11 ms·

Prim (YC S13) Does Your Laundry. Pickup, Wash, Fold, Delivery, Awesome

100 points by caoxuwen 13y ago

wiml 13y ago
I'm under the impression that pick-up-and-drop-off laundry has been a common business in larger cities for the last, oh, century or more? Is this just a "...yeah, but this time it's on the Internet!" business model?
- prawn 13y ago
  If it wins business, so be it. Same's worked with home cleaning. Established dinosaurs aren't moving quickly enough or don't understand what users want in sites/apps in many cases, IMO.
- pbreit 13y ago
  To an extent you are correct although your snarky tone is lame. The same could be said of towncars and taxis, for example, but Uber has absolutely brought a new spin to the market taking large advantage of the internet and mobile to organize constituents and offer enhanced service. I don't think laundry has quite the opportunity but I don't find it necessary to belittle the effort here since there is obviously room for improvement.
  - pbreit 13y ago
    Reason for downvotes?
    - mikeg8 13y ago
      The first comment, while maybe a bit "snarky", is still very relevant and right on point. The first line of your response is why you're getting down voted. Little bit of snark > calling a comment lame.
      - pbreit 13y ago
        But being snarkily sarcastic is lame while calling something out straightforwardly is not.
        mikeg8 13y ago
        I'd say the downvotes you're receiving might mean this community disagrees with you... but I'm just a messenger. You asked the question.
        pbreit 13y ago
        Wow, I guess that's possible. But I wasn't that disagreeable with the post I replied to. I said it had some merit, identified a solid example to support my contention and then still hedged back towards the OP's side.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I know that downvoting hurts (no sarcasm), but just try and remember that they're internet points. If you took out "although your snarky tone is lame" and "I don't find it necessary to belittle the effort here since" you would have been fine. Complaining about downvoting is also against the guidelines, even though everyone does it now and then.
  - prodigal_erik 13y ago
    Half the time I called a taxi dispatcher, the driver simply didn't bother showing up (probably found a fare on the way). Towncars want a reservation measured in hours. The new spin is having a critical mass of reliable drivers nearby. Technology is cool (especially GPS) but Uber could have worked over radio.
- jes5199 13y ago
  The crazy thing is, I kinda need a laundry service, but I have no idea how to find one. Do I just go on yelp? It's a form of business I've never used, so it makes me sort of anxious to try it. Startups that make interactions with businesses less anxiety-provoking tend to get my money. Take Uber for an example: there are Taxis all over SF. But hailing one is intimidating. So I'd rather push a button. The difference in fees don't matter much to me. I'm paying Bay Area rent, remember! The money I spend on laundry and taxis and food delivery and whatever is basically a rounding error - too small to meter.
  - bobwaycott 13y ago
    $9K (cost of Prim over the length of time it takes to get your money out of a washer & dryer) is too small to meter?
    - jes5199 13y ago
      9K over, what, four years? Yeah. I wouldn't even notice that.
      - bobwaycott 13y ago
        2.5 years (well, at 4 loads per week, and given low-end units @ $800 total). Still. $800 over 2.5 years vs $9K over 2.5 yrs. Or, to be a tad more accurate, $0.76/load vs $25/load. That's an interesting meter you have.
        jes5199 13y ago
        Well, it's not really fair to compare the cost like that. I don't have a laundry line-item in my budget that I have to justify to a comittee- but I do have hundreds of dollars to spend on dumb ideas every week. Spending some of my disposable income on getting my laundry nicely cleaned and folded might be enjoyable enough to justify. In the same way that I know I can cook dinner at home for just a few dollars, I still go out to restaurants several times a week and spend $20 or more on a meal. Sometimes I'd juat rather not cook, and I won't really notice the difference in the price, at least not in any long-term sense.
- Nursie 13y ago
  Yeah, I was wondering. It might have a nice web frontend, but otherwise... I was using a service like this in London about five years ago, and I'm pretty sure it's been a available as a service for as long as there have been people wanting clothes cleaned.
  - yalooze 13y ago
    Do you remember any information about the service? Was it just a local laundromat/dry cleaner that did it? I'm looking for something just like that in London.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      The one I used serves a number of postcodes in East London (and had another location in Essex) and was called "The Ironing Board". They charge by weight, their site is here, but you have to call them rather than arrange it via the web - http://www.theironingboard.com/ http://www.theironingboard.com/ I would expect there to be others in other parts of the city. I could be wrong :) --edit-- It looks like they've been doing it for 21 years!
cwilson 13y ago
I'm a subscriber to this service and I can verify it is awesome. I'm rarely home (nor does my apartment or building have machines), the wash & folds close to me are known to lose laundry, and I absolutely don't have time to sit around and wait for my laundry in a laundry mat (you know, startup taking up all my time). This service is maybe $5 more expensive than taking it to a wash & fold yourself, so it's a no-brainer.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  "This service is maybe $5 more expensive than taking it to a wash & fold yourself..." Which means the price might not be sustainable once the venture capital funding runs out, and would have to be raised to cover the company's real expenses. Think about it: - Prim is probably paying as much as anyone else would for the laundry services. (Why would a well-rated laundry service give Prim a discount from their usual rates? A laundry business probably has pretty slim margins, and a good one probably can get plenty of customers without offering discounts.) - Can the extra $5 pay for the cost of the person who is picking up and delivering the laundry (a truck driver probably gets much more than minimum wage), the fuel and maintenance of the trucks, insurance, office space, computers, etc. and still provide profit for Prim?
  - jjsz 13y ago
    Though by that time, with their customer base, they can guarantee bulk economical washing machines directly from manufacturers, discounted rental space, and hybrid or electric cars to further cut down costs.
    - greenyoda 13y ago
      "they can guarantee bulk economical washing machines directly from manufacturers..." Do the people running this business know anything about actually washing clothes? What makes you think they could set up and operate a commercial laundry themselves and make a profit doing it? These are a couple of young Stanford grads who originally wanted to do an "in-video advertising platform". "discounted rental space..." Why would someone rent them commercial space at a discount? "and hybrid or electric cars to further cut down costs..." I don't think cars are economical for doing laundry pickups. How many 20 pound laundry bags can you fit into a car before having to go back to the laundry to drop them off? That would waste a lot of driver time, which is probably much more expensive per hour than gas.
uniclaude 13y ago
I've been using a similar service for a while in Japan (there are a lot of those here), http://www.wash-fold.com/ http://www.wash-fold.com/. This said: Prim is cheaper (like, half the price!), offers a guarantee, and deals with a third party laundromat, which is a good idea for scaling. Cool.
pbreit 13y ago
Does anyone know about how many pounds in one of their bags? How does the pricing compare to $1/lb (with free pickup/delivery)?
- outericky 13y ago
  I've used Prim, and had a great experience. I was surprised at how much the bag weighed by feel, but I didn't weigh it. Basically we filled a 13 gallon kitchen garbage bag the first time, which was about 2 loads of laundry if I were to do it myself. Fill a kitchen size garbage bag and weigh it...
redthrowaway 13y ago
Come on, Xuwen. You run a laundry service. Your shirt should not look like it's spent the last week on your floor. The guy with the faux hawk is wearing a shirt that looks how I want my shirts to look. The very least you can do is use your own product and show why it rocks, and that means wearing a freshly cleaned shirt.
- caoxuwen 13y ago
  Sorry that was a new shirt taken out of a box before we took a last minute photo. None of my other shirts were like that...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - mikeg8 13y ago
      Jesus christ man, your first comment was enough. You make some valid points but you're not his mother and I think we all got the advice the first time. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and a soap box...
  - tjculbertson 13y ago
    Don't sweat it Xuwen. Most people probably didn't notice, but I would email TC and do a re-shoot or photoshop it and replace the pic. I really like the name and branding. It will probably come down to unbelievable consistency, ease of use / UX and customer service. As long as pricing is reasonable, you can win biz if the aforementioned is awesome. Have you looked into using a provider that uses non-toxic, eco-friendly detergents? Gotta push that hard and can run a premium level for it.
- throaway823467 13y ago
  Kill youreself
marknutter 13y ago
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?
- aroman 13y ago
  As fellow (hopefully that's a safe assumption) an outsider looking in, I have to agree with this. 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.
  - jjsz 13y ago
    "Well maybe once everything in our country is automated, we'll have time to worry about others' automation, digital divide, and poverty."
    - aroman 13y ago
      Having just Googled that quote, I'm going to assume it was meant to be a paraphrasing of my comment/a (sarcastic?) response to it, rather than an actual quote. 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."
      - jjsz 13y ago
        It wasn't sarcastic, it was a realist based comment pointing out the fact on how much we focus on our country's automation before moving on to other countries. I agree, eventually, after solving our digital divide issue, we'll worry about real problems. VCs invest in these services to bring what rich people had for years to the masses, and that is a maid and servants to free up your time to do what you really want to do. The economic recession has allowed numerous of people willing to do your laundry, these people picked up on that, I wonder what's next. Will there be a service to wash my dog?
snitko 13y ago
An unfortunate name in the light of PRISM revelations.
- evanmoran 13y ago
  I read it as Prism as well.
bobwaycott 13y ago
Next, we'll see the return of the milk man and we'll almost be in time for living just like exactly a century ago. These are not fresh, new ideas.
- oftenwrong 13y ago
  I'm hoping for a doctor that makes house calls.
  - bobwaycott 13y ago
    That would not be terrible.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - john_w_t_b 13y ago
    Try Memd.me - doctor visit over video conf.
    - bloodorange 13y ago
      I had to go to the doctor recently. Among the 'tests' he did was to check different parts of my chest with a stethoscope (and noted that there was a mild wheeze). Another was gently pressing particular points on my throat and asked me if it hurt. He also checked how the ears, nose and throat looked by using a bright light pointed towards them. Overall he checked for a variety of things and some of them involved physical contact. I think it would have been hard for him to do this over a video call or have the same confidence in his diagnosis if he were not able to do these 'tests' even if his diagnosis were the same. I myself would find it hard to feel comfortable with diagnosis that I receive over a video session. In fact unless the whole pipeline for transmitting sound from one end to the other is very good, the doctor might miss some vital clues. I say this because I once saw him mention a faint whistling sound in my wife's breathing from a few feet away (which we had not noticed until he pointed it out to us). How could he notice something small like that over a video call? How could a patient be confident that the doctors are not missing something like that over the call? I wouldn't mind receiving consultation regarding legal, financial or technical (Programming?) matters over a video call but I don't see being comfortable receiving medical consultation through a video call. [Edit: replied to wrong post earlier, deleted that and pasted here]
hardwaresofton 13y ago
I had this idea, though I envisioned hardcases with RFID tags and a laundry robot that read them -- But nice to see it was a good idea. And yeah, it's a solution to a first world problem that only really occurs to 20 something tech crowd people, but, in the end, there's a market, and they're serving it. Simple as that.
imcqueen 13y ago
Are you trying to sell this to businesses as an employee perk or just DTC right now? I'm guessing most employers who offer this service have people bring their clothes on site to be picked up (anyone with experience please weigh in). Your angle is to eliminate that piece, so that may be a good selling point.
cbhl 13y ago
I'm confused. Purple Tie does laundry at $1.69/lb (10 lb minimum, so $16.90 minimum) and also does pick-up at home. How is this better?
- throaway823467 13y ago
  It's a startup funded by YC, duh. This is an extravagance that should embarrass any user of the service and anyone involved with providing the service.
- prodigal_erik 13y ago
  Purple Tie doesn't have 24-hour turnaround and doesn't serve my office every day. It's not that hard to make sure I send an order while I still have several days' worth of clothes left, though.
  - cbhl 13y ago
    I find this confusing. Do brick-and-mortar laundromats typically have <24hr turnarounds?
    - prodigal_erik 13y ago
      I have the impression it isn't common, though I've seen a few signs with offers like "in by 9, out by 5". https://getprim.com/FAQ#return https://getprim.com/FAQ#return says they commit to two days but their average return time is next day.
taurath 13y ago
Next we need Priss. The laundry service with a sneer!
deleted 13y ago
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pfisch 13y ago
Why is this on tech crunch at all? This is not a tech business or even special in anyway..... You don't need any VC money to do this....this is like running a baby sitting service....
physcab 13y ago
I would have loved this service when I was in grad school. I lived a mile from the nearest laundromat, and I would have to put a load in my backpack and truck it over on my bike. Laundry took literally all day to do. Add in bad Florida weather and the experience was downright miserable. I wonder if it would be cheaper to crowdsource laundry service, like an airbnb for laundry. My washer is unused all day and it would be awesome if I could rent it out. My roommate tends to be at home too during odds times of the day and probably would be willing to do loads if it meant getting paid a nice fee.
kefs 13y ago
I think the last sentence of the faq has a typo: > We will bend over backgrounds to resolve your concerns.
corporalagumbo 13y ago
It's interesting to see the great lengths the TC writer goes to to justify (primarily to himself, it seems) this idea as socially valid. I would have thought the efficiency benefits of passing off home labour to specialised businesses would have been patently obvious, especially to a technology journalist. Do we really still stigmatise people as being "lazy" just for wanting to focus on their specialisation? I also notice a similar prejudice among commenters here. Come on people, this is basic economics.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
codex 13y ago
This looks like a horrible business. It's old (one of the world's oldest professions) and it doesn't scale (huge marginal cost). It uses unskilled labor with repetitive motion--factory like conditions. Competition is fierce: a dry cleaner already exists on practically every city block. Can someone explain the innovation? To me it looks like someone who wants to do a startup more than they have original ideas.
- kneisley 13y ago
  This is basically like Seamless, but for getting your clothes washed instead of getting yourself fed. It organizes and simplifies a very chaotic market and presents it with a nice brand, and what sounds like great customer service. Also, you send them a picture of your key and they'll come in and get your laundry. That's both innovative and awesome.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    > It organizes and simplifies a very chaotic market and presents it with a nice brand, and what sounds like great customer service. Are laundry services really a chaotic market? Generally people use the laundry services available where they live (washer/drying in apt./house or in the building/development) or use a laundromat which is usually a local business. The vast majority of laundromats I have been to offer a wash and fold service, although pickup at home is less common. > Also, you send them a picture of your key and they'll come in and get your laundry. That's both innovative and awesome. Is this really that innovative? There have been personal cleaning services that will do this kind of thing since forever.
cletus 13y ago
Scott Wiener came to Google and gave a talk about pizza in NYC [1]. It was an interesting talk but one thing I remember was this: he said that you can't just cut up a sell a pizza by the slice and replicate what you have in NYC. The point of this is that pizza by the slice is a culture that comes about and continues to exist for historical reasons, namely that Manhattan (in particular) is densely populated and people walk a lot, which has a bunch of other consequences. You can't just replicate that. Also in NYC we have wash and fold laundromats. I walk five blocks to work and pass four of them on 8th Avenue. They're open 7 days a week (one from 7am-11pm every day). They will pick up your laundry and drop it off or you can drop it off and pick it up yourself. Typically you pay $0.60-1.00/lb (plus something per load) for this and drop it off in the morning you get it back the same day. There are historical reasons for this but again it survives due to cultural and infrastructure reasons. So something like this doesn't really work in low density car-dominated locales like the Valley. I'm a little confused by Prim because ultimately they're just a courier service for clothes that subcontracts the cleaning to local laundromats. Okay... But I question the demand for this given the economics and different culture. This also highlights to me the benefits of living high-density as lots of things become possible. Effective public transport for example. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mayGAx9ngvo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mayGAx9ngvo
- epa 13y ago
  It's true, when you break apart the business model, it is a 3rd party delivery/courier service for a niche market. This is not sustainable and has no barriers to entry.
nedwin 13y ago
I've been using these guys and they're great. Obviously they're thinking hard about every element of the service experience. While there are plenty of places that do this kind of thing, none are delivering great service at the scale they're shooting for. No doubt this isn't the last service they're going to improve via service design.
seige 13y ago
changing the world, eh?
Pradeepv 13y ago
Kudos on your startup. This is a lesson that business need not sound glamorous, it's all about finding someone to pay for it. With scale, it looks like you can make it work and keep the prices reasonable. Do ignore the negative comments and good luck!
ryanobjc 13y ago
A pretty awesome idea! I wonder how the competition with the wash and fold at the corner near me would work? Not having to walk it over seems pretty nice though...
bigchewy 13y ago
I'm confused by all of these start ups that appear to be trying to disrupt TaskRabbit. From my perspective, Prim seems to offer the exact same service that I can hire via TaskRabbit so will have the same overhead cost structure (tech, marketing, etc.) but limited revenue opportunity (only clothes washing vs. any task). My TaskRabbit does my laundry and then also does whatever else I want. She does the laundry at her house, using idle equipment that she already owns. What am I missing?
retr0h 13y ago
http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/prim-co-founders-from-left-xuwen-cao-and-yin-yin-wu1.png?w=512&h=415 http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/prim-co-... I hope they fold better than his shirt expresses.
HaloZero 13y ago
So quick question, what happens if I stuff that big to it's max? Most places charge by the pound and by the type of clothing, is there any economical issues involving that?
rdl 13y ago
This seems awesome -- I wonder if there's a market in offering this as a perk for employees, either just doing normal pickup/etc. at home, or letting smaller startups offer onsite laundry dropoff/pickup as a perk. It would kind of suck to take your clothes to work if you took transit, but if you drive, throwing a bag of laundry in your trunk and picking up a bag of clean clothes on the way home would be easy.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
Even if I have the money, I don't want more human servants, I want more automation so that the sum total of menial work done by people goes down. How about a robot that does laundry? I'm thinking of a third robot that interacts with our existing and totally fabulous washing machine and dryer robots instead of a human.
- rebel 13y ago
  Isn't that what will ultimately happen? Once a business has the financial incentive to optimize how it's done they will eventually get to automating it when that is possible/economical.
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    Only if people are willing to put up with having more servants in their lives in the interim. But if not, people will just keep doing their own laundry and the business will fold, or perhaps just reach a level where for some people it offers a slight improvement on existing laundry services. Whereas a laundry robot would be really quite the revolution, it would end up being a new mandatory home appliance after dishwasher, stove, fridge, washer, and dryer if it worked out. But then again, it's probably super hard to build such a thing.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      They do have laundry robots, they just sit on the floor and you turn dials to configure them and dump your laundry into them.
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I think you probably missed what I said higher up. > I'm thinking of a third robot that interacts with our existing and totally fabulous washing machine and dryer robots instead of a human.
        13y ago
lyime 13y ago
I have used Prim a few times and have been extremely satisfied by the quality of the service. It's also very refreshing to see the founders go out of their way to satisfy the customer. In one instance I had to change the delivery by a few hours since I wasn't going to be home and I got an instant response. Yin Yin personally delivered the washed clothes when I was home.
healthenclave 13y ago
In India we have had PRIM for decades and we call it DHOBI (The Washerman). They will come down to your place, take your clothes, Wash , Iron and Starch your clothes (also dry clean on request). Deliver them back to your place. Sometimes within the same day or the next.
pairing 13y ago
So few apartments have laundry in SV. Seems like a great place to launch this service for those of us who don't work at a company that provides laundry. Having to spend 2.5 hours on weekends for laundry is a huge time sink for me. By the time I find a washer, find a dryer, and then run a second dry cycle because the first one didn't dry the clothes I've wasted good portion of my day on laundry. I can't leave my complex because then I'd be the neighbor who leaves clothes in the dryer all day. I'll have to checkout Prim!
kfk 13y ago
I keep thinking that logistics is THE issue here. I understand all the comments criticizing the idea, but the idea is awesome! Who would not say otherwise? Pick up laundry? Amazing! I want it now! But the question is on the margins and prices. Sending a truck around is no joke and it costs money. You clearly see it because Prim drops USD 10 after the first bag. That is huge (40% discount guys). How would I go about this? Create a scheduling service. Tell people their price drops if they find other people in the neighborhood. Tell them you make it cheaper if they schedule a day of the week. Reduce the requirement. 1 bag is big for a single person, but maybe half bag no, and what about if you say, ok, if you find another half bag 0.5 km from you we come anyway? Look at this 2 dimensions: price and quantity. You can reduce price, you can reduce quantity (the half bag), you can reduce both. Then apply these 2 dimensions to a group purchasing model. You get benefits all over the place: incentive for customers to invite other customers, no risk in running on negative margins and better deals with the laundries. You really can play a lot with this once you look at the real aspect of the problem, which is logistics. I would love to hear your comments on this guys, this is an issue many similar start ups face.
gfodor 13y ago
First-world problem? Sure. It's pretty hard to not laugh at the image of the surely brilliant Stanford engineer doing laundry for hipsters in the bay area burbs instead of out curing cancer. But, think about what happens if this actually works out. Think about the amount of time that will be returned to people, at scale. Think about the amount of capital that will be freed up. Think about the amount of resources that will be more efficiently allocated. Having a washing machine in every household, if you step back, seems more than a little wasteful. Imagine giant uber-laundromats, akin to Amazon's fullfillment centers, that squeeze the last bit of efficiency out of the problem of ingesting dirty clothing on one end and spitting out freshly pressed, super-clean items on the other, and the logistics therein. It's only a first-world problem because it costs $25 a load, which is absurdly expensive for most families. But what if it were $2.50? $0.25? Free if you watch an ad on your TV? Then it becomes truly disruptive.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Trucking laundry around, having another worker load/wash/unload/iron and then the sorting / tagging / customer service issues associated with that seems pretty inefficient. It just adds overhead without removing any of the original work. It may be that the washing machines can be more efficient at scale but for that to be the dominant factor the process as a whole would have to be super efficient as well and that is very hard if you start by adding a huge amount of overhead over the original problem. Having the ability to do your own laundry (especially with small kids) is pretty basic.
  - eitally 13y ago
    No kidding!! With two toddlers I do laundry daily, and frequently the cycle is "remove clothes at bath time and put them directly into the washing machine".
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      If only because if you don't wash it right away it tends to start walking around all by itself, and a few days later it will talk back to you.
duiker101 13y ago
25$ to avoid loading your washing machine? damn! That is real laziness.
ghshephard 13y ago
I Just did my laundry in a Singaporean Laundromat last weekend (Thompson Plaza) - One thing that sets them aside, is that in addition for "Self Service" - where you pay $15 to use a (small) washing machine and then a Dryer, you can also have your laundry done for you at $2 - $4 per item. They will basically put your laundry in the Washing Machine, then Dryer (at too hot a heat, I noticed - never Dry your laundry with the highest setting), and then fold it and put it in a bag for you. You need to drop it off, and you need to pick it up. My bag of laundry that I did for $15 ($5 washing Machine, $10 Dryer, on medium - so 1 Hr, would have been $10 if I had used it on High) - would have cost me $60 if they had washed it for me - And I had to both Drop it off, and come pick it up. There was a very large queue of laundry waiting to be completed. Prim should immediately look at expanding into Singapore - there is clearly a market for this service - and I have every expectation that something more convenient than having to drive your laundry over to a laundromat would be a big hit - at least with the people who drop their laundry off at Thompson Plaza.
retube 13y ago
TIL in the US people don't have washing machines.
napoleoncomplex 13y ago
I had an argument about these type of services when Instacart showed up, not a well-thought out one, but here goes. My first thought with these services is always "that's cool!". I'll save time, won't have to bother with some boring task etc, no more inconvenience! Same reaction with Instacart. Then I questioned that reaction. The store where I buy all my food is roughly a 100m away from my apartment, and it takes me roughly 10 minutes to get there, buy food and get back. Yet I still find it inconvenient. And after I get rid of that inconvenience, there will be something else that will start to bother me, a smaller inconvenience than the last one, but still bothersome. So where does it stop? I always think of those kids you see around, whose life has been completely removed of all unpleasantness by their overprotective parents, and who are spoiled/irritating beyond belief. Will we all turn into that? Expanding on that, we probably won't all turn into that in the near future, because the inconvenience that we'll have removed will be taken care of by another human being, who in turn will take on all the unpleasantness. So there will be a class of people who do all of the "boring" work so the top class can "do what they want". It's already long established in things like house-cleaning, gardening etc. And the argument I get into is, why do "we" get to do what we want, and "they" get to do the work we (and in most cases they) find a waste of time. The counter-argument I get is it's a job, people get paid, and people can make any work enjoyable for themselves, even if it's picking up groceries/laundry for others. And I argue that if they can make any work enjoyable for themselves, why the hell don't we make picking up groceries/laundry enjoyable for ourselves? Or is making a boring task enjoyable again reserved for that other class of people, who don't have the means to avoid it? This is quite a tangent, and I still think it's a cool idea, we're all working on projects which serve to remove pain-points for people, and abstracted away, you could argue my points for any business in the world. Still, I'd like a start-up that instead of shifting my inconvenience to other people, removes my feeling of inconvenience itself. Once someone teaches me that, I'll be set for life. Maybe we can revive Marcus Aurelius and give him a few million dollars.
- mdt 13y ago
  Not a 'challenge': Are you or aren't you describing the whole of non-medical, non-moon landing human technological progress? (Yes, 'progress' is a loaded word, but depending on your perspective, that may be the point.) Neolithic Rev. onward, it's been specialize, optimize, specialize, optimize. What's Excel do that you can't do with an abacus?
ajaymehta 13y ago
I'm a user, Prim is awesome. Hoping they branch out a bit, and can help me do my dishes too (only 50% kidding).
netcan 13y ago
Sheesh. The objections on this thread (SV bubble), expected objections (first world problems) and counterarguments to both (don't worry! time saved will go to raising kids, curing cancer & cooking quinoa!) make this discussion sound so puritan. Curing cancer is great. So is raising children. Exercising. Reading. Etc. But are we saying that a laundry service is only valid if it can be justified with time spent on something wholesome or saintly? Prim sounds quirky in that it's startup-ish, but basically it's a service that does your laundry. Some people don't want to do their own laundry and will pay money to have someone else do it. Simple. Do people that start a business doing other people's laundry really need to justify themselves?
- Nursie 13y ago
  Absolutely not. This business is common all over the world and as old as houses. I'm not objecting as such, but I do wonder what's novel about it. I suppose making national/international business out of it is quite novel as most operations of this type tend to stay small and local.
- bobwaycott 13y ago
  Do people that start a business doing other people's laundry usually find themselves celebrated as a 'startup' and receive venture capital funding? This is a news story because it has YC's name attached. The objections and counterarguments, to me, provide valuable insight into what kinds of startups ought to be both celebrated and funded, as well as to gauging wider public reception for a service that is going to have to rely heavily on some significant pickup and economies of scale to not be a wasted investment. That, and there are plenty of other social, economic, and environmental impacts a service like Prim poses that many, including myself, consider to be of significant concern and worthwhile evaluation in funding and celebrating such a service. Also, that's really not what puritan means.
  - netcan 13y ago
    You're concerned about the social, economic, and environmental impacts of a laundry service? I meant puritan in a cultural sense. The kind of impulse that says you should be doing your homework or your chores, not sitting around playing Taki you lazy no good brat.
CRidge 13y ago
When co-founding a laundry related service and promoting it in a photo while wearing a branded t-shirt, wouldn't it be a good idea if that t-shirt wasn't full of wrinkles? ;-)
xoe26 13y ago
It bothered me that the two co-founders are wearing creased unironed t-shirts with their company logo on them. If they're not fussed about wearing clean ironed clothes for a photoshoot why should I trust them with my laundry.
ajiang 13y ago
So now we have the Uber for housecleaning, laundry/dry cleaning, cooking, shopping, babysitting(?), and at some point everything else under the sun that falls into the consumer home services umbrella. These business use technology and economics of scale to deliver convenient on-demand services at a reasonable price, with the thesis that the price becomes increasingly more reasonable with continued local density and national scale. Is there a path to this where a large home services company is formed as a roll up of all of these types of services? Once the actual services and logistics models are proven and ironed out, it would at least on the surface appear to be many major benefits to a roll up: additional scale economies from logistics / transportation, cross-training and utilization of the service workforce, single platform for payment, cross selling services, and of course your run of the mill shared services among legal, HR, accounting, etc. I think to me the point on cross training and utilization of the service workforce is especially poignant, as these services see a lot of demand volatility, so having multiple service lines help smooth out labor productivity.
cafard 13y ago
Is it raining on the parade to remark that there are services that do this right now? Sterling Cleaners, for example, in the Washington, DC, area has been around for ages.
matthiasb 13y ago
Marriott just charged me $200 to wash a single bag. I did not realize it would be so expensive. Each item had a safety PIN with a number I had to remove myself. This service sounds like something I would be interested in when I am traveling and I don't want to carry a heavy luggage with me.
sacrilicious 13y ago
Mazel Tov, if people in underserved markets find online arrangement and pricing simplicity a real value-add, more power to 'em. However, I live in <insert large city here,> where the local laundromats all do free pickup as a service anyway, so I have a hard time not thinking that for urban areas 'just walk the street nearby or talk to your neighbors, people!' Or, just do your laundry like you do your dishes in places that have machines in your building - unless you're so important and valuable you have a staff to arrange these things.
nayefc 13y ago
I don't get it. Online laundry shops have been there for years. I've had my laundry picked up, washed, folded and delivered a few times. Why does it need a Y-Combinator backed-startup? Can't wait to see a job posting asking for a "full-stack engineer". This is a typical laundry business: there's hundreds of them everywhere, all "startups" (in the original non-techy sense) who make money. They don't need a Techcrunch article, or any of that hype.
- Nimi 13y ago
  Not only it doesn't seem to "need a startup", I wonder what the founders and YC thought about the barrier to entry to the market. If there are already several competitors in this space, what would be the expected good outcome? A single company outlasting its rivals and leveraging economy of scale? (Obviously YC is smart enough to give this a thought, curious to know what they think)
  - nayefc 13y ago
    I guess leveraging economy of scale would be what they're seeking for, but that's just a typical business. Why don't they promote it as such? Current online laundry services are physical laundry spaces, that are leveraging the internet for the area around them. I guess no one has done it at a larger scale yet.
kaolinite 13y ago
The laundry company I use (in the UK) are pretty awful. They only tumble-dry on a high heat and when I first tried them (as a naïve 19 year old who figured all clothes could be tumble-dryed unless they were silk or whatever) they shrunk about £500 of brand new clothes. Looking back, I feel stupid for not checking the labels, but I've since found it very hard to find clothes that are ok at high-heat.
wglb 13y ago
I think this is a cool idea, and wish the founders success with it. One tangential phrase stood out to me: give them a copy of your key or send a photo of it. Interesting.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
newsign 13y ago
The most tedious and boring part of laundry is ironing and i guess it is not included(?) - they say 'fold' but it doesn't mean ironing(?)

100 points by caoxuwen 13y ago

wiml 13y ago

I'm under the impression that pick-up-and-drop-off laundry has been a common business in larger cities for the last, oh, century or more? Is this just a "...yeah, but this time it's on the Internet!" business model?

prawn 13y ago
If it wins business, so be it. Same's worked with home cleaning. Established dinosaurs aren't moving quickly enough or don't understand what users want in sites/apps in many cases, IMO.
pbreit 13y ago
To an extent you are correct although your snarky tone is lame. The same could be said of towncars and taxis, for example, but Uber has absolutely brought a new spin to the market taking large advantage of the internet and mobile to organize constituents and offer enhanced service. I don't think laundry has quite the opportunity but I don't find it necessary to belittle the effort here since there is obviously room for improvement.
- pbreit 13y ago
  Reason for downvotes?
  - mikeg8 13y ago
    The first comment, while maybe a bit "snarky", is still very relevant and right on point. The first line of your response is why you're getting down voted. Little bit of snark > calling a comment lame.
    - pbreit 13y ago
      But being snarkily sarcastic is lame while calling something out straightforwardly is not.
      - mikeg8 13y ago
        I'd say the downvotes you're receiving might mean this community disagrees with you... but I'm just a messenger. You asked the question.
        pbreit 13y ago
        Wow, I guess that's possible. But I wasn't that disagreeable with the post I replied to. I said it had some merit, identified a solid example to support my contention and then still hedged back towards the OP's side.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I know that downvoting hurts (no sarcasm), but just try and remember that they're internet points. If you took out "although your snarky tone is lame" and "I don't find it necessary to belittle the effort here since" you would have been fine. Complaining about downvoting is also against the guidelines, even though everyone does it now and then.
- prodigal_erik 13y ago
  Half the time I called a taxi dispatcher, the driver simply didn't bother showing up (probably found a fare on the way). Towncars want a reservation measured in hours. The new spin is having a critical mass of reliable drivers nearby. Technology is cool (especially GPS) but Uber could have worked over radio.
jes5199 13y ago
The crazy thing is, I kinda need a laundry service, but I have no idea how to find one. Do I just go on yelp? It's a form of business I've never used, so it makes me sort of anxious to try it. Startups that make interactions with businesses less anxiety-provoking tend to get my money. Take Uber for an example: there are Taxis all over SF. But hailing one is intimidating. So I'd rather push a button. The difference in fees don't matter much to me. I'm paying Bay Area rent, remember! The money I spend on laundry and taxis and food delivery and whatever is basically a rounding error - too small to meter.
- bobwaycott 13y ago
  $9K (cost of Prim over the length of time it takes to get your money out of a washer & dryer) is too small to meter?
  - jes5199 13y ago
    9K over, what, four years? Yeah. I wouldn't even notice that.
    - bobwaycott 13y ago
      2.5 years (well, at 4 loads per week, and given low-end units @ $800 total). Still. $800 over 2.5 years vs $9K over 2.5 yrs. Or, to be a tad more accurate, $0.76/load vs $25/load. That's an interesting meter you have.
      - jes5199 13y ago
        Well, it's not really fair to compare the cost like that. I don't have a laundry line-item in my budget that I have to justify to a comittee- but I do have hundreds of dollars to spend on dumb ideas every week. Spending some of my disposable income on getting my laundry nicely cleaned and folded might be enjoyable enough to justify. In the same way that I know I can cook dinner at home for just a few dollars, I still go out to restaurants several times a week and spend $20 or more on a meal. Sometimes I'd juat rather not cook, and I won't really notice the difference in the price, at least not in any long-term sense.
Nursie 13y ago
Yeah, I was wondering. It might have a nice web frontend, but otherwise... I was using a service like this in London about five years ago, and I'm pretty sure it's been a available as a service for as long as there have been people wanting clothes cleaned.
- yalooze 13y ago
  Do you remember any information about the service? Was it just a local laundromat/dry cleaner that did it? I'm looking for something just like that in London.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    The one I used serves a number of postcodes in East London (and had another location in Essex) and was called "The Ironing Board". They charge by weight, their site is here, but you have to call them rather than arrange it via the web - http://www.theironingboard.com/ http://www.theironingboard.com/ I would expect there to be others in other parts of the city. I could be wrong :) --edit-- It looks like they've been doing it for 21 years!

cwilson 13y ago

I'm a subscriber to this service and I can verify it is awesome. I'm rarely home (nor does my apartment or building have machines), the wash & folds close to me are known to lose laundry, and I absolutely don't have time to sit around and wait for my laundry in a laundry mat (you know, startup taking up all my time). This service is maybe $5 more expensive than taking it to a wash & fold yourself, so it's a no-brainer.

greenyoda 13y ago
"This service is maybe $5 more expensive than taking it to a wash & fold yourself..." Which means the price might not be sustainable once the venture capital funding runs out, and would have to be raised to cover the company's real expenses. Think about it: - Prim is probably paying as much as anyone else would for the laundry services. (Why would a well-rated laundry service give Prim a discount from their usual rates? A laundry business probably has pretty slim margins, and a good one probably can get plenty of customers without offering discounts.) - Can the extra $5 pay for the cost of the person who is picking up and delivering the laundry (a truck driver probably gets much more than minimum wage), the fuel and maintenance of the trucks, insurance, office space, computers, etc. and still provide profit for Prim?
- jjsz 13y ago
  Though by that time, with their customer base, they can guarantee bulk economical washing machines directly from manufacturers, discounted rental space, and hybrid or electric cars to further cut down costs.
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    "they can guarantee bulk economical washing machines directly from manufacturers..." Do the people running this business know anything about actually washing clothes? What makes you think they could set up and operate a commercial laundry themselves and make a profit doing it? These are a couple of young Stanford grads who originally wanted to do an "in-video advertising platform". "discounted rental space..." Why would someone rent them commercial space at a discount? "and hybrid or electric cars to further cut down costs..." I don't think cars are economical for doing laundry pickups. How many 20 pound laundry bags can you fit into a car before having to go back to the laundry to drop them off? That would waste a lot of driver time, which is probably much more expensive per hour than gas.

uniclaude 13y ago

I've been using a similar service for a while in Japan (there are a lot of those here), http://www.wash-fold.com/ http://www.wash-fold.com/. This said: Prim is cheaper (like, half the price!), offers a guarantee, and deals with a third party laundromat, which is a good idea for scaling. Cool.

pbreit 13y ago

Does anyone know about how many pounds in one of their bags? How does the pricing compare to $1/lb (with free pickup/delivery)?

outericky 13y ago
I've used Prim, and had a great experience. I was surprised at how much the bag weighed by feel, but I didn't weigh it. Basically we filled a 13 gallon kitchen garbage bag the first time, which was about 2 loads of laundry if I were to do it myself. Fill a kitchen size garbage bag and weigh it...

redthrowaway 13y ago

Come on, Xuwen. You run a laundry service. Your shirt should not look like it's spent the last week on your floor. The guy with the faux hawk is wearing a shirt that looks how I want my shirts to look. The very least you can do is use your own product and show why it rocks, and that means wearing a freshly cleaned shirt.

caoxuwen 13y ago
Sorry that was a new shirt taken out of a box before we took a last minute photo. None of my other shirts were like that...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - mikeg8 13y ago
    Jesus christ man, your first comment was enough. You make some valid points but you're not his mother and I think we all got the advice the first time. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and a soap box...
- tjculbertson 13y ago
  Don't sweat it Xuwen. Most people probably didn't notice, but I would email TC and do a re-shoot or photoshop it and replace the pic. I really like the name and branding. It will probably come down to unbelievable consistency, ease of use / UX and customer service. As long as pricing is reasonable, you can win biz if the aforementioned is awesome. Have you looked into using a provider that uses non-toxic, eco-friendly detergents? Gotta push that hard and can run a premium level for it.
throaway823467 13y ago
Kill youreself

marknutter 13y ago

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?

aroman 13y ago
As fellow (hopefully that's a safe assumption) an outsider looking in, I have to agree with this. 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.
- jjsz 13y ago
  "Well maybe once everything in our country is automated, we'll have time to worry about others' automation, digital divide, and poverty."
  - aroman 13y ago
    Having just Googled that quote, I'm going to assume it was meant to be a paraphrasing of my comment/a (sarcastic?) response to it, rather than an actual quote. 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."
    - jjsz 13y ago
      It wasn't sarcastic, it was a realist based comment pointing out the fact on how much we focus on our country's automation before moving on to other countries. I agree, eventually, after solving our digital divide issue, we'll worry about real problems. VCs invest in these services to bring what rich people had for years to the masses, and that is a maid and servants to free up your time to do what you really want to do. The economic recession has allowed numerous of people willing to do your laundry, these people picked up on that, I wonder what's next. Will there be a service to wash my dog?

snitko 13y ago

An unfortunate name in the light of PRISM revelations.

evanmoran 13y ago
I read it as Prism as well.

bobwaycott 13y ago

Next, we'll see the return of the milk man and we'll almost be in time for living just like exactly a century ago. These are not fresh, new ideas.

oftenwrong 13y ago
I'm hoping for a doctor that makes house calls.
- bobwaycott 13y ago
  That would not be terrible.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- john_w_t_b 13y ago
  Try Memd.me - doctor visit over video conf.
  - bloodorange 13y ago
    I had to go to the doctor recently. Among the 'tests' he did was to check different parts of my chest with a stethoscope (and noted that there was a mild wheeze). Another was gently pressing particular points on my throat and asked me if it hurt. He also checked how the ears, nose and throat looked by using a bright light pointed towards them. Overall he checked for a variety of things and some of them involved physical contact. I think it would have been hard for him to do this over a video call or have the same confidence in his diagnosis if he were not able to do these 'tests' even if his diagnosis were the same. I myself would find it hard to feel comfortable with diagnosis that I receive over a video session. In fact unless the whole pipeline for transmitting sound from one end to the other is very good, the doctor might miss some vital clues. I say this because I once saw him mention a faint whistling sound in my wife's breathing from a few feet away (which we had not noticed until he pointed it out to us). How could he notice something small like that over a video call? How could a patient be confident that the doctors are not missing something like that over the call? I wouldn't mind receiving consultation regarding legal, financial or technical (Programming?) matters over a video call but I don't see being comfortable receiving medical consultation through a video call. [Edit: replied to wrong post earlier, deleted that and pasted here]

hardwaresofton 13y ago

I had this idea, though I envisioned hardcases with RFID tags and a laundry robot that read them -- But nice to see it was a good idea. And yeah, it's a solution to a first world problem that only really occurs to 20 something tech crowd people, but, in the end, there's a market, and they're serving it. Simple as that.

imcqueen 13y ago

Are you trying to sell this to businesses as an employee perk or just DTC right now? I'm guessing most employers who offer this service have people bring their clothes on site to be picked up (anyone with experience please weigh in). Your angle is to eliminate that piece, so that may be a good selling point.

cbhl 13y ago

I'm confused. Purple Tie does laundry at $1.69/lb (10 lb minimum, so $16.90 minimum) and also does pick-up at home. How is this better?

throaway823467 13y ago
It's a startup funded by YC, duh. This is an extravagance that should embarrass any user of the service and anyone involved with providing the service.
prodigal_erik 13y ago
Purple Tie doesn't have 24-hour turnaround and doesn't serve my office every day. It's not that hard to make sure I send an order while I still have several days' worth of clothes left, though.
- cbhl 13y ago
  I find this confusing. Do brick-and-mortar laundromats typically have <24hr turnarounds?
  - prodigal_erik 13y ago
    I have the impression it isn't common, though I've seen a few signs with offers like "in by 9, out by 5". https://getprim.com/FAQ#return https://getprim.com/FAQ#return says they commit to two days but their average return time is next day.

taurath 13y ago

Next we need Priss. The laundry service with a sneer!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

pfisch 13y ago

Why is this on tech crunch at all? This is not a tech business or even special in anyway..... You don't need any VC money to do this....this is like running a baby sitting service....

physcab 13y ago

I would have loved this service when I was in grad school. I lived a mile from the nearest laundromat, and I would have to put a load in my backpack and truck it over on my bike. Laundry took literally all day to do. Add in bad Florida weather and the experience was downright miserable. I wonder if it would be cheaper to crowdsource laundry service, like an airbnb for laundry. My washer is unused all day and it would be awesome if I could rent it out. My roommate tends to be at home too during odds times of the day and probably would be willing to do loads if it meant getting paid a nice fee.

kefs 13y ago

I think the last sentence of the faq has a typo: > We will bend over backgrounds to resolve your concerns.

corporalagumbo 13y ago

It's interesting to see the great lengths the TC writer goes to to justify (primarily to himself, it seems) this idea as socially valid. I would have thought the efficiency benefits of passing off home labour to specialised businesses would have been patently obvious, especially to a technology journalist. Do we really still stigmatise people as being "lazy" just for wanting to focus on their specialisation? I also notice a similar prejudice among commenters here. Come on people, this is basic economics.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

codex 13y ago

This looks like a horrible business. It's old (one of the world's oldest professions) and it doesn't scale (huge marginal cost). It uses unskilled labor with repetitive motion--factory like conditions. Competition is fierce: a dry cleaner already exists on practically every city block. Can someone explain the innovation? To me it looks like someone who wants to do a startup more than they have original ideas.

kneisley 13y ago
This is basically like Seamless, but for getting your clothes washed instead of getting yourself fed. It organizes and simplifies a very chaotic market and presents it with a nice brand, and what sounds like great customer service. Also, you send them a picture of your key and they'll come in and get your laundry. That's both innovative and awesome.
- king_jester 13y ago
  > It organizes and simplifies a very chaotic market and presents it with a nice brand, and what sounds like great customer service. Are laundry services really a chaotic market? Generally people use the laundry services available where they live (washer/drying in apt./house or in the building/development) or use a laundromat which is usually a local business. The vast majority of laundromats I have been to offer a wash and fold service, although pickup at home is less common. > Also, you send them a picture of your key and they'll come in and get your laundry. That's both innovative and awesome. Is this really that innovative? There have been personal cleaning services that will do this kind of thing since forever.

cletus 13y ago

Scott Wiener came to Google and gave a talk about pizza in NYC [1]. It was an interesting talk but one thing I remember was this: he said that you can't just cut up a sell a pizza by the slice and replicate what you have in NYC. The point of this is that pizza by the slice is a culture that comes about and continues to exist for historical reasons, namely that Manhattan (in particular) is densely populated and people walk a lot, which has a bunch of other consequences. You can't just replicate that. Also in NYC we have wash and fold laundromats. I walk five blocks to work and pass four of them on 8th Avenue. They're open 7 days a week (one from 7am-11pm every day). They will pick up your laundry and drop it off or you can drop it off and pick it up yourself. Typically you pay $0.60-1.00/lb (plus something per load) for this and drop it off in the morning you get it back the same day. There are historical reasons for this but again it survives due to cultural and infrastructure reasons. So something like this doesn't really work in low density car-dominated locales like the Valley. I'm a little confused by Prim because ultimately they're just a courier service for clothes that subcontracts the cleaning to local laundromats. Okay... But I question the demand for this given the economics and different culture. This also highlights to me the benefits of living high-density as lots of things become possible. Effective public transport for example. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mayGAx9ngvo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mayGAx9ngvo

epa 13y ago
It's true, when you break apart the business model, it is a 3rd party delivery/courier service for a niche market. This is not sustainable and has no barriers to entry.

nedwin 13y ago

I've been using these guys and they're great. Obviously they're thinking hard about every element of the service experience. While there are plenty of places that do this kind of thing, none are delivering great service at the scale they're shooting for. No doubt this isn't the last service they're going to improve via service design.

seige 13y ago

changing the world, eh?

Pradeepv 13y ago

Kudos on your startup. This is a lesson that business need not sound glamorous, it's all about finding someone to pay for it. With scale, it looks like you can make it work and keep the prices reasonable. Do ignore the negative comments and good luck!

ryanobjc 13y ago

A pretty awesome idea! I wonder how the competition with the wash and fold at the corner near me would work? Not having to walk it over seems pretty nice though...

bigchewy 13y ago

I'm confused by all of these start ups that appear to be trying to disrupt TaskRabbit. From my perspective, Prim seems to offer the exact same service that I can hire via TaskRabbit so will have the same overhead cost structure (tech, marketing, etc.) but limited revenue opportunity (only clothes washing vs. any task). My TaskRabbit does my laundry and then also does whatever else I want. She does the laundry at her house, using idle equipment that she already owns. What am I missing?

retr0h 13y ago

http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/prim-co-founders-from-left-xuwen-cao-and-yin-yin-wu1.png?w=512&h=415 http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/prim-co-... I hope they fold better than his shirt expresses.

HaloZero 13y ago

So quick question, what happens if I stuff that big to it's max? Most places charge by the pound and by the type of clothing, is there any economical issues involving that?

rdl 13y ago

This seems awesome -- I wonder if there's a market in offering this as a perk for employees, either just doing normal pickup/etc. at home, or letting smaller startups offer onsite laundry dropoff/pickup as a perk. It would kind of suck to take your clothes to work if you took transit, but if you drive, throwing a bag of laundry in your trunk and picking up a bag of clean clothes on the way home would be easy.

foobarbazqux 13y ago

Even if I have the money, I don't want more human servants, I want more automation so that the sum total of menial work done by people goes down. How about a robot that does laundry? I'm thinking of a third robot that interacts with our existing and totally fabulous washing machine and dryer robots instead of a human.

rebel 13y ago
Isn't that what will ultimately happen? Once a business has the financial incentive to optimize how it's done they will eventually get to automating it when that is possible/economical.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Only if people are willing to put up with having more servants in their lives in the interim. But if not, people will just keep doing their own laundry and the business will fold, or perhaps just reach a level where for some people it offers a slight improvement on existing laundry services. Whereas a laundry robot would be really quite the revolution, it would end up being a new mandatory home appliance after dishwasher, stove, fridge, washer, and dryer if it worked out. But then again, it's probably super hard to build such a thing.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    They do have laundry robots, they just sit on the floor and you turn dials to configure them and dump your laundry into them.
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      I think you probably missed what I said higher up. > I'm thinking of a third robot that interacts with our existing and totally fabulous washing machine and dryer robots instead of a human.
      - 13y ago

lyime 13y ago

I have used Prim a few times and have been extremely satisfied by the quality of the service. It's also very refreshing to see the founders go out of their way to satisfy the customer. In one instance I had to change the delivery by a few hours since I wasn't going to be home and I got an instant response. Yin Yin personally delivered the washed clothes when I was home.

healthenclave 13y ago

In India we have had PRIM for decades and we call it DHOBI (The Washerman). They will come down to your place, take your clothes, Wash , Iron and Starch your clothes (also dry clean on request). Deliver them back to your place. Sometimes within the same day or the next.

pairing 13y ago

So few apartments have laundry in SV. Seems like a great place to launch this service for those of us who don't work at a company that provides laundry. Having to spend 2.5 hours on weekends for laundry is a huge time sink for me. By the time I find a washer, find a dryer, and then run a second dry cycle because the first one didn't dry the clothes I've wasted good portion of my day on laundry. I can't leave my complex because then I'd be the neighbor who leaves clothes in the dryer all day. I'll have to checkout Prim!

kfk 13y ago

I keep thinking that logistics is THE issue here. I understand all the comments criticizing the idea, but the idea is awesome! Who would not say otherwise? Pick up laundry? Amazing! I want it now! But the question is on the margins and prices. Sending a truck around is no joke and it costs money. You clearly see it because Prim drops USD 10 after the first bag. That is huge (40% discount guys). How would I go about this? Create a scheduling service. Tell people their price drops if they find other people in the neighborhood. Tell them you make it cheaper if they schedule a day of the week. Reduce the requirement. 1 bag is big for a single person, but maybe half bag no, and what about if you say, ok, if you find another half bag 0.5 km from you we come anyway? Look at this 2 dimensions: price and quantity. You can reduce price, you can reduce quantity (the half bag), you can reduce both. Then apply these 2 dimensions to a group purchasing model. You get benefits all over the place: incentive for customers to invite other customers, no risk in running on negative margins and better deals with the laundries. You really can play a lot with this once you look at the real aspect of the problem, which is logistics. I would love to hear your comments on this guys, this is an issue many similar start ups face.

gfodor 13y ago

First-world problem? Sure. It's pretty hard to not laugh at the image of the surely brilliant Stanford engineer doing laundry for hipsters in the bay area burbs instead of out curing cancer. But, think about what happens if this actually works out. Think about the amount of time that will be returned to people, at scale. Think about the amount of capital that will be freed up. Think about the amount of resources that will be more efficiently allocated. Having a washing machine in every household, if you step back, seems more than a little wasteful. Imagine giant uber-laundromats, akin to Amazon's fullfillment centers, that squeeze the last bit of efficiency out of the problem of ingesting dirty clothing on one end and spitting out freshly pressed, super-clean items on the other, and the logistics therein. It's only a first-world problem because it costs $25 a load, which is absurdly expensive for most families. But what if it were $2.50? $0.25? Free if you watch an ad on your TV? Then it becomes truly disruptive.

jacquesm 13y ago
Trucking laundry around, having another worker load/wash/unload/iron and then the sorting / tagging / customer service issues associated with that seems pretty inefficient. It just adds overhead without removing any of the original work. It may be that the washing machines can be more efficient at scale but for that to be the dominant factor the process as a whole would have to be super efficient as well and that is very hard if you start by adding a huge amount of overhead over the original problem. Having the ability to do your own laundry (especially with small kids) is pretty basic.
- eitally 13y ago
  No kidding!! With two toddlers I do laundry daily, and frequently the cycle is "remove clothes at bath time and put them directly into the washing machine".
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    If only because if you don't wash it right away it tends to start walking around all by itself, and a few days later it will talk back to you.

duiker101 13y ago

25$ to avoid loading your washing machine? damn! That is real laziness.

ghshephard 13y ago

I Just did my laundry in a Singaporean Laundromat last weekend (Thompson Plaza) - One thing that sets them aside, is that in addition for "Self Service" - where you pay $15 to use a (small) washing machine and then a Dryer, you can also have your laundry done for you at $2 - $4 per item. They will basically put your laundry in the Washing Machine, then Dryer (at too hot a heat, I noticed - never Dry your laundry with the highest setting), and then fold it and put it in a bag for you. You need to drop it off, and you need to pick it up. My bag of laundry that I did for $15 ($5 washing Machine, $10 Dryer, on medium - so 1 Hr, would have been $10 if I had used it on High) - would have cost me $60 if they had washed it for me - And I had to both Drop it off, and come pick it up. There was a very large queue of laundry waiting to be completed. Prim should immediately look at expanding into Singapore - there is clearly a market for this service - and I have every expectation that something more convenient than having to drive your laundry over to a laundromat would be a big hit - at least with the people who drop their laundry off at Thompson Plaza.

retube 13y ago

TIL in the US people don't have washing machines.

napoleoncomplex 13y ago

I had an argument about these type of services when Instacart showed up, not a well-thought out one, but here goes. My first thought with these services is always "that's cool!". I'll save time, won't have to bother with some boring task etc, no more inconvenience! Same reaction with Instacart. Then I questioned that reaction. The store where I buy all my food is roughly a 100m away from my apartment, and it takes me roughly 10 minutes to get there, buy food and get back. Yet I still find it inconvenient. And after I get rid of that inconvenience, there will be something else that will start to bother me, a smaller inconvenience than the last one, but still bothersome. So where does it stop? I always think of those kids you see around, whose life has been completely removed of all unpleasantness by their overprotective parents, and who are spoiled/irritating beyond belief. Will we all turn into that? Expanding on that, we probably won't all turn into that in the near future, because the inconvenience that we'll have removed will be taken care of by another human being, who in turn will take on all the unpleasantness. So there will be a class of people who do all of the "boring" work so the top class can "do what they want". It's already long established in things like house-cleaning, gardening etc. And the argument I get into is, why do "we" get to do what we want, and "they" get to do the work we (and in most cases they) find a waste of time. The counter-argument I get is it's a job, people get paid, and people can make any work enjoyable for themselves, even if it's picking up groceries/laundry for others. And I argue that if they can make any work enjoyable for themselves, why the hell don't we make picking up groceries/laundry enjoyable for ourselves? Or is making a boring task enjoyable again reserved for that other class of people, who don't have the means to avoid it? This is quite a tangent, and I still think it's a cool idea, we're all working on projects which serve to remove pain-points for people, and abstracted away, you could argue my points for any business in the world. Still, I'd like a start-up that instead of shifting my inconvenience to other people, removes my feeling of inconvenience itself. Once someone teaches me that, I'll be set for life. Maybe we can revive Marcus Aurelius and give him a few million dollars.

mdt 13y ago
Not a 'challenge': Are you or aren't you describing the whole of non-medical, non-moon landing human technological progress? (Yes, 'progress' is a loaded word, but depending on your perspective, that may be the point.) Neolithic Rev. onward, it's been specialize, optimize, specialize, optimize. What's Excel do that you can't do with an abacus?

ajaymehta 13y ago

I'm a user, Prim is awesome. Hoping they branch out a bit, and can help me do my dishes too (only 50% kidding).

netcan 13y ago

Sheesh. The objections on this thread (SV bubble), expected objections (first world problems) and counterarguments to both (don't worry! time saved will go to raising kids, curing cancer & cooking quinoa!) make this discussion sound so puritan. Curing cancer is great. So is raising children. Exercising. Reading. Etc. But are we saying that a laundry service is only valid if it can be justified with time spent on something wholesome or saintly? Prim sounds quirky in that it's startup-ish, but basically it's a service that does your laundry. Some people don't want to do their own laundry and will pay money to have someone else do it. Simple. Do people that start a business doing other people's laundry really need to justify themselves?

Nursie 13y ago
Absolutely not. This business is common all over the world and as old as houses. I'm not objecting as such, but I do wonder what's novel about it. I suppose making national/international business out of it is quite novel as most operations of this type tend to stay small and local.
bobwaycott 13y ago
Do people that start a business doing other people's laundry usually find themselves celebrated as a 'startup' and receive venture capital funding? This is a news story because it has YC's name attached. The objections and counterarguments, to me, provide valuable insight into what kinds of startups ought to be both celebrated and funded, as well as to gauging wider public reception for a service that is going to have to rely heavily on some significant pickup and economies of scale to not be a wasted investment. That, and there are plenty of other social, economic, and environmental impacts a service like Prim poses that many, including myself, consider to be of significant concern and worthwhile evaluation in funding and celebrating such a service. Also, that's really not what puritan means.
- netcan 13y ago
  You're concerned about the social, economic, and environmental impacts of a laundry service? I meant puritan in a cultural sense. The kind of impulse that says you should be doing your homework or your chores, not sitting around playing Taki you lazy no good brat.

CRidge 13y ago

When co-founding a laundry related service and promoting it in a photo while wearing a branded t-shirt, wouldn't it be a good idea if that t-shirt wasn't full of wrinkles? ;-)

xoe26 13y ago

It bothered me that the two co-founders are wearing creased unironed t-shirts with their company logo on them. If they're not fussed about wearing clean ironed clothes for a photoshoot why should I trust them with my laundry.

ajiang 13y ago

So now we have the Uber for housecleaning, laundry/dry cleaning, cooking, shopping, babysitting(?), and at some point everything else under the sun that falls into the consumer home services umbrella. These business use technology and economics of scale to deliver convenient on-demand services at a reasonable price, with the thesis that the price becomes increasingly more reasonable with continued local density and national scale. Is there a path to this where a large home services company is formed as a roll up of all of these types of services? Once the actual services and logistics models are proven and ironed out, it would at least on the surface appear to be many major benefits to a roll up: additional scale economies from logistics / transportation, cross-training and utilization of the service workforce, single platform for payment, cross selling services, and of course your run of the mill shared services among legal, HR, accounting, etc. I think to me the point on cross training and utilization of the service workforce is especially poignant, as these services see a lot of demand volatility, so having multiple service lines help smooth out labor productivity.

cafard 13y ago

Is it raining on the parade to remark that there are services that do this right now? Sterling Cleaners, for example, in the Washington, DC, area has been around for ages.

matthiasb 13y ago

Marriott just charged me $200 to wash a single bag. I did not realize it would be so expensive. Each item had a safety PIN with a number I had to remove myself. This service sounds like something I would be interested in when I am traveling and I don't want to carry a heavy luggage with me.

sacrilicious 13y ago

Mazel Tov, if people in underserved markets find online arrangement and pricing simplicity a real value-add, more power to 'em. However, I live in <insert large city here,> where the local laundromats all do free pickup as a service anyway, so I have a hard time not thinking that for urban areas 'just walk the street nearby or talk to your neighbors, people!' Or, just do your laundry like you do your dishes in places that have machines in your building - unless you're so important and valuable you have a staff to arrange these things.

nayefc 13y ago

I don't get it. Online laundry shops have been there for years. I've had my laundry picked up, washed, folded and delivered a few times. Why does it need a Y-Combinator backed-startup? Can't wait to see a job posting asking for a "full-stack engineer". This is a typical laundry business: there's hundreds of them everywhere, all "startups" (in the original non-techy sense) who make money. They don't need a Techcrunch article, or any of that hype.

Nimi 13y ago
Not only it doesn't seem to "need a startup", I wonder what the founders and YC thought about the barrier to entry to the market. If there are already several competitors in this space, what would be the expected good outcome? A single company outlasting its rivals and leveraging economy of scale? (Obviously YC is smart enough to give this a thought, curious to know what they think)
- nayefc 13y ago
  I guess leveraging economy of scale would be what they're seeking for, but that's just a typical business. Why don't they promote it as such? Current online laundry services are physical laundry spaces, that are leveraging the internet for the area around them. I guess no one has done it at a larger scale yet.

kaolinite 13y ago

The laundry company I use (in the UK) are pretty awful. They only tumble-dry on a high heat and when I first tried them (as a naïve 19 year old who figured all clothes could be tumble-dryed unless they were silk or whatever) they shrunk about £500 of brand new clothes. Looking back, I feel stupid for not checking the labels, but I've since found it very hard to find clothes that are ok at high-heat.

wglb 13y ago

I think this is a cool idea, and wish the founders success with it. One tangential phrase stood out to me: give them a copy of your key or send a photo of it. Interesting.

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newsign 13y ago

The most tedious and boring part of laundry is ironing and i guess it is not included(?) - they say 'fold' but it doesn't mean ironing(?)