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Your Mechanic (YC W12) Wins TC Disrupt
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ajaymehta 14y agoCongrats to Art and the team! Well deserved. When is Your Mechanic coming to SF?
- alexaleesf 14y agoOur plan is to launch service there in a few months. Thanks for asking!
- uptown 14y agoWe should all go talk about it on Shaker. http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2012/09/techcrunch-disrupt-where-are-they-now.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2012/09/techcrunch-disrupt...
- dusing 14y agoI prefer Yammer
- ivankirigin 14y agoawesome. I've used them, and the service was great.
- wilfra 14y agoCongrats! I just put in an order to have my AC fixed tomorrow. Hopefully it works out, I hate going to mechanics, but my high mileage car demands that I do so often.
- alexg0 14y agoCongratulations to Art. Great job!
- nodesocket 14y agoThe pitch did not impress me, it felt rehearsed, awkward, and lacking a "wow" factor. If I may be honest, not trying to be negative or troll, but most startups that pitched and demo'd at Disrupt don't excite me. The exception was last year's BitCasa, who ironically lost to Shaker. Strange world we live in sometimes.
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- hartror 14y agoEdit: deleted comment I replied to was saying two of the judges were investors in the company. Wow really? If that is the case how can they not have received favorable treatment? Even with the best of intentions those judges must be intimate with every aspect of the business and would be unable to separate that knowledge from what the other judges are basing their decisions on. I know the TC bias bashing is a bit of a meme here on HN but is hard to get away from when things like this crop up.
- rdl 14y agoThose two investors were investors in many of the entrants and finalists.
- pbreit 14y agoFunding announcement[1] includes SV Angel (David Lee) and CrunchFund (Mike Arrington). Not sure the best way to handle this when you're trying to get the best judges and most promising startups. But it does smell. 1: http://www.pehub.com/165503/do-publish/ http://www.pehub.com/165503/do-publish/
- ry0ohki 14y agoNo surprise, CrunchFund was also a funder in Shaker before it won last year.
- davidwhodge 14y agoCongrats guys!
- shortlived 14y agoI need serious repairs requiring a lift. How do they do this "on site"?
- nodesocket 14y agohttp://goo.gl/WT7YZ http://goo.gl/WT7YZ Sorry had too. :)
- Danieru 14y agoI know there is a sunk-cost aspect to writing a comment, realizing it is "sup-optimal", yet posting it anyway. I implore you need to resist letting this fallacy get the better of you. Some of my best contributions to HN are when I close the tab before posting a bad comment.
- Element_ 14y agoThere are portable hydraulic car lifts on the market that would easily fit in the back of a cubevan/small truck. e.g: http://www.asedeals.com/images/MSC6K-portable-post-lift-5.jpg http://www.asedeals.com/images/MSC6K-portable-post-lift-5.jp...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- exue 14y agoThe pitch may be a bit awkward and I can't attest to the quality of other contestants, but I have a good impression overall from Your Mechanic. Car repair is heavily stuck in the 20th-century model of businesses. Individual shops open from 8am to 5pm, you want to find someone good? Without Yelp you're basically relying on word of mouth to not get ripped off, or Yellow Pages. The main form of contact is calling mechanics up, driving around the city at 8am before I go to work and then dropping it off. Sometimes I get in to my favorite shop and they have too many cars and can't help me. My options are now come back another day, or heading to a random unknown shop if it's urgent - risking the cesspool of bad mechanics. Google offers onsite oil change and basic maintenance, which is a much better experience than taking an hour + off to run back and forth in business hours. I've had to go to the shop many times in the past 9 months, and overall the logistics have not been a great experience. The only thing is I don't really trust Your Mechanic to offer me a reliable/honest mechanic - I've been relying on referrals, reviews and Yelp to find places, some good experiences, some bad. I feel like Your Mechanic's system may or may not be good depending on how ratings and the network effects work out. Overall I'm excited for Your Mechanic to start making some changes.
- soup10 14y agoWow, is there anything google doesn't offer as a benefit? Something strikes me as odd about a Corp that has it's tentacles involved in so many aspects of daily life. Why not just offer higher salaries? Seems like all the perks are designed to make you feel dependent on google, make it inconvenient to leave, and live a lifestyle that benefits google. That's probably just my tinfoil hat speaking though. Just seems a bit creepy to be dependent on your employer for so many everyday things.
- theatrus2 14y agoI'm sure all of the perks (and good salary, work satisfaction) are part of their efficiency optimization and retention play. If you don't have to leave for mundane daily things, perhaps you'll get more work done.
- lacker 14y agoThe on-site oil changes aren't free. I'm not sure if Google even spends any money on it. They basically just let a mechanic set up shop in the parking lot one day a week. It's nice because it saves time, not because it saves money.
- sinak 14y agoFor reference, the other finalists were: Lit Motors (runner up): http://litmotors.com/ http://litmotors.com/ Expect Labs: http://www.expectlabs.com/ http://www.expectlabs.com/ Gyft: http://www.gyft.com/ http://www.gyft.com/ Prior Knowledge: https://www.priorknowledge.com/ https://www.priorknowledge.com/ Saya: http://www.saya.im/ http://www.saya.im/ Zumper: http://zumper.com http://zumper.com
- wamatt 14y agoInterested if anyone had any thoughts on Prior Knowledge's predictive DB, Veritable. https://www.priorknowledge.com/ https://www.priorknowledge.com/
- capkutay 14y agoCould it serve as a replacement to running mapreduce on large sets of data?
- fchollet 14y agoMy personal opinion is that it might be too early for this kind of product to find a real market. The value proposition will seem unclear to almost every potential user. They're not the only players in the field, by the way: https://www.numenta.com/index.html https://www.numenta.com/index.html
- pawelwentpawel 14y agoWatching Lit Motors presentation definitely gave me the "I want one" face expression. I hope to see some of their vehicles on the street one day. The video in which their creation is being hit by a jeep was very impressive too. Zumper gave a very good pitch too. They went straight to the point, showed a product that works well and solves the problem that I'm currently having. "Neighbourhood preview" is a great idea and I'm eager to see them starting it in London. Finding a good flat (browsing through all the scams and incomplete craiglisty ads) over there is a challenge!
- swah 14y agoKinda OT, but how are companies usign Google Maps? Isn't it very easy to outgrow its limits?
- jcampbell1 14y agoCongrats to the team. I thoroughly checked out the site, and this is clearly backed by a smart team. I see dozens of subtle smart decisions, and no obvious mistakes. Compared to YC companies, they are way ahead on SEO and other web marketing strategy. YC demo day companies tend to suck at SEO in obvious ways.
- sk5t 14y agoI would downvote this comment for extreme, petulant vagueness if I had the karma to do so.
- newman314 14y agoAgreed. If we are going to "pump" up the SEO factor, things like https://www.yourmechanic.com/book/#/addj=10021 https://www.yourmechanic.com/book/#/addj=10021 for "Car is not starting" would not be in place. Instead, maybe something like https://www.yourmechanic.com/fix/10021/car-is-not-starting https://www.yourmechanic.com/fix/10021/car-is-not-starting So yeah, I wouldn't necessarily hold this site up as heavily SEO optimized. Nothing against the company as they are a young company just not a good example IMO.
- jcampbell1 14y agoI don't think pumping is necessary. Their site is not a solution to the general case of "car is not starting", thus should not have a page for that. That would be gaming google, which is fine, but a bad first move for a startup. I'll now call out YC companies to prove my point. I went to the techcrunch demo day round 1, and have a look at http://vastrm.com/ http://vastrm.com/ It is a complete SEO disaster. No reasonable advisor would have said that was a good idea for an e-commerce company.
- artag 14y agowe are getting there :). more like yourmechanic.com/problem/car-is-not-starting - some place where you can all the common reasons etc. There are a lot of things we need to improve.
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- npguy 14y agoSolid Gap. Anyone with a car can appreciate the problem !
- artag 14y agoThank you for posting this!
- jpeg_hero 14y agothe term "shade tree mechanic" comes to mind.
- newman314 14y agoSome config issues? curl -I https://www.yourmechanic.com https://www.yourmechanic.com HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Server: nginx/1.2.2 Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 05:05:23 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 168 Connection: keep-alive Vary: Accept-Encoding
- staunch 14y ago$ curl -I -A Mozilla https://www.yourmechanic.com HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.2.2 ...snip... They're "blocking" curl for whatever reason.
- newman314 14y agoInteresting. I wonder how this is configured in nginx. Edit: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/unix-linux-appleosx-bsd-nginx-block-user-agent/ http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/unix-linux-appleosx-bsd-nginx-b... On a different note, I think it's rather odd they find the time to block user agents but do not have HSTS set.
- alexchamberlain 14y agoThat is broken still. I doubt they can justify UA sniffing for the homepage.
- noonespecial 14y agoI'm just wondering here: Might it be hard to find a mechanic like this in February in Minneapolis?
- goggles99 14y agoThis is the same thought that came to my head. Weather conditions would certainly cause a problem. Heat, rain, snow. How could a mechanic come to your office and do work on your car 2/3 of the year? the conditions won't permit it. I suppose if everyone lived in San Diego, CA things would work out great though. I suppose that the mechanic could come pick up your car at work and drive it to their garage/shelter - then drive it back (why don't auto shops do this now for a small fee?).
- Gustomaximus 14y agoIt could be problematic on the keys swap-over as you would still meet up. Though this just got me thinking, wouldn't having your mobiles RFID/NFC also do car entry & startup be cool! That must be in the works somewhere. Alternatly some mechanics offer courtesy cars, so you can stay on the road while your car is being fixed.
- pbreit 14y agoIt sounds like repair estimates are going to be freely available so I wonder if YourMechanic becomes a reference-able source of quote information for negotiating purposes?
- rprasad 14y agoNo. Repair estimates are already freely available. Just google the parts you need to replace. The price you see (plus taxes) should be what you pay to your mechanic. Unless you're getting major work done (i.e., dent removal), a reputable mechanic will only charge for parts, not for labor. If you've never actually had that experience with your mechanic, I suggest you look around b/c you've been getting ripped off.
- pbreit 14y agoMy experience is typically the opposite: parts at cost and charges for labor.
- scapa 14y agoProduct looks really useful and I might end up using one of these sometime in future. The pitch really sucked with thick accent and would be lot better if it came in natural way.
- goggles99 14y agoJust checked Your Mechanic. $40 for an oil change? no thanks. Not worth the convenience. It will fail at these prices.
- cwilson 14y agoHave you ever taken an Uber? People are paying double the cost of a regular cab and Uber is doing extremely well. People will pay for convenience. Personally, I've gone way over the time in which I should have changed my oil dozens of times simply because it's inconvenient and I have better things to do. I'm also not even sure what an average oil change costs? Without that knowledge, because I haven't done it often enough to know, $40 actually seems perfectly reasonable.
- ebiester 14y agoI'll pay it. I don't have to take my car to a mechanic? That saves me an hour. The extra 10 dollars is an acceptable convenience charge. (Now, I know you think, everyone can just change their own oil! But for those of us who are apartment dwellers without space for all of the tools? We're a bit stuck. That's not counting the places where we aren't allowed to change our own oil -- I'm not sure how Your Mechanic will work around this. I'm more worried they won't be able to get the density required to make this worthwhile in the first place.
- artag 14y agoyea, it is really hard to compete on oil change price. 80% of our services are price competitive (even up to 30% less expensive).
- ramanujan 14y agoHow much are a few hours of your time worth? Even a one hour savings easily saves $40. Absolutely worth it for the convenience, would shell that out in a second if someone would come by and fix it while I coded.
- branchan 14y agoTell us, how much do you pay for an oil change and around how much do you get paid per hour?
- goggles99 14y agoLit Motors - YES, very interesting. This is something that I could see take off if the cost is not too high. There are so many commuters these days and so little carpoolers.
- colinshark 14y agoThey are estimating a $24k launch price, which I think is optimistic. That assumes they have secured a supply chain, and know all their costs well. I'm pretty tapped in to all things motorized. They needed to aim a bit lower, here. An up-market product is not going to provide much of a revolution.
- rish_cloudmagic 14y agoCongratulations to them. Does seem like an age old industry to 'disrupt'
- prawn 14y agoAre mobile mechanics a new thing in the US or is this different? Lubemobile here in Australia has been around for 30 years and I'm sure there are competitors. Is it just the collation and quoting that's novel?
- rprasad 14y agoNo, mobile mechanics exist in the U.S. However, the service providers are either (1) very expensive, top-of-the-line, and operate on the concierge model, or (2) not worth the gas they spent getting to you or whose skillsets are limited to very basic repairs. Type 1 will not use YourMechanic because it will cut into their profit margins significantly and they don't need a 3rd party middle-man to get business. Type 2 will use YourMechanic. They can handle simple stuff, i.e., the stuff that will take a shop 10-15 minutes to repair. For anything more complicated, your SOL.
- brianbreslin 14y agoI was talking about this idea with my friend who is a master mechanic for GM, and he didn't like the idea. His reasons were: - Working on someone's pavement outside is awful - Car falls off the lift hurts mechanic, its homeowner's fault - Oil and chemical disposal isn't accounted for - People usually don't properly diagnose their problem, so you wouldn't have most parts ready. - Most luxury dealerships will pickup and drop off your car for service in major metro areas. (his dealership picks up as far as 3 hours drive away) His other suggestion was to build a barbershop model whereby the independent shop owner rents the repair bays to independent mechanics.
- leoedin 14y agoThe "working on the pavement" point is spot on. If you've ever tried to do anything more than a simple job on a car without a good set of tools and a car lift, then you'll be completely aware of how horrible it can be. For small jobs (change the brake pads, change the oil), this might make sense (but they're not the kind of job you tend to get ripped off on). For large jobs (change the clutch without good access?) it would simply be horrible for the mechanic. There's a reason everyone who works on their own cars desires a pit or car lift.
- adrianbye 14y agoi think its people like your GM friend that this startup is working to disrupt. a lot of backyard mechanics can do a great job very cheaply.
- wglb 14y agoBut isn't the master mechanic from GM the competition to this idea? Consider the "disrupt" part of the event.
- branchan 14y agoNo, I would like to think that a master mechanic's job might not be as simply as changing fluids, brake pads or diagnosing engine fault codes. Imagine doing engine repair or changing the clutch on your driveway without a lift? It would take many times as long for the mechanic to finish and he would rather just take 3 separate jobs in that same span of time. Yes, the idea of the startup has its merit, but like the windshield repair service that was mentioned earlier, the services offered by the mechanics will probably only include the most basic of repairs.
- dbot 14y agoThe problems I see with services like auto mechanics, home services providers, etc. are three-fold: 1. The time it takes out of your day to fix the problem; 2. The knowledge disparity between the vendor and customer, exacerbated by the need to have the issue fixed quickly (no time to check veracity); 3. The fact that many of these services have business models that focus on upcharging after customer lock-in. For example, I've read that some quick lube shops are expected to get an additional 50% above the oil change cost out of each customer.. This service seems to help with the first issue, not so much the others. For example, if the mechanic comes over and diagnoses several, expensive problems and is now saying it will cost $X to fix, you either have to accept it and pay or send the person home, which wastes everyone's time. That recently happened to me with an electrician I found on a daily deals site. All I wanted was a pair of outlets installed, and he put together a work order for more than $1000 in "needed" repairs. I just asked him to leave. My house is still standing and my regular electrician disagreed about the necessity of those repairs. It shouldn't be surprising that the best shops are always really busy and, frankly, I doubt they will have the time or interest in participating in something like this. (Not to be a downer, I love the idea...these are just the issues I see.)