their goal was to reduce the total number of washers, dryers, and irons in the United States? What if washers/dryers/irons are extremely inefficient and that by reaching scale PRIM reduces consumption?

It's a longshot, I know, but try to be a little less negative.

In India, these services already exist but have no mobile platform.

I live in Austin, do not have much disposable income, and have free time, but I hate doing laundry. I wish they'd come here, I'd pay their rates and cut back elsewhere.

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.

You'll notice I never complained in my comment about this idea not being "world changing". I just wanted to point out that there's been a raft of startups that cater very specifically to the demographic of people who start startups in the valley (as PG acknowledged in a sibling comment). It just seems to me that SV is becoming an echo chamber.

Every technology has its early adopters. Here are examples of not so world changing startups that changed the world with early adopters from the 'luxury' crowd. Using your same logic in a previous time might have yielded the same feedback for technologies that are world changing.

Viagra is now used to save lives.

The foldit project proved video gamers can solve complex protein folding problems.

Birth control pills were initially sold to fix first world problems and is now a leading technology in giving women control of their reproductive systems.

Maybe Prim starts here, but none of us know where it will end.

50+ years ago James Lapeyre Senior stepped on a piece of shrimp and saw the shelling come off the meat. He built the first shrimp peeler. As he commoditized the world's shrimp industry making it massively popular among the rich and then scaling it to make it price friendly, he realized that the conveyor belts that fed the shrimp peeler with shrimp were rusting.

He then went on to form a half a billion dollar modular plastic conveyor belt technology that is used by 60,000 clients. Before dying he had about 130 patents in all sorts of areas. The first digital magnetic compass etc...

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.

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 in fees don't matter much to me. I'm paying Bay Area rent, remember! The money I spend on laundry and taxis and food delivery and whatever is basically a rounding error - too small to meter.

$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.

2.5 years (well, at 4 loads per week, and given low-end units @ $800 total).

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.

Well, it's not really fair to compare the cost like that. I don't have a laundry line-item in my budget that I have to justify to a comittee- but I do have hundreds of dollars to spend on dumb ideas every week. Spending some of my disposable income on getting my laundry nicely cleaned and folded might be enjoyable enough to justify.

In the same way that I know I can cook dinner at home for just a few dollars, I still go out to restaurants several times a week and spend $20 or more on a meal. Sometimes I'd juat rather not cook, and I won't really notice the difference in the price, at least not in any long-term sense.

If it wins business, so be it.

Same's worked with home cleaning. Established dinosaurs aren't moving quickly enough or don't understand what users want in sites/apps in many cases, IMO.

To an extent you are correct although your snarky tone is lame. The same could be said of towncars and taxis, for example, but Uber has absolutely brought a new spin to the market taking large advantage of the internet and mobile to organize constituents and offer enhanced service. I don't think laundry has quite the opportunity but I don't find it necessary to belittle the effort here since there is obviously room for improvement.

Half the time I called a taxi dispatcher, the driver simply didn't bother showing up (probably found a fare on the way). Towncars want a reservation measured in hours. The new spin is having a critical mass of reliable drivers nearby. Technology is cool (especially GPS) but Uber could have worked over radio.

Reason for downvotes?

The first comment, while maybe a bit "snarky", is still very relevant and right on point. The first line of your response is why you're getting down voted. Little bit of snark > calling a comment lame.

But being snarkily sarcastic is lame while calling something out straightforwardly is not.

I'd say the downvotes you're receiving might mean this community disagrees with you... but I'm just a messenger. You asked the question.

Wow, I guess that's possible. But I wasn't that disagreeable with the post I replied to. I said it had some merit, identified a solid example to support my contention and then still hedged back towards the OP's side.

I know that downvoting hurts (no sarcasm), but just try and remember that they're internet points. If you took out "although your snarky tone is lame" and "I don't find it necessary to belittle the effort here since" you would have been fine. Complaining about downvoting is also against the guidelines, even though everyone does it now and then.

Yeah, I was wondering. It might have a nice web frontend, but otherwise... I was using a service like this in London about five years ago, and I'm pretty sure it's been a available as a service for as long as there have been people wanting clothes cleaned.

Do you remember any information about the service? Was it just a local laundromat/dry cleaner that did it? I'm looking for something just like that in London.

The one I used serves a number of postcodes in East London (and had another location in Essex) and was called "The Ironing Board". They charge by weight, their site is here, but you have to call them rather than arrange it via the web - http://www.theironingboard.com/

I would expect there to be others in other parts of the city. I could be wrong :)

--edit-- It looks like they've been doing it for 21 years!

I'm a subscriber to this service and I can verify it is awesome.

I'm rarely home (nor does my apartment or building have machines), the wash & folds close to me are known to lose laundry, and I absolutely don't have time to sit around and wait for my laundry in a laundry mat (you know, startup taking up all my time).

This service is maybe $5 more expensive than taking it to a wash & fold yourself, so it's a no-brainer.

"This service is maybe $5 more expensive than taking it to a wash & fold yourself..."

Which means the price might not be sustainable once the venture capital funding runs out, and would have to be raised to cover the company's real expenses.

Think about it:

- Prim is probably paying as much as anyone else would for the laundry services. (Why would a well-rated laundry service give Prim a discount from their usual rates? A laundry business probably has pretty slim margins, and a good one probably can get plenty of customers without offering discounts.)

- Can the extra $5 pay for the cost of the person who is picking up and delivering the laundry (a truck driver probably gets much more than minimum wage), the fuel and maintenance of the trucks, insurance, office space, computers, etc. and still provide profit for Prim?

Though by that time, with their customer base, they can guarantee bulk economical washing machines directly from manufacturers, discounted rental space, and hybrid or electric cars to further cut down costs.

"they can guarantee bulk economical washing machines directly from manufacturers..."

Do the people running this business know anything about actually washing clothes? What makes you think they could set up and operate a commercial laundry themselves and make a profit doing it? These are a couple of young Stanford grads who originally wanted to do an "in-video advertising platform".

"discounted rental space..."

Why would someone rent them commercial space at a discount?

"and hybrid or electric cars to further cut down costs..."

I don't think cars are economical for doing laundry pickups. How many 20 pound laundry bags can you fit into a car before having to go back to the laundry to drop them off? That would waste a lot of driver time, which is probably much more expensive per hour than gas.

>Do the people running this business know anything about actually washing clothes?

Funny, isn't it?

Look, I applaud anyone out there hustling for business. And in that sense, this is a very interesting small business idea. But I'm not sure how it needs (deserves? earns?) VC funding. It isn't terribly novel (there are 4 or 5 SF competitors listed in the article), there's no barrier to entry and I don't fully understand how $25 can cover all courier/labour costs without it using minimum wage labour.

Yet, somehow people are making the leap that the path leads from from here to replacing all home washers and driers with large, centralized, industrial laundromats, with hybrid electric logistics, all run by solar power? Interesting.

I think this is a tough thing to scale. But I've been wrong before.

Right, because these founders have clearly spent less time thinking about operational costs and margins than the 5 minutes you've had to think about it.

And they definitely couldn't be doing something clever to increase profits.

They must not know anything about "actually washing clothes".

>Right, because these founders have clearly spent less time thinking about operational costs and margins than the 5 minutes you've had to think about it.

I think the SV deadpool is rife with founders who spent too little time thinking about operational costs and margins.

Just sayin'.

If they base their company in California they won't get discounted rental space but if they move to a city where they have incentives they will.

I mentioned HCs and ECs as a way to save gas. They can have their own solar charging station, completely becoming independent until Tesla releases an e-truck.

It's laundry. Not terribly difficult from an operational perspective. Differentiation is the challenge, and this company seems to be doing well in that area.

> - Can the extra $5 pay for the cost of the person who is picking up and delivering the laundry (a truck driver probably gets much more than minimum wage), the fuel and maintenance of the trucks, insurance, office space, computers, etc. and still provide profit for Prim?

That would depend on how many different pickups/dropoffs the drivers can get per units of time/fuel.

I would have loved this service when I was in grad school. I lived a mile from the nearest laundromat, and I would have to put a load in my backpack and truck it over on my bike. Laundry took literally all day to do. Add in bad Florida weather and the experience was downright miserable.

I wonder if it would be cheaper to crowdsource laundry service, like an airbnb for laundry. My washer is unused all day and it would be awesome if I could rent it out. My roommate tends to be at home too during odds times of the day and probably would be willing to do loads if it meant getting paid a nice fee.

I had an argument about these type of services when Instacart showed up, not a well-thought out one, but here goes.

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.

The truth is, there is no inconvenient tasks. The only way to remove inconvenience is to enjoy the things that you do. The only way to do that is to be completely present in the here and now - concentrate on setting one foot in front of the other on the way to the convenience store. Notice the miracles all around you - the plants; the other people; the raindrops; etc.

You don't need anyone to teach you this, you already know. All you need to do is pay attention.

You'll get unhappy if you think of your trip to the grocery store as an unpleasant thing you need to "get over with" so you can do... what exactly? Laze on the couch? Is that your perfect day? All tasks become pleasant when you put your full attention into them. The suffering only occurs when you wish you were doing something else.

I sometimes think what I'd do if I were a billionaire. I'd buy a huge yacht and fill it with models. And lots of property everywhere. But then maybe I'd spend all my time managing my yacht, my properties, and my portfolio. Hold on, that doesn't sound like fun at all. Maybe I'd hire managers for the yacht and the properties... then I'd spend all my time managing the managers. Doesn't sound like fun either.

Maybe I'd sit on a beach and do nothing. But then I could do that right now. Ta.

Your story reminds me of this story. An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied only a little while. The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The American then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time? The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor." The American scoffed, "I am a Wharton MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise." The Mexican fisherman asked, "But señor, how long will this all take?" To which the American replied, "15-20 years." "But what then, señor?" The American laughed and said, That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions." "Millions, señor? Then what?" The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

Sounds like this Onion article:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/unambitious-loser-with-happ...

The part that's left out of the story is what the fisherman does when suddenly the fish aren't biting. Part of becoming wealthy is being financial secure and comfortable in any situation, not just when times are plentiful.

> Still, I'd like a start-up that instead of shifting my inconvenience to other people, removes my feeling of inconvenience itself.

A program that instills resiliency into people (a dual n-back for virtue) would change humanity forever. I could see it happening through future versions of the Oculus Rift.

I think you have good points not far from what I was getting at in my longer comment elsewhere in the thread--that of shifting personal inconveniences from mundane chores onto other humans who are likely making far less than the user of this service, and don't get to benefit from the 'value'.

They still have to go home and do their laundry.

Funding and celebrating startups should evaluate the value that is offered to users and to the people who staff the companies. There's a lot of workers who are going to get the shit end of the value proposition here.

a start-up that instead of shifting my inconvenience to other people, removes my feeling of inconvenience itself

I don't think getting a stoic to do your laundry will have the desired effect. I get what you're saying. But this is a matter of right tool for the right job. Marcus Aurelius for figuring out if you should do your own laundry or use Prim. Laundry services for doing the laundry if Marcus says it needs doing.

You can easily make doing laundry relatively nice experience, just find a nice podcast to listen to. But watching game of thrones or programming something interesting is more fun.

This kind of dynamic is not with hard to beat I think.

Not a 'challenge':

Are you or aren't you describing the whole of non-medical, non-moon landing human technological progress? (Yes, 'progress' is a loaded word, but depending on your perspective, that may be the point.)

Neolithic Rev. onward, it's been specialize, optimize, specialize, optimize. What's Excel do that you can't do with an abacus?

I wouldn't call reinventing the early 20th century progress, at least not positive progress. The service industry is largely the antithesis of a technological utopia.

Come on, Xuwen. You run a laundry service. Your shirt should not look like it's spent the last week on your floor. The guy with the faux hawk is wearing a shirt that looks how I want my shirts to look. The very least you can do is use your own product and show why it rocks, and that means wearing a freshly cleaned shirt.

Sorry that was a new shirt taken out of a box before we took a last minute photo. None of my other shirts were like that...

Don't sweat it Xuwen. Most people probably didn't notice, but I would email TC and do a re-shoot or photoshop it and replace the pic. I really like the name and branding.

It will probably come down to unbelievable consistency, ease of use / UX and customer service. As long as pricing is reasonable, you can win biz if the aforementioned is awesome. Have you looked into using a provider that uses non-toxic, eco-friendly detergents? Gotta push that hard and can run a premium level for it.

Deleted comment

Jesus christ man, your first comment was enough. You make some valid points but you're not his mother and I think we all got the advice the first time. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and a soap box...

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.

Most good ideas have precedents. The iPad was not the first tablet by a long shot. Nor was Dropbox the first service to offer syncing and backup. The difference, as here, was in subtle implementation details. But, as here, a small difference in implementation multiplied by a basic human need = great value to users.

On a related note, many of the ground-breaking Kickstarter successes were not nearly brand-new ideas. Fancy iPhone dock, smart watch, network storage and synching, these have all been done dozens of times before.

The one difference is "subtle implementation details."

Another is very slick marketing spin. The people who make the big bucks are not those who invent a new thing. It is those who present it in the right light, as a total seamless solution that solves your problem in an exciting way.

Thanks for the comment, pg.

Yes, most good ideas have precedents. I think the value of iPads and Dropbox can be assessed with qualitative and quantitative analysis in meaningful ways. With Prim, however, the subtle details belie a more problematic relationships with users and workers.

Back of the envelope calculations (sorta):

Let's say I have 4 loads of laundry per week--colors, whites, towels, sheets & blanket/comforter. A low-end top-loading washing machine and dryer cost $400 each, new. So, in 12 weeks Prim has cost me more than buying a washing machine already. Average national price from a quick search at the EPA puts water cost at $2/1000 gallons; power is about $0.10/kWh. The cost-per-load at home runs users about $0.76, or $160/yr.

Given that a washer and dryer might run me around $800 (excluding tax) for low-end options, we're looking at around 525 loads to recoup the machine cost, or 131 weeks of laundry (2.5 yrs). In those 131 weeks, we've recouped the machine expense and spent an additional $400 in laundry costs. So, we're $1200 invested into doing our own laundry at home.

Average pricing at laundromats indicate that doing 4 loads will cost me less than the price of an additional load with Prim, or about the price of that additional load when including gas to get to the laundromat if I'm driving myself (which adds maybe $1-2 per week). In those 131 weeks, we're out about $1,965 (using the Prim extra load cost as our expected laundromat cost for 4 loads per week).

Cost with Prim over those 131 weeks? $9,170. $7,970 more than doing laundry at home with a machine the user owns and can take anywhere that allows them their own machine. Or $7,205 more than relying on a laundromat if one doesn't have such a residence.

I can think of a lot of things a user can do with $7-8K that can have a qualitative impact on each user's life. That's no small chunk of change. As another commenter remarked, Prim is betting entirely on users spending (hopefully) disposable income in a way that is of dubious personal and social utility.

Outsourcing such mundane chores for the sake of profit exacts an unbalanced price--users are losing a significant amount of money for which they receive no quantifiable return, and those employed to do their chores are left with mundane work that (hopefully) provides a subsistent standard of living. It is the commodification of chores by questionable assignment of non-deterministic values for which users and workers alike are paying an unreasonably high price.

I'd be very interested in understanding the metrics by which 'great value to users' is assessed and determined by YC, as I recognize this is merely a cash assessment. Moreover, I'd be really interested in determinations of value that incorporate some notion of improving society and people's lives in a qualitative way that isn't solely reliant upon subjective measurements of convenience and relying on statements about how much productivity is lost when doing laundry--which is highly dependent upon a dubious and dismissible premise that laundry is done during typical productive/working hours.

Obviously, if users want to throw $7-8K away on having someone do their laundry for them, and someone stands up to take that money, they're going to do it. But assigning increased convenience by offloading a mundane chore onto another human, who is getting far less out of the deal, as 'great value to the user' feels very wrong.

Moreover, the business costs seem to far outweigh the revenue potential. Assuming that a Prim employee is making minimum wage, it will take about 4 users with 4 loads of laundry per week to pay his/her salary. Or, if it's users who only need a load per week, that's about 12 single-load pickups. I presume Prim covers vehicle/gas costs to make these pickups, or are Prim employees showing up to people's residences (and, gasp, possibly having a key!) with their own vehicles, thus forcing employees to shoulder the transportation costs? If, as a user, I was having Prim do my laundry, the revenue of my 4 loads per week for 2.5 years would only cover about 28 weeks of salary at minimum wage. To stick around for the 2.5 years I need them compared to doing it myself, the employee costs is going to be just shy of $40K, and that doesn't include all the other business expenses. Just to pay one employee, Prim needs about 540 users doing 4 loads per week for 2.5 years, and I'm pretty sure that person is going to be unable to make all the pickups, much less complete all that laundry. Are there really that many people out there who want to overpay a company to complete a chore they can do in their free, non-productive time, to make Prim a viable business?

Disclaimer1: I have laundry running in the background while I'm writing comments on HN. Disclaimer2: I am idealistic. Disclaimer3: You're smarter than I am, undoubtedly know all of this, and are privy to information I am not. Thanks if you read this far. :)

I'm hoping for a doctor that makes house calls.

Try Memd.me - doctor visit over video conf.

I had to go to the doctor recently. Among the 'tests' he did was to check different parts of my chest with a stethoscope (and noted that there was a mild wheeze). Another was gently pressing particular points on my throat and asked me if it hurt. He also checked how the ears, nose and throat looked by using a bright light pointed towards them. Overall he checked for a variety of things and some of them involved physical contact.

I think it would have been hard for him to do this over a video call or have the same confidence in his diagnosis if he were not able to do these 'tests' even if his diagnosis were the same.

I myself would find it hard to feel comfortable with diagnosis that I receive over a video session. In fact unless the whole pipeline for transmitting sound from one end to the other is very good, the doctor might miss some vital clues. I say this because I once saw him mention a faint whistling sound in my wife's breathing from a few feet away (which we had not noticed until he pointed it out to us). How could he notice something small like that over a video call? How could a patient be confident that the doctors are not missing something like that over the call?

I wouldn't mind receiving consultation regarding legal, financial or technical (Programming?) matters over a video call but I don't see being comfortable receiving medical consultation through a video call.

[Edit: replied to wrong post earlier, deleted that and pasted here]

That would not be terrible.

This already exists - http://www.oberweis.com/web/default.asp

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.

Touché. I should have googled beforehand.

Of course, a $3.00 delivery fee hardly seems extravagant compared to Prim charging ~33x the average cost of completing a load of laundry in one's home.

Any reason they don't just buy organic milk?

No one is going to argue that this is cheaper than doing your laundry at home. The simple fact is: people pay a premium for convenience. You should be comparing Prim's pricing with other laundry delivery services not the cost of doing laundry at home. Many laundromats deliver for free and charge between $1-1.25 per pound. If you figure that 20 lbs of laundry fits into a standard laundry bag, then Prim's per pound rate is $1.25; on par with many laundromats offering "free" delivery and pick up. Now, assuming you send your laundry out already, and Prim is offering a superior service (better customer service, an easy to manage online UI, etc) than other laundromats, selecting them as your provider is a no brainer.

*Disclaimer: I've been working on the same model as Prim for a few months and will be launching in a major city in the next few months. The economics are there, even on a small scale. Scaling up is where things get really interesting.

The milk man was a great idea during time where fewer people had cars, and milk wasn't so well pasteurized that a single gallon can last a month without going bad.

When I read the headline I thought... is "Prim" the name of a robot?

If it's not a laundry robot, I'm horribly unimpressed.

I'm confused.

Purple Tie does laundry at $1.69/lb (10 lb minimum, so $16.90 minimum) and also does pick-up at home.

How is this better?

Purple Tie doesn't have 24-hour turnaround and doesn't serve my office every day. It's not that hard to make sure I send an order while I still have several days' worth of clothes left, though.

I find this confusing. Do brick-and-mortar laundromats typically have <24hr turnarounds?

I have the impression it isn't common, though I've seen a few signs with offers like "in by 9, out by 5". https://getprim.com/FAQ#return says they commit to two days but their average return time is next day.

It's interesting to see the great lengths the TC writer goes to to justify (primarily to himself, it seems) this idea as socially valid. I would have thought the efficiency benefits of passing off home labour to specialised businesses would have been patently obvious, especially to a technology journalist. Do we really still stigmatise people as being "lazy" just for wanting to focus on their specialisation?

I also notice a similar prejudice among commenters here. Come on people, this is basic economics.

I'm confused by all of these start ups that appear to be trying to disrupt TaskRabbit. From my perspective, Prim seems to offer the exact same service that I can hire via TaskRabbit so will have the same overhead cost structure (tech, marketing, etc.) but limited revenue opportunity (only clothes washing vs. any task). My TaskRabbit does my laundry and then also does whatever else I want. She does the laundry at her house, using idle equipment that she already owns.

What am I missing?

I don't get it. Online laundry shops have been there for years. I've had my laundry picked up, washed, folded and delivered a few times.

Why does it need a Y-Combinator backed-startup? Can't wait to see a job posting asking for a "full-stack engineer". This is a typical laundry business: there's hundreds of them everywhere, all "startups" (in the original non-techy sense) who make money. They don't need a Techcrunch article, or any of that hype.

Not only it doesn't seem to "need a startup", I wonder what the founders and YC thought about the barrier to entry to the market. If there are already several competitors in this space, what would be the expected good outcome? A single company outlasting its rivals and leveraging economy of scale?

(Obviously YC is smart enough to give this a thought, curious to know what they think)

I guess leveraging economy of scale would be what they're seeking for, but that's just a typical business. Why don't they promote it as such?

Current online laundry services are physical laundry spaces, that are leveraging the internet for the area around them. I guess no one has done it at a larger scale yet.

I keep thinking that logistics is THE issue here. I understand all the comments criticizing the idea, but the idea is awesome! Who would not say otherwise? Pick up laundry? Amazing! I want it now!

But the question is on the margins and prices. Sending a truck around is no joke and it costs money. You clearly see it because Prim drops USD 10 after the first bag. That is huge (40% discount guys).

How would I go about this? Create a scheduling service. Tell people their price drops if they find other people in the neighborhood. Tell them you make it cheaper if they schedule a day of the week. Reduce the requirement. 1 bag is big for a single person, but maybe half bag no, and what about if you say, ok, if you find another half bag 0.5 km from you we come anyway?

Look at this 2 dimensions: price and quantity. You can reduce price, you can reduce quantity (the half bag), you can reduce both. Then apply these 2 dimensions to a group purchasing model. You get benefits all over the place: incentive for customers to invite other customers, no risk in running on negative margins and better deals with the laundries.

You really can play a lot with this once you look at the real aspect of the problem, which is logistics. I would love to hear your comments on this guys, this is an issue many similar start ups face.

I Just did my laundry in a Singaporean Laundromat last weekend (Thompson Plaza) - One thing that sets them aside, is that in addition for "Self Service" - where you pay $15 to use a (small) washing machine and then a Dryer, you can also have your laundry done for you at $2 - $4 per item. They will basically put your laundry in the Washing Machine, then Dryer (at too hot a heat, I noticed - never Dry your laundry with the highest setting), and then fold it and put it in a bag for you.

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.

Why is this on tech crunch at all? This is not a tech business or even special in anyway.....

You don't need any VC money to do this....this is like running a baby sitting service....

So now we have the Uber for housecleaning, laundry/dry cleaning, cooking, shopping, babysitting(?), and at some point everything else under the sun that falls into the consumer home services umbrella. These business use technology and economics of scale to deliver convenient on-demand services at a reasonable price, with the thesis that the price becomes increasingly more reasonable with continued local density and national scale.

Is there a path to this where a large home services company is formed as a roll up of all of these types of services? Once the actual services and logistics models are proven and ironed out, it would at least on the surface appear to be many major benefits to a roll up: additional scale economies from logistics / transportation, cross-training and utilization of the service workforce, single platform for payment, cross selling services, and of course your run of the mill shared services among legal, HR, accounting, etc. I think to me the point on cross training and utilization of the service workforce is especially poignant, as these services see a lot of demand volatility, so having multiple service lines help smooth out labor productivity.

This seems awesome -- I wonder if there's a market in offering this as a perk for employees, either just doing normal pickup/etc. at home, or letting smaller startups offer onsite laundry dropoff/pickup as a perk. It would kind of suck to take your clothes to work if you took transit, but if you drive, throwing a bag of laundry in your trunk and picking up a bag of clean clothes on the way home would be easy.

I've been using a similar service for a while in Japan (there are a lot of those here), http://www.wash-fold.com/.

This said: Prim is cheaper (like, half the price!), offers a guarantee, and deals with a third party laundromat, which is a good idea for scaling.

Cool.

Sheesh. The objections on this thread (SV bubble), expected objections (first world problems) and counterarguments to both (don't worry! time saved will go to raising kids, curing cancer & cooking quinoa!) make this discussion sound so puritan.

Curing cancer is great. So is raising children. Exercising. Reading. Etc. But are we saying that a laundry service is only valid if it can be justified with time spent on something wholesome or saintly? Prim sounds quirky in that it's startup-ish, but basically it's a service that does your laundry. Some people don't want to do their own laundry and will pay money to have someone else do it. Simple.

Do people that start a business doing other people's laundry really need to justify themselves?

Do people that start a business doing other people's laundry usually find themselves celebrated as a 'startup' and receive venture capital funding?

This is a news story because it has YC's name attached.

The objections and counterarguments, to me, provide valuable insight into what kinds of startups ought to be both celebrated and funded, as well as to gauging wider public reception for a service that is going to have to rely heavily on some significant pickup and economies of scale to not be a wasted investment.

That, and there are plenty of other social, economic, and environmental impacts a service like Prim poses that many, including myself, consider to be of significant concern and worthwhile evaluation in funding and celebrating such a service.

Also, that's really not what puritan means.

You're concerned about the social, economic, and environmental impacts of a laundry service?

I meant puritan in a cultural sense. The kind of impulse that says you should be doing your homework or your chores, not sitting around playing Taki you lazy no good brat.

You're not concerned about the social, economic, and environmental impacts of this laundry service? This has a far greater potential footprint than a simple neighborhood dry cleaners or wash-and-fold. Especially when it's billed as a 'startup' and pitching for venture capital or other investment to reach the point where desired economies of scale will only increase that footprint in order to provide any level of viability and persistence.

I find lack of concern for the variegated impacts any business has on social, economic, and environmental dimensions far more problematic than exhibiting and evaluating such concern. At least engaging the concern can allow someone the ability to assess such impacts in determining whether or not to fund and/or celebrate such a service.

Absolutely not. This business is common all over the world and as old as houses.

I'm not objecting as such, but I do wonder what's novel about it. I suppose making national/international business out of it is quite novel as most operations of this type tend to stay small and local.

In India we have had PRIM for decades and we call it DHOBI (The Washerman). They will come down to your place, take your clothes, Wash , Iron and Starch your clothes (also dry clean on request). Deliver them back to your place. Sometimes within the same day or the next.

Kudos on your startup. This is a lesson that business need not sound glamorous, it's all about finding someone to pay for it. With scale, it looks like you can make it work and keep the prices reasonable. Do ignore the negative comments and good luck!

Mazel Tov, if people in underserved markets find online arrangement and pricing simplicity a real value-add, more power to 'em. However, I live in <insert large city here,> where the local laundromats all do free pickup as a service anyway, so I have a hard time not thinking that for urban areas 'just walk the street nearby or talk to your neighbors, people!' Or, just do your laundry like you do your dishes in places that have machines in your building - unless you're so important and valuable you have a staff to arrange these things.

So few apartments have laundry in SV. Seems like a great place to launch this service for those of us who don't work at a company that provides laundry.

Having to spend 2.5 hours on weekends for laundry is a huge time sink for me. By the time I find a washer, find a dryer, and then run a second dry cycle because the first one didn't dry the clothes I've wasted good portion of my day on laundry. I can't leave my complex because then I'd be the neighbor who leaves clothes in the dryer all day. I'll have to checkout Prim!

So quick question, what happens if I stuff that big to it's max? Most places charge by the pound and by the type of clothing, is there any economical issues involving that?

Is it raining on the parade to remark that there are services that do this right now? Sterling Cleaners, for example, in the Washington, DC, area has been around for ages.

This looks like a horrible business. It's old (one of the world's oldest professions) and it doesn't scale (huge marginal cost). It uses unskilled labor with repetitive motion--factory like conditions. Competition is fierce: a dry cleaner already exists on practically every city block. Can someone explain the innovation? To me it looks like someone who wants to do a startup more than they have original ideas.

This is basically like Seamless, but for getting your clothes washed instead of getting yourself fed. It organizes and simplifies a very chaotic market and presents it with a nice brand, and what sounds like great customer service. Also, you send them a picture of your key and they'll come in and get your laundry. That's both innovative and awesome.

> It organizes and simplifies a very chaotic market and presents it with a nice brand, and what sounds like great customer service.

Are laundry services really a chaotic market? Generally people use the laundry services available where they live (washer/drying in apt./house or in the building/development) or use a laundromat which is usually a local business. The vast majority of laundromats I have been to offer a wash and fold service, although pickup at home is less common.

> Also, you send them a picture of your key and they'll come in and get your laundry. That's both innovative and awesome.

Is this really that innovative? There have been personal cleaning services that will do this kind of thing since forever.

The laundry company I use (in the UK) are pretty awful. They only tumble-dry on a high heat and when I first tried them (as a naïve 19 year old who figured all clothes could be tumble-dryed unless they were silk or whatever) they shrunk about £500 of brand new clothes. Looking back, I feel stupid for not checking the labels, but I've since found it very hard to find clothes that are ok at high-heat.

I have used Prim a few times and have been extremely satisfied by the quality of the service. It's also very refreshing to see the founders go out of their way to satisfy the customer.

In one instance I had to change the delivery by a few hours since I wasn't going to be home and I got an instant response. Yin Yin personally delivered the washed clothes when I was home.

Even if I have the money, I don't want more human servants, I want more automation so that the sum total of menial work done by people goes down. How about a robot that does laundry? I'm thinking of a third robot that interacts with our existing and totally fabulous washing machine and dryer robots instead of a human.

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 dishwasher, stove, fridge, washer, and dryer if it worked out. But then again, it's probably super hard to build such a thing.

They do have laundry robots, they just sit on the floor and you turn dials to configure them and dump your laundry into them.

I think you probably missed what I said higher up.

> I'm thinking of a third robot that interacts with our existing and totally fabulous washing machine and dryer robots instead of a human.

I think you probably missed the wry ironic subtext in my comment. How fucking entitled are we as people that it isn't enough to have machines take care of the hard part of laundry, they have to do the easy part, too?

Oh. Yep, I basically agree with you.

Menial work is going down. This isn't a personal servant, it's a business that's able to batch, scale, and prioritize like a scaled business.

Right now, doing laundry in your own homes, it takes exactly 10 people to do 10 loads of laundry. We can reduce this to one or two people by centralizing all of this work to specialized workers, if not less.

If we go by the goal of fewer people spending less time doing menial labor, this is a clear win.

I actually just don't understand why one person picking up 10 loads of different people's laundry, doing the laundry, and delivering back the folded loads requires less total minutes of work than 10 people doing 10 loads of laundry at home. Yes, it takes less people, but those people spend their lives doing laundry. Yes, servants are specialized workers.

I think there may be marginal efficiencies over people taking their clothes to a laundromat in some cases. But I've never heard of anybody with washer and dryer at home using a laundry service. Typically they'll just hire a maid to do their laundry if they really need it.

I've been using these guys and they're great. Obviously they're thinking hard about every element of the service experience.

While there are plenty of places that do this kind of thing, none are delivering great service at the scale they're shooting for.

No doubt this isn't the last service they're going to improve via service design.

I had this idea, though I envisioned hardcases with RFID tags and a laundry robot that read them -- But nice to see it was a good idea.

And yeah, it's a solution to a first world problem that only really occurs to 20 something tech crowd people, but, in the end, there's a market, and they're serving it. Simple as that.

Marriott just charged me $200 to wash a single bag. I did not realize it would be so expensive. Each item had a safety PIN with a number I had to remove myself. This service sounds like something I would be interested in when I am traveling and I don't want to carry a heavy luggage with me.

Are you trying to sell this to businesses as an employee perk or just DTC right now?

I'm guessing most employers who offer this service have people bring their clothes on site to be picked up (anyone with experience please weigh in). Your angle is to eliminate that piece, so that may be a good selling point.

http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/prim-co-...

I hope they fold better than his shirt expresses.

It bothered me that the two co-founders are wearing creased unironed t-shirts with their company logo on them.

If they're not fussed about wearing clean ironed clothes for a photoshoot why should I trust them with my laundry.

25$ to avoid loading your washing machine? damn! That is real laziness.

When co-founding a laundry related service and promoting it in a photo while wearing a branded t-shirt, wouldn't it be a good idea if that t-shirt wasn't full of wrinkles? ;-)

I think this is a cool idea, and wish the founders success with it.

One tangential phrase stood out to me: give them a copy of your key or send a photo of it.

Interesting.

The most tedious and boring part of laundry is ironing and i guess it is not included(?) - they say 'fold' but it doesn't mean ironing(?)

Does anyone know about how many pounds in one of their bags? How does the pricing compare to $1/lb (with free pickup/delivery)?

I've used Prim, and had a great experience. I was surprised at how much the bag weighed by feel, but I didn't weigh it. Basically we filled a 13 gallon kitchen garbage bag the first time, which was about 2 loads of laundry if I were to do it myself. Fill a kitchen size garbage bag and weigh it...

A pretty awesome idea!

I wonder how the competition with the wash and fold at the corner near me would work?

Not having to walk it over seems pretty nice though...

I'm a user, Prim is awesome. Hoping they branch out a bit, and can help me do my dishes too (only 50% kidding).

I think the last sentence of the faq has a typo:

> We will bend over backgrounds to resolve your concerns.

TIL in the US people don't have washing machines.

Next we need Priss. The laundry service with a sneer!

changing the world, eh?

An unfortunate name in the light of PRISM revelations.

I read it as Prism as well.

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