6 ms·

Why ‘Do It for Me’ Is the Next Big Thing

65 points by carlchenet 12y ago

amelius 12y ago
So suddenly everybody is rushing to build a human dispatch service for everything, and the end result will be that there will be one winner, who cashes in a big percentage of every transaction in the particular market segment. The actual AI can wait, because what matters now is the cornering of the market. As you can see, this development does not make me happy.
- castell 12y ago
  > the actual AI can wait Scaling such services is hard. I want to hear back from "Magic", "Cloe", "Luka", "Path Talk", "Rabbits", "Jarvis" - a post mortem, what went right, what went wrong. How do they bootstrap - with a few friends or with outsource partners from Asia? Magic (59 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819, Jarvis (266 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351 . The creator of Magic wrote a response 3 days ago on PH: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/magic#comment-89372 http://www.producthunt.com/posts/magic#comment-89372
- netcan 12y ago
  Why not? I'm not trying to be snarky, what specifically don't you like?
  - throwaway9324 12y ago
    Many of these companies aspire to things that are great for themselves, like controlling markets and integrating vertically, but not so great for everyone else.
    - netcan 12y ago
      Is this generally different from the world of business and entrepreneurship where companies aspire to have market share, profits, etc..? IE, specific to the ‘Do It for Me’ market?
      - throwaway9324 12y ago
        I think more of the business potential of these companies require bad things compared to other companies. Most companies have some sort of core business and the things that in part end up being bad for other are second to that. With DIFM companies those things, at least almost, ends up being the core business. https://www.uber.com/jobs/list https://www.uber.com/jobs/list (of course the sector of businesses we are talking about isn't very well defined)
      - amelius 12y ago
        The problem is mostly that these companies seem to try to put a wall around a market and try to become the gate-keeper for that particular market, and will then become the regulator of that market. This goes against the principle of "free markets". Besides these "do it for me" markets, roughly the same pattern is seen with app-stores, and probably many more markets. (Of course, in a truly free market it should in theory be possible to create such nested markets, but this just shows that the concept of a totally free market is nonsense, and that we should act against these patterns.)
InclinedPlane 12y ago
This should be obvious. Concierge style services married to digital communication and software dispatch, it's a natural combination.
- netcan 12y ago
  "Concierge" is an analogy in this context, I think. That is, it's a starting point for your brain to have something to graft onto. In reality, the service is bound to be very different from a concierge once it hits legit MVP (with enough 'V' to genuinely validate a business) levels of traffic, the concierge analogy will start to be something deep in the identity of the actual product rather than the product. You might have "classrooms" in your elearning software, but it's relationship to an actual classroom is metaphorical. Anyway, the actual work is figuring out how to scale this. If scaling means a linear increase in people, you've got a hard problem to solve. It's not impossible. Uber needs another physical car for each simultaneous passenger. But, it's fundamentally different difficulties than "scaling" of a software. Metaphors are tricky.
  - InclinedPlane 12y ago
    Certainly. But "concierge" gives you a good handhold to understand a lot of the potential businesses that haven't emerged yet. Using the concierge model makes things like shyp and magic seem pretty obvious, for example. From there I think it's a lot easier to see what's possible, where the easy money is, and what the outlines of a viable product look like.
timdaub 12y ago
Can we please stop to assume that younger generations don't want to own and do things? I don't know where this self-proclaimed fact comes from but hell I know a lot of people that define themselves not as non-materialistic AirBnB-Homejoy-Uber users. Instead, like everyone else on this planet, they want to express status with watches, cars and houses. Some maybe even enjoy mowing their lawn and cleaning their house, as it cleans their mind from stressful work related stuff. Yes, Uber and AirBnB are great services and we will use them a lot more in the future, but this doesn't mean that everyone will use a dogfood-delivery or brush-my-teeth service. The DIFM-Economy surely will exist, but it will probably be far smaller than silicon valley based journalist imagine it.
- swalsh 12y ago
  Silicon Valley has taken the motto "Build things you want" to heart, and is building things that are a great fit for living in silicon valley.
- mcdougle 12y ago
  You're definitely not wrong. Of course there are those in the younger generation who want to own things. I bet most of them do, in fact. I own my car, of course, and although I'm happy renting an apartment now, I'll be getting a house once I settle down and have a family. But there's no denying that there are those who just don't want the hassle. I have a friend who uses Uber to get anywhere -- even if it's a 5 minute drive. Most of my friends don't own homes and don't intend to (anytime soon, at least). I have a tenant who makes a very good living, has a very large savings account, and a very high credit score, owned his own home previously, and chose to rent from me because it's just easier. There's a pretty big market for those sorts of people -- and I think that's what the article was getting at.
  - timdaub 12y ago
    Alright, I accept that and I don't think its a phenomena caused by our wealthy society for a specific generation, as some self-proclaimed millennial-educators suggest. Essentially what they're saying is that we millennials do not want to own things, because we already did had strong abundance of that in our childhood. Firstly, that is certainly not true for most people I know. Secondly, people I know that had strong abundance in their childhood, strive towards even more now. I think its owed to the fact of these peoples' current living situation as well as the state of the economy that there are some people that actually don't want to own things. But lets face it: To much of your money (at least in percentages) in a bank account ultimately is worth nothing. Spending it on services does - on the long term - not yield as much value as ownership. Think about it: You can sell your car after using it for 5-10 years. Same goes for your house, phone, watch, laptop, apartment. Ownership returns securities, and people need securities! I think people from our generation just ride this wave because of convenience but will ultimately converge to the ownership-game as everyone else.
Nursie 12y ago
>> This is the first generation of teenagers that doesn’t universally wish to own their own cars, many instead preferring to be shuttled around with the help of a smartphone app. Alternatively, people like taxis. Especially young, urban people who have a bit of spare cash and like to drink.
- ams6110 12y ago
  ... and this is not really a new thing. Car ownership in dense urban areas has been a hassle for decades. You have typically exhorbitant local permit fees/taxes, you pay for parking, or have to hunt endlessly for street parking, your insurance rates are higher, gasoline is more expensive, etc. and none of those things are recent developments.
- andyjdavis 12y ago
  >and like to drink. I actually wonder how big a factor changes around drink driving are. Certainly in Australia (where I am from) blood alcohol limits have decreased during my lifetime and police enforcement has massively increased. It is now reasonably common on a friday or saturday night in particular to have police block off various choke points and even multilane freeways during peak "coming home from a night out" times breathalyzing and even drug testing a huge proportion of drivers coming through. That has made driving an increasingly unattractive proposition during precisely the time (friday and saturday night) that owning a car used to be most appealing for people in their late teens and early 20s.
Bostwick 12y ago
Reading this article leads me to believe the writers at Techcrunch are slowly discovering basic economics, and they think it's revolutionary. Instead of selling “software-as-a-service,” these DIFM companies are delivering “software-with-a-service.” The result is awesome customer experience that can only be delivered with a human touch. Techcrunch has it reversed. These companies are selling a service, and happen to effectively use software to create their competitive advantage.
richardbrevig 12y ago
DIFM = the "whole product" as described by Geoffrey Moore in "Crossing the Chasm." He suggests that you partner with third-parties so that your customers get a complete use case, usually your technology only solves part of the problem and leaves the customer coming up with the rest.
halfmoon 12y ago
Stop jerk tech We don't want more slaves to increase inequality
mattnewton 12y ago
As a young "millennial" myself, my rent/service oriented lifestyle is based around how free it makes me feel to not own anything. Ownership comes with hassles, and upkeep costs that I would rather not pay if I can just solve a problem directly, and it is hard to change course once you have bought things. I felt anchored by my car, the amount of time I spent servicing it, parking it, driving it and paying for it until I spent all the time selling it for a fraction of it's original cost. Money in a bank account represents any asset I can imagine. Today solving problems quickly through services is so frictionless, committing that money to a particular form often seems like a losing proposition.
barrystaes 12y ago
Seriously? This needs to be a buzzword? Jeez!! It is how the economy has worked since.. always. I hire a carpenter to do it for me. A cleaner to do it for me. IT company X to do it for me. Contractor Y to build it for me. Baker Z to bake it for me.

65 points by carlchenet 12y ago

So suddenly everybody is rushing to build a human dispatch service for everything, and the end result will be that there will be one winner, who cashes in a big percentage of every transaction in the particular market segment. The actual AI can wait, because what matters now is the cornering of the market. As you can see, this development does not make me happy.

castell 12y ago
> the actual AI can wait Scaling such services is hard. I want to hear back from "Magic", "Cloe", "Luka", "Path Talk", "Rabbits", "Jarvis" - a post mortem, what went right, what went wrong. How do they bootstrap - with a few friends or with outsource partners from Asia? Magic (59 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819, Jarvis (266 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094351 . The creator of Magic wrote a response 3 days ago on PH: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/magic#comment-89372 http://www.producthunt.com/posts/magic#comment-89372
netcan 12y ago
Why not? I'm not trying to be snarky, what specifically don't you like?
- throwaway9324 12y ago
  Many of these companies aspire to things that are great for themselves, like controlling markets and integrating vertically, but not so great for everyone else.
  - netcan 12y ago
    Is this generally different from the world of business and entrepreneurship where companies aspire to have market share, profits, etc..? IE, specific to the ‘Do It for Me’ market?
    - throwaway9324 12y ago
      I think more of the business potential of these companies require bad things compared to other companies. Most companies have some sort of core business and the things that in part end up being bad for other are second to that. With DIFM companies those things, at least almost, ends up being the core business. https://www.uber.com/jobs/list https://www.uber.com/jobs/list (of course the sector of businesses we are talking about isn't very well defined)
    - amelius 12y ago
      The problem is mostly that these companies seem to try to put a wall around a market and try to become the gate-keeper for that particular market, and will then become the regulator of that market. This goes against the principle of "free markets". Besides these "do it for me" markets, roughly the same pattern is seen with app-stores, and probably many more markets. (Of course, in a truly free market it should in theory be possible to create such nested markets, but this just shows that the concept of a totally free market is nonsense, and that we should act against these patterns.)

InclinedPlane 12y ago

This should be obvious. Concierge style services married to digital communication and software dispatch, it's a natural combination.

netcan 12y ago
"Concierge" is an analogy in this context, I think. That is, it's a starting point for your brain to have something to graft onto. In reality, the service is bound to be very different from a concierge once it hits legit MVP (with enough 'V' to genuinely validate a business) levels of traffic, the concierge analogy will start to be something deep in the identity of the actual product rather than the product. You might have "classrooms" in your elearning software, but it's relationship to an actual classroom is metaphorical. Anyway, the actual work is figuring out how to scale this. If scaling means a linear increase in people, you've got a hard problem to solve. It's not impossible. Uber needs another physical car for each simultaneous passenger. But, it's fundamentally different difficulties than "scaling" of a software. Metaphors are tricky.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  Certainly. But "concierge" gives you a good handhold to understand a lot of the potential businesses that haven't emerged yet. Using the concierge model makes things like shyp and magic seem pretty obvious, for example. From there I think it's a lot easier to see what's possible, where the easy money is, and what the outlines of a viable product look like.

timdaub 12y ago

Can we please stop to assume that younger generations don't want to own and do things? I don't know where this self-proclaimed fact comes from but hell I know a lot of people that define themselves not as non-materialistic AirBnB-Homejoy-Uber users. Instead, like everyone else on this planet, they want to express status with watches, cars and houses. Some maybe even enjoy mowing their lawn and cleaning their house, as it cleans their mind from stressful work related stuff. Yes, Uber and AirBnB are great services and we will use them a lot more in the future, but this doesn't mean that everyone will use a dogfood-delivery or brush-my-teeth service. The DIFM-Economy surely will exist, but it will probably be far smaller than silicon valley based journalist imagine it.

swalsh 12y ago
Silicon Valley has taken the motto "Build things you want" to heart, and is building things that are a great fit for living in silicon valley.
mcdougle 12y ago
You're definitely not wrong. Of course there are those in the younger generation who want to own things. I bet most of them do, in fact. I own my car, of course, and although I'm happy renting an apartment now, I'll be getting a house once I settle down and have a family. But there's no denying that there are those who just don't want the hassle. I have a friend who uses Uber to get anywhere -- even if it's a 5 minute drive. Most of my friends don't own homes and don't intend to (anytime soon, at least). I have a tenant who makes a very good living, has a very large savings account, and a very high credit score, owned his own home previously, and chose to rent from me because it's just easier. There's a pretty big market for those sorts of people -- and I think that's what the article was getting at.
- timdaub 12y ago
  Alright, I accept that and I don't think its a phenomena caused by our wealthy society for a specific generation, as some self-proclaimed millennial-educators suggest. Essentially what they're saying is that we millennials do not want to own things, because we already did had strong abundance of that in our childhood. Firstly, that is certainly not true for most people I know. Secondly, people I know that had strong abundance in their childhood, strive towards even more now. I think its owed to the fact of these peoples' current living situation as well as the state of the economy that there are some people that actually don't want to own things. But lets face it: To much of your money (at least in percentages) in a bank account ultimately is worth nothing. Spending it on services does - on the long term - not yield as much value as ownership. Think about it: You can sell your car after using it for 5-10 years. Same goes for your house, phone, watch, laptop, apartment. Ownership returns securities, and people need securities! I think people from our generation just ride this wave because of convenience but will ultimately converge to the ownership-game as everyone else.

Nursie 12y ago

>> This is the first generation of teenagers that doesn’t universally wish to own their own cars, many instead preferring to be shuttled around with the help of a smartphone app. Alternatively, people like taxis. Especially young, urban people who have a bit of spare cash and like to drink.

ams6110 12y ago
... and this is not really a new thing. Car ownership in dense urban areas has been a hassle for decades. You have typically exhorbitant local permit fees/taxes, you pay for parking, or have to hunt endlessly for street parking, your insurance rates are higher, gasoline is more expensive, etc. and none of those things are recent developments.
andyjdavis 12y ago
>and like to drink. I actually wonder how big a factor changes around drink driving are. Certainly in Australia (where I am from) blood alcohol limits have decreased during my lifetime and police enforcement has massively increased. It is now reasonably common on a friday or saturday night in particular to have police block off various choke points and even multilane freeways during peak "coming home from a night out" times breathalyzing and even drug testing a huge proportion of drivers coming through. That has made driving an increasingly unattractive proposition during precisely the time (friday and saturday night) that owning a car used to be most appealing for people in their late teens and early 20s.

Bostwick 12y ago

Reading this article leads me to believe the writers at Techcrunch are slowly discovering basic economics, and they think it's revolutionary. Instead of selling “software-as-a-service,” these DIFM companies are delivering “software-with-a-service.” The result is awesome customer experience that can only be delivered with a human touch. Techcrunch has it reversed. These companies are selling a service, and happen to effectively use software to create their competitive advantage.

richardbrevig 12y ago

DIFM = the "whole product" as described by Geoffrey Moore in "Crossing the Chasm." He suggests that you partner with third-parties so that your customers get a complete use case, usually your technology only solves part of the problem and leaves the customer coming up with the rest.

halfmoon 12y ago

Stop jerk tech We don't want more slaves to increase inequality

mattnewton 12y ago

As a young "millennial" myself, my rent/service oriented lifestyle is based around how free it makes me feel to not own anything. Ownership comes with hassles, and upkeep costs that I would rather not pay if I can just solve a problem directly, and it is hard to change course once you have bought things. I felt anchored by my car, the amount of time I spent servicing it, parking it, driving it and paying for it until I spent all the time selling it for a fraction of it's original cost. Money in a bank account represents any asset I can imagine. Today solving problems quickly through services is so frictionless, committing that money to a particular form often seems like a losing proposition.

barrystaes 12y ago

Seriously? This needs to be a buzzword? Jeez!! It is how the economy has worked since.. always. I hire a carpenter to do it for me. A cleaner to do it for me. IT company X to do it for me. Contractor Y to build it for me. Baker Z to bake it for me.