tezclarke

OP here - this was my first post on HN, loved it. Thanks for all the discussion, it helped challenge and solidify my thinking.

Where there's a consolidated critical asset like the concrete plant, they can monopolize the area. Different with PC when the work is being done by individual techs on their routes.

Also I'm starting with the goal "Be the best pest control company" and building up from there, rather than to monopolize it.

It's only going to get easier, cheaper and faster to build these things for yourself. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, and the other way around is increasing now. Industry insiders building their own tools to solve specific problems.

On residential - lots of people don't want to get their hands dirty. For commercial - it's rarely worth doing in-house and in manufacturing / food industries getting it wrong can lead to fines / closure losing contracts, so it's not worth penny pinching.

For the d2d residential services, you're buying peace of mind and usually the provider will guartantee the service. E.g. if you see ants and you're not due a visit until next month, they'll drop in and sort it.

Getting the initial conversation even to research (not just to sell to) is more difficult than before for these reasons.

We plan to build more technology in house than PE does. We will start with this first small acquisition, learn and go from there. It might grow by more acquisitions, franchising or organically by attracting the right technicians over, or having a better training program to quickly train and get experience for new guys

Tough as consumer goods are generally getting cheaper and better quality. Can’t remember the last time we had a problem with the TV. We have left them behind when moving apartments as they’re relatively cheap now

It’s the business characteristics I like. Recurring and one off revenue, big market, growing, regulations. The exam barrier to entry rather than 4y apprenticeship like plumbing

Agree.

A lot of people have been sold a lie about uni education (and willingly bought it in a lot of cases).

AI slop - you've sent me the same message on linkedin and you vibe coded that two minutes ago.

They killed it. "A better way to rent"

I give this example as I previously worked at a big European REIT. My job was to implement renewable energy across the portfolio which on paper was a no-brainer due to legislation and grants / feed in tariffs etc.

We got huge pushback from every angle with the local teams, people paying lip service to drag it out and delay. Eventually I got to the root cause... The capex had to come out of the business unit, and the payback would negatively affect their KPIs and bonus. Next time I came across this kind of issue, I asked to see the incentive structure before approaching anyone.

The best outcome is bespoke software for every company and small "ops heavy" (in startup context) startups have a window to grow like weeds. Imagine the culture shock and legal / procurement process for an established player to bring a vendor in to build this for them. It won't work, it needs to be an internal team, but even then, the internal politics, and short term affects to people's bonuses and incentives will make it almost impossible.

The regulations for pesticide use are really tightening up, especially in California. Today's treatments often don't kill the pest, rather they make them feel a bit sick and they move along to more welcoming environments like you say.

Pest control is about 60% consolidated, and I don't want to pick the fight of convincing the top 5-6 to buy more SaaS or AI. Realistically they're looking to Salesforce for leadership there.

I see today's consolidation as fragile though, and it's not locked in forever. I'm better at building a competitor where I have full influence of the customer and worker experience, and I have the patience to see it through.

Part of shaping my thinking here is 1) knowing what I'm good at, much better than I did before, and 2) in my previous company we built a heavy equipment telematics platform which was used on about 1/3 of the UK's infrastructure projects. JCB (an equipment OEM with their own bad version of what we were doing) threw the kitchen sink at field sales and account management, and they had reach into all the sites across the country. It was an eye opener and good lesson about go to market for enterprise sales in traditional industries.

It'll go further - bespoke software for the specific company. The exam training is a good example - people have different learning preferences so why can't we cater to that automatically if we already have all the data and context?

Voice input that actually works to reduce screen time and distractions while driving or wearing gloves on site. Understanding and reacting to parking availability in cities, prompting the technician to upsell in the way the system knows he's most comfortable with (so he actually does it).

Incumbents will have to base this on Salesforce and adapt it which is expensive and a grind. Even if they have appetite for that, retraining the technicians who are used to the existing way will be horrendous.

The training was basically to sit and read books all day, and it could be so much faster. Surprisingly there is no reliable test / quiz prep tool available online, just some free ones that contain errors.

Given this company is basically the best, they should really build their own revision / quiz tool. The most valuable part of training was a webinar which I took notes from, and turned into revision cards alongside info from the books and revised the way I know works for me. They could do this bespoke for each trainee in seconds now.

Agree, and can't be skipped (can be accelerated though)

Ask for forgiveness, not permission!

Much more difficult to get attention from blue-collar decision makers than it was previously. Also bc there's a ton of investment in the sector now, so they're bombarded by inbound!

Cash flow and accounts receivable management is a headache for these guys

Love this one. You are selling people their time back with a service like wallpapering for sure.

I know exactly who you’re talking about

and not competing - we are looking at a different location and sector, not that I think they'd even consider us as competition anyway

No, and to be absolutely clear, you should not be dishonest or fabricate.

I was up front that I was exploring getting back into blue-collar, coming off the closure of my startup, and that I wanted to get into sales but wasn't sure if this would be a long term thing as it's a totally new industry for me.

We were aligned on giving the technician job a try before moving into sales, and it's common for people to take that path as you can't really sell the services if you've not done the job for a bit.

Important context - I am not a tech millionaire. The top guys regionally at these companies earn $500k+, and some are in the $Ms, so if there was a route to be top pest guy at BigCo, I was up for it!

I'm non-technical so I don't code, although I'm able to do a lot more myself than a year ago, with AI / claude cowork.

Absolutely not.