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?
Are founders overly homogeneous?
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.