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 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.
Where is your $100 going for getting your laundry done?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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
Even with lowball estimates, my cost for washing is double yours - 30+c/kWh... sigh.
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.
Context switches are expensive. Moreso for some of us than others. Laundry can easily kill an hour of my productivity.
Where is $100 an hour entry level? Wowsers...
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.
Are founders overly homogeneous?
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?
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?
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.
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."
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.
I never even though to just outsource to existing laundromats / dry cleaners. Ha!
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.
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."
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
I don't think the commenter was remarking on the lack of personal catering he experiences from SV startup land.
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 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.
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.
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.
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...