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I wanted to build vertical SaaS for pest control, so I took a technician job
- microbuilderco 7mo ago[dead]
- skillflow_ai 7mo ago[dead]
- zhainya 7mo agoYou took a job as a tech in order to learn about pest control business so you could build a SaaS platform? Do I understand that correctly? In the end you decided not to build a SaaS and started your own pest control company?
- tezclarke 7mo agoI wanted to get in the field for real, see how it works. There is going to be a lot more people exploring blue-collar work as white collar jobs are eliminated. I plan to acquire the traditional operator I've identified, and tech-enable it. If that works, grow it as a platform by either acquiring other companies or attracting technicians over.
- truetraveller 7mo agoCongrats, and genius move. And great hustling, show's there's no way out of hard-work. Reminder to myself to pick an industry that's always gonna have demand. We recently paid ~$200 for a 30 minute visit to seal off like 3 tiny holes around the perimiter of our house because of mice (actual cost of materials ~$5).
- tezclarke 7mo agoLots of guys working at the big companies do this type of work (called exclusion) on the side. One guy where I worked charged a restaurant $8k for exclusion work that took 2-3 days out of hours and $500 in materials. I asked the company why we let this work go - they don't want the liability and relative hassle compared to steady service routes.
- 1970-01-01 7mo agoSo how is hiring going to be handled at this new company? Is he expecting people to just show up and start working?
- tezclarke 7mo agoWe will recruit technicians who are aligned with the tech-enabled approach.
- MisterTea 7mo agoInteresting pivot. What I don't understand is how the SaaS software fits into it or helps grow a pest control company.
- relaxing 7mo ago[dead]
- tezclarke 7mo agoI don't believe SaaS is a good option in this sector - the incumbent VSaaS is decent, cheap, and ubiquitous. By "tech-enabling", I mean layering tech into the ops where it adds value and helps to scale the business. Obvious wins are upselling, hands-free data entry to the CRM, smart traps/stations. My choice is to compete as a tech-enabled operator, rather than sell AI/SaaS to incumbents.
- fma 7mo agoSimilar boat here. Many of these service industries are cheap. I've built my own CRM/management system that no big company will ever touch. Even if I can sell to 1000 companies and charge them $25 a month...I'd have staff overhead, maintenance to support it. SaaS isn't some little photo editing app or something you can just launch and forget. I'd rather grow my business and make as much money. If I can crush it with my business I'd make more than that.
- tezclarke 7mo agoYeah agree - software needs to either do a ton more, be much cheaper, have network effects (such as connecting supply and demand), or some data benefit to avoid being built in-house or replicated. Also for me there's an element of picking the pain I want to solve for. I've run a software company before, and prefer the tech-enabled route personally.
- alberth 7mo agoI’m genuinely inspired by your journey. One question for clarity: why don’t you see an opportunity to sell AI or other technology into this space again? Is it just because incumbents already have it locked up and it’s cheap? The reason I ask is that this feels like one of those moments in history similar to mobile. PlanGrid succeeded because tradespeople suddenly had iPhones and iPads in the field, which made it possible to digitize blueprints and collaborate in real time. Put differently, what could be the new “PlanGrid” for your industry - that AI makes possible now, the way mobile once did for construction?
- johnea 7mo agoGTM? Does that mean Get The Money? Assuming everyone knows your acronyms is just not a good writing style. Since I couldn't understand how s/w was going to get opossums out of anyone's basement, I think the correct decision was made: hands on! You deserve accolades for making this choice. Good Job! Like any physical trade, this is by it's nature a local only endeavor. So a web presence that is primarily visible to geographically local potential customers would be most effective. Any aggregation is really just a way to skim some of the profits from the people actually doing the job. That is to say, GTM according to my definition above. Personally, when I can't get an in-real-life personal referral to some trade, and I'm forced to do web search, I always spend extra time to try to find a web page that is put up by a local company, not an aggregator. Things like plumers.com (this is a totally made up example, not referring to any real website) I find to be extremely irritating. Since they have absolutely nothing to do with whoever will eventually show up and do the work. This form of aggregation through, is extremely common today, and a very large part of why the modern internet sucks. craigslist.com (the actual website) used to be a good example of referring local services, until it was overrun with spammers and scammers. Will this correct? Will we proceed to the dead internet? Who knows! What next weeks exciting episode to find out...
- stbtrax 7mo agobizarre take and writing style. if the saas enables them to be more efficient it's overall net positive
- 9x39 7mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-to-market_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-to-market_strategy GTM is ubiquitous on the business side. If you read his post, there's significant effort not "catching opossums" but waiting or churning through admin overhead - wasted time, which maybe he can translate into $. This much inefficiency is...common in many businesses.
- tezclarke 7mo agoGo to market - e.g. how to sell your thing. For residential / consumer markets, referrals are the gold standard and I agree to an extent about the local focus. A lot of PE (private equity) backed roll-ups result in a worse customer and worker experience as they try to force scale too fast. Some PE companies will open a local market by initiating acquisition conversations with all local players, low ball everyone, buy some and for a short period dramatically reduce pricing to force the hold-out cohort to sell at an even lower price. Not good for communities. The unlock to balancing scale and customer / worker experience is creating the right incentives for people to adopt the behaviors you're after. This is why bolting on SaaS or AI to established companies is tough, as the staff often don't want to change and will leave - which is bad in a tight labor market. Searching for home services online is totally broken and is a tax on buyers and operators. HVAC contractors pay on average $600 for a closed lead from online ads, and close about one in four / one in five leads.
- mememememememo 7mo agoI'd love if this ends up being he gets a 1m/y pest control empire going and quits tech startups as he prefers the sweaty kind.
- tezclarke 7mo agoThis is going to be the route for a lot of white collar people as they lose their jobs to AI.
- mememememememo 7mo agoAbsolutely. I am thinking what my blue collar alter ego will be.
- DrewADesign 7mo agoI hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as a recent white->blue collar convert, (union metalworker,) tech workers are usually far less qualified than your average vocational high school graduate, way less physically capable, and waaaaay less tolerant of the sort of workplace unpleasantries in these types of jobs at the entry level. Your tech experience gets you pretty much zero advantage, and there are lots of very smart people outside of the software world that have put a whole lot more thought into that industry than you have. Consistently high labor demand meant companies had to comparatively treat tech workers with kid gloves, and as a result, most don’t realize how much smoke has been blown up our assess for decades. They start as soft, arrogant, maladroit noobs who will cosplay as working class for a couple weeks and either eat crow and stick with it long enough for their boss to not want to throw them off a bridge, or give up/get fired and try to pay the bills doing zero-entry-barrier gig work. I was fortunate enough to have been a blue-> white collar covert a couple of decades ago so I knew what I was getting into. The fantasy that a tech worker landing in a blue collar field will naturally rise above the rabble and shoot to the top is a workplace version of the fantasy where a white person finds themselves in some jungle full of “savages” and is so inherently impressive and sophisticated that they’re immediately made king.
- clcaev 7mo agoI liked that you picked a service that has a relatively low barrier to entry. The real asset are local operators and referrals. Making them more efficient without being controlled by a big company would be a boon for everyone involved. Consider being a platform coop with regional operators as members. See https://platform.coop/ https://platform.coop/
- tezclarke 7mo agoYes, the barrier here is the desire to study and pass the exam. If willing, you are up and running relatively quickly - but only as a technician under someone else's operating license. To get the operator license (eg to be a full on pest control company) requires 2+ year documented experience and another set of exams. The operating license holder is also on the hook for legal action if (when) things go wrong. "Control" is interesting and I have found in all trades that people value their freedom. The good companies don't monitor employees too tightly, and are rewarded with loyalty and longer tenures generally. Of course you have to run a good recruitment and referral process to find the good people!
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- DrewADesign 7mo agoI’ve never heard of platform Co-ops. Cool! Lots of people predicted that a beloved local coffee shop was doomed to fail when the workers got a loan and bought it to run as a completely flat cooperative. It’s been a few years and they are absolutely killing it. I’d love to see the tech version of that.
- clcaev 7mo agoThere is still much to be worked out, but some smart people are working on it. See also https://e2c.how/ https://e2c.how/
- DrewADesign 7mo ago
- colesantiago 7mo agoThere is definitely money in the pest control SaaS business, mine is running at $2M ARR for a few years now. There are lots of antiquated operators not having newer technology for pest control, which makes this area lucrative for even $50K MRR. Go for it!
- tezclarke 7mo agoCongrats - what's the company called?
- d675 7mo agoalso starting in a blue-collar field soon as an operator-ish in a facility management company. I've already lined up an awesome new SaaS in the main industry. Pest control will be one of the verticals the company has customers fo so I will be keeping an eye for it, was thinking of just starting a pest control business it self. Does your software do anything fancy or is mostly for organization, good workflow, and being the central source of truth? Did it require a lot of development after getting a few customers on boarded? are you a 1 man show?
- bashtoni 7mo agoI love this, the perfect antidote to all the stupid startup-bro grind bullshit posts. You put in real work to understand the business landscape and typical pain points. With AI, implementing solutions has become much easier but knowing what the problems are and how to solve them hasn't.
- dsalzman 7mo agoDoing something similar. Bought a business in the petroleum equipment service space. Building internal tools for ourselves. Pen and paper still dominates the industry.
- spenczar5 7mo agoDoes it matter that pen and paper dominate? How much of the business's expenses are overhead?
- jofzar 7mo agoI worked in scheduling and timekeeping industry for a little bit, when pen and paper is mentioned you think "oh it's just notes written, and some other things" but in reality it's literally whole departments storing everything in daily/weekly sheets/binders and it's like 20 people's job to keep it all in order and keep the ship running for next week. When someone asks what the plan is for next week, the answer is normally, it needs to be written out, or I'll have to find this for you etc.
- christoff12 7mo agoYeah, my first job at a startup was at an oil and gas saas that ingested unstructured data into a standardized db for smaller operators.* "How much money did we make yesterday?" was a nontrivial question that required a several people a couple of days to compile manually before our software. --- * Would probably make a killing today; this was over a decade ago and the extraction was 98% regex and custom if statements
- deweywsu 7mo agoWould you recommend buying a business over starting one from scratch when possible?
- dsalzman 7mo agoDepends on the industry and your experience plus your access to capital. Sorry for the non-answer
- system2 7mo agoHow long was the employment at the pest company? At any point, did anyone treat you like you were stealing their business? I thought about this approach, but I chickened out many times because of the possible confrontation.
- tezclarke 7mo agoNo, 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!
- system2 7mo agoThank you. This story is a reminder that all these niches we pass on assuming they are not worth pursuing are actually thriving quietly in the background.
- nomilk 7mo agoLove stories like this, where someone learns some completely orthogonal domain for educational purposes.
- deweywsu 7mo agoThis might be a bit of a gold rush of sorts at first, in that the first people to transition from tech to running a small business, whether tech-enabled or not, will find a bigger piece of the pie waiting for their taking. But as the stream of many others increases over the years, the pie's slices will get smaller as competition for the same market segments increases. Not trying to paint doom and gloom, just that I'd imagine, as the author says, this kind of white to blue collar shift will accelerate, and as it does, competition will rise, lowering the chance for overall profits.
- TurdF3rguson 7mo agoIs it a gold rush or a pie eating contest? (I need to know if I should be selling shovels or forks).
- deweywsu 7mo agoThat said, this guy is a superstar. This kind of application of skill to a totally different business paradigm to improve it is what I'd love to spend my time doing. Knowing my personality, once I improved the business, I'd get bored running it and move on to finding something else to improve.
- tshaddox 7mo agoSounds great for people who need pest control tool services!
- linkjuice4all 7mo agoIn my limited “ai transformation” experience the biggest gains seem to be just forcing down some of the walls between these different systems. Larger, more well run places were probably integrating all of their systems/data/etc so there was none of this low hanging fruit. It seems AI as a forcing function of combining data sources to feed into the AI just had the beneficial side effect of connecting all the crap.
- tezclarke 7mo ago
- Aeroi 7mo agoI work as a Boat Captain and I've been building Camera Search for 16 months to provide better tools for tradesmen. It's evolved into a larger platform with multiple clients, but the core use case for me was building a video and photo first agent that is grounded in actual manuals and data and provide better diagnostics, parts, and repair info. My longterm vision is to be the agent platform for traditional industries, bridging the gap between knowledge work and physical work.
- tezclarke 7mo agoDiagnosis without the professional having to be on site is a good use case.
- TZubiri 7mo agoDid I read this correctly? You were on the job for 1 month and you are now starting a competing company? >when I was leaving my boss told me I should start my own company. Genuinely or sarcastically?
- taude 7mo agoYou can't offshore pest control.
- ozten 7mo agoBut you can onshore pests... wait, Nutria pest control and generate demand by ... introducing Nutria to untapped markets!
- downrightmike 7mo agoWe did with the central american hook work fly etc prevention programs
- isatty 7mo agoThe possum is a friend and not a pest though. I hope you aren’t killing them :(
- tezclarke 7mo agoAbsolutely not.
- aaronbrethorst 7mo agosquish them very gently (and then give them treats)
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoPossums and Skunks may carry diseases like most wild animals, but usually only show up if there is a rat/mouse infestation around a food/garbage source. Taming wild animals is bad for their long-term well-being around human populations, as rabies also initially causes uncharacteristically "friendly" behavior at first. I agree people should leave nature alone whenever possible. =3
- tdb7893 7mo agoPossums are stinky bastards but I love them so much! Juvenile possums are shockingly adorable, just look at these little guys! (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Baby_opossum.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Baby_opos...)
- btown 7mo ago> That’s why selling SaaS or AI to this kind of company isn’t for me - I’d rather focus my energy on building a company from my own principles, and hire people who share them from the beginning. > When I told my manager I was leaving, he said I should start my own company and give him a call when I do. So that's what I'm doing. I love hearing stories like this, because it shows a way to be a builder without the "venture or nothing" narrative that has pervaded the tech space since the dotcom days. It is very difficult to make a venture-backed services firm (providing services, not software) that can be immediately profitable, grow sustainably, and outperform competitors with in-house technology that's built for real on-the-ground stakeholders... at a speed that will satisfy venture investors. But it is more possible than ever ([0]), to do this (in-house tech and all) on a bootstrapped basis - since AI reduces the engineering staff required to build, adapt, and maintain an agile best-in-class solution at single-tenant/single-customer scale. The outcome is at the least a lifestyle business, but with upside that can take the form of anything from franchising to licensing to full-fledged SaaS in the future. I wish OOP the best of luck, and hope he's found a passion. He could go far with this approach if he ends up following through. ([0] This is not to say there are no barriers to entry. There's privilege in the word "founder," and this is no exception. And the K-shaped economy has left many brilliant would-be founders behind. But at least some barriers are lower than they once were, and that's worth appreciating.)
- anon291 7mo agoLifestyle business has been a thing since day zero in this space (the tech world)
- tezclarke 7mo agoI have been surprised by how many tech founders, currently funded by VC, have side gigs or are running the company knowing they wont' or can't scale it. I don't think this is a good thing for either the founders or the VC (who probably don't know)
- thaumasiotes 7mo agoI briefly worked for someone who was funded by Imagine K12, just before Imagine K12 merged into Y Combinator. He used his funding to rent four apartments in San Francisco, which he then sublet, personally, through Airbnb.
- devnotes77 7mo ago[dead]
- ozten 7mo agoWilliam Burroughs on 1959 HN: I wanted to write Naked Lunch, so I took a pest control job.
- impish9208 7mo agoThe bugs are the feature!
- tezclarke 7mo agoBugs are top of funnel.
- pier25 7mo agoDomain knowledge is really the most important in any business. If you're making software for a particular industry you won't get very far without it.
- tezclarke 7mo agoAgree, and can't be skipped (can be accelerated though)
- teleforce 7mo ago>I built my own training GPT and passed in 13 days, which was a company record. The training manager knew I'd built the app but never showed an interest, which makes sense: it could replace about a quarter of his role. I'd really love to read a dedicated article on this side project. Apparently, Karpathy is into AI based education business with Eureka Labs [1]. [1] Introducing Eureka Labs: https://eurekalabs.ai/ https://eurekalabs.ai/
- tezclarke 7mo agoThe 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.
- g947o 7mo agoThe whole thing looks dead. I followed a few links but couldn't find anything meaningful that comes out of this.
- tgtweak 7mo agoI know about 4 friends that have left their parent company, built a killer product that same company didn't think to build or didn't believe in, only to get acquired by that same company after a few years... some have done it multiple times. I think this falls in exactly that situation. You see how janky these national companies are doing things, plot out a disruptive course, then disrupt them in a particular region so that you can extrapolate how much that will hurt at national scale and force a buyout that's way beyond the multiple you bought those small operators for.
- tezclarke 7mo agoAsk for forgiveness, not permission!
- charlie0 7mo agoHow did they deal with non-competes? Are they in CA or somewhere those aren't enforceable?
- williamdclt 7mo agoSounds like they didn't build competing products, they built products that'd have been very valuable to the parent company.
- panavm 7mo ago[flagged]
- tezclarke 7mo agoIt'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.
- skyberrys 7mo agoWow this is a wild read. I can't believe it worked out so well, although it certainly had it's share of hiccups. Just recently I had an encounter with a pest at my house and then spent some time trying to find a company to deal with it for me. The results of my calling were unsatisfying so I ended up just taking care of it myself. However after I solved my problem I saw a truck from one of the companies I was calling driving through my neighborhood. I think I must have managed to convince my guest to move to another house and apparently that home owner has less issues than I do with the pest removal methods. Side note, is it just me or do these services seem designed to be a short term patch so I have to have a long term, every 6 month, sort of servicing from the pest control company?
- tezclarke 7mo agoThe 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.
- BigBalli 7mo agoThat's wild. I literally just launched https://pestpro.app https://pestpro.app and find this extremely fascinating.
- tezclarke 7mo agoAI slop - you've sent me the same message on linkedin and you vibe coded that two minutes ago.
- truetraveller 7mo agoHey! I have no absolutely no clue who OP (BigBalli) is. I checked this guy's profile out. He's a member since 2012, I don't think he meant bad at all. I'm personally anti-AI. I checked out his app, and whether vibe-coded or not, it looks very well done. And the app actually has both offline mobile apps + web apps. And it's free? And FWIW, pestpro.app was registered ~1 month ago.
- liamwire 7mo agoAgreed, reaction from OP is concerning to say the least
- BigBalli 7mo agothanks FWIW didn't mean to hurt/insult(?)
- jvidalv 7mo agoIf you click on "download button" which should open the link to the App Store you will notice that is a broken link. This is why is ai slop. Spinning a web like that today is 30 minutes of Claude Code prompting. But like it or not, the gatekeeping of Apple and Google means that pushing an app to their stores is days work and wait time. So yeah, reeks of ai slop.
- BigBalli 7mo ago
- vlinx 7mo agoI think taking the technician job is brilliant and exactly how you find the 'better way' for vertical SaaS, similar to how EquipmentShare understood the deep inefficiencies in heavy equipment rental. It's
- tezclarke 7mo agoThey killed it. "A better way to rent"
- hikaru_ai 7mo ago[dead]
- Pythius 7mo ago[flagged]
- rsmtjohn 7mo ago[flagged]
- diordiderot 7mo ago> Taking the job yourself is the cheat code that most developers are too proud to use. This line smells clanky
- alecco 7mo agoIf this story is real* it should be pinned to HN home page, IMO. * Always take sales people's stories with a grain of salt
- fede_dp 7mo ago[dead]
- lexro_ai 7mo ago[flagged]
- Fokamul 7mo agoI hope LLMs will soon replace all these sales people and SaaS companies. Recreating SaaS product with LLM legally, will be fun during this year and I think it will explode in 2027, also with major lawsuits :)
- mpajares 7mo ago[dead]
- BrianFHearn 7mo ago[dead]
- jamesjolliffe 7mo agoHuge admiration and respect for this guy. Jealous of his people skills. Legit, what % of developers on HN do you think are well-rounded enough to pull this off? Godspeed bro.
- skizm 7mo ago> We have an acquisition of a small residential operator lined up, which we'll build the tooling for and grow a platform around once we’ve proven the model works and can scale. This is the exact process private equity tries to do at scale, right?
- tezclarke 7mo agoWe 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
- skizm 7mo agoHopefully I didn’t come off as dismissive. Love the hustle here. It’s always been a dream of mine to quit big tech and do something local like this. Glad to see others have made the jump successfully.
- vicchenai 7mo ago[dead]
- danielmarkbruce 7mo agoYou don't have an email address listed - could you ping me at my username at googles popular email service to chat on tools for institutional investing?
- AlexeyBelov 7mo agovicchenai is an LLM bot.
- maxothex 7mo ago[dead]
- felixagentai 7mo ago[flagged]
- _spduchamp 7mo agoI like this idea of building your own software to run your own business rather than trying to sell software. My wife and I run a small chain of second-hand clothing stores that buy from the public, and we run it on our own custom software built on top of a rails e-commerce engine. (Solidus) We don't do anything online, but instead use the engine to run our point-of-sale and credit system. We have one part-time developer who works from home and occasionally comes and works directly with the staff in the stores, and now she leans a little on Claude for assistance. I would never want the hassle of trying to make our system work for other companies. I love that we have a system that can adapt and change based on our needs without being beholden to some else's SaaS. If we were to rebuild it all today, we'd probably lean even harder on Claude, but still work using a good open source e-commerce framework.
- tezclarke 7mo agoIt's only going to get easier, cheaper and faster to build these things for yourself. Thanks for sharing.
- cestith 7mo agoThere’s no way to build domain knowledge like working in the field you want to target. This could be a reusable model for people looking to serve a well-targeted vertical with one’s own software company for that vertical.
- tezclarke 7mo agoYes, and the other way around is increasing now. Industry insiders building their own tools to solve specific problems.
- pugchat 7mo ago[dead]
- sizzle 7mo agoI have annoying carpenter ants does anyone recommend Taurus SC?
- tezclarke 7mo agoOP here - this was my first post on HN, loved it. Thanks for all the discussion, it helped challenge and solidify my thinking.