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on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) I wanted to build vertical SaaS for pest control, so I took a technician job
sizzle wrote 14 hours 58 min ago:
I have annoying carpenter ants does anyone recommend Taurus SC?
cestith wrote 18 hours 9 min ago:
Thereâs no way to build domain knowledge like working in the field
you want to target. This could be a reusable model for people looking
to serve a well-targeted vertical with oneâs own software company for
that vertical.
tezclarke wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
Yes, and the other way around is increasing now. Industry insiders
building their own tools to solve specific problems.
_spduchamp wrote 18 hours 42 min ago:
I like this idea of building your own software to run your own business
rather than trying to sell software.
My wife and I run a small chain of second-hand clothing stores that buy
from the public, and we run it on our own custom software built on top
of a rails e-commerce engine. (Solidus) We don't do anything online,
but instead use the engine to run our point-of-sale and credit system.
We have one part-time developer who works from home and occasionally
comes and works directly with the staff in the stores, and now she
leans a little on Claude for assistance.
I would never want the hassle of trying to make our system work for
other companies. I love that we have a system that can adapt and change
based on our needs without being beholden to some else's SaaS.
If we were to rebuild it all today, we'd probably lean even harder on
Claude, but still work using a good open source e-commerce framework.
tezclarke wrote 17 hours 22 min ago:
It's only going to get easier, cheaper and faster to build these
things for yourself. Thanks for sharing.
vicchenai wrote 20 hours 14 min ago:
the incentive structure thing is so real. i build tools for
institutional investing and the number of times i've seen a perfectly
good product idea die because it threatened someone's quarterly bonus
is depressing. the REIT example is exactly what happens in finance too
-- compliance teams will block adoption of something that saves money
if it makes their workflow tracking harder, even temporarily. working
in the domain first changes what you build in ways you can't get from
interviews. you stop building features nobody asked for and start
solving the annoying 5 minute tasks that happen 40 times a day.
danielmarkbruce wrote 19 hours 51 min ago:
You don't have an email address listed - could you ping me at my
username at googles popular email service to chat on tools for
institutional investing?
AlexeyBelov wrote 6 hours 36 min ago:
vicchenai is an LLM bot.
skizm wrote 21 hours 46 min ago:
> We have an acquisition of a small residential operator lined up,
which we'll build the tooling for and grow a platform around once
weâve proven the model works and can scale.
This is the exact process private equity tries to do at scale, right?
tezclarke wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
We plan to build more technology in house than PE does. We will start
with this first small acquisition, learn and go from there. It might
grow by more acquisitions, franchising or organically by attracting
the right technicians over, or having a better training program to
quickly train and get experience for new guys
skizm wrote 21 hours 2 min ago:
Hopefully I didnât come off as dismissive. Love the hustle here.
Itâs always been a dream of mine to quit big tech and do
something local like this. Glad to see others have made the jump
successfully.
jamesjolliffe wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
Huge admiration and respect for this guy. Jealous of his people skills.
Legit, what % of developers on HN do you think are well-rounded enough
to pull this off?
Godspeed bro.
Fokamul wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
I hope LLMs will soon replace all these sales people and SaaS
companies.
Recreating SaaS product with LLM legally, will be fun during this year
and I think it will explode in 2027, also with major lawsuits :)
lexro_ai wrote 1 day ago:
The REIT bonus thing hit me. It's never about the idea being bad, it's
about who's getting hurt in their pocket if it works. Took me way too
long to figure that out too.
One thing I'm curious about â are you planning to actually run the
company day to day after the acquisition or bring someone in to operate
it while you focus on the tech side? Feels like that decision changes
everything about the pace you can move at.
vlinx wrote 1 day ago:
I think taking the technician job is brilliant and exactly how you find
the 'better way' for vertical SaaS, similar to how EquipmentShare
understood the deep inefficiencies in heavy equipment rental. It's
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
They killed it. "A better way to rent"
BigBalli wrote 1 day ago:
That's wild. I literally just launched [1] and find this extremely
fascinating.
(HTM) [1]: https://pestpro.app
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
AI slop - you've sent me the same message on linkedin and you vibe
coded that two minutes ago.
BigBalli wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
I wasn't sure you'd see the comment here (didn't know you posted it
yourself). Was just trying to connect to learn from you.
grey-area wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
Really quite disturbing that you can now generate this kind of
slop in minutes. [1] Let's be honest here, why did you generate
this just now, are you hoping for work building mobile apps, or
are you sincerely expecting to run a pest control SaaS business
with AI generated blog posts and a download link that doesn't
work?
You've done the incredibly easy bit (making a prototype), do you
intend to do the hard work of building a business over 10+ years?
(HTM) [1]: https://pestpro.app/blog/
truetraveller wrote 1 day ago:
Hey! I have no absolutely no clue who OP (BigBalli) is. I checked
this guy's profile out. He's a member since 2012, I don't think he
meant bad at all.
I'm personally anti-AI. I checked out his app, and whether
vibe-coded or not, it looks very well done. And the app actually
has both offline mobile apps + web apps. And it's free? And FWIW,
pestpro.app was registered ~1 month ago.
Jn2G3Np8 wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
On top of the app store link not working, the privacy and terms
links also 404.
Also why is it free? Presumably the data is the product.
BigBalli wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
yeah, apple still has to review it... hence the broken link
jvidalv wrote 1 day ago:
If you click on "download button" which should open the link to
the App Store you will notice that is a broken link. This is why
is ai slop.
Spinning a web like that today is 30 minutes of Claude Code
prompting.
But like it or not, the gatekeeping of Apple and Google means
that pushing an app to their stores is days work and wait time.
So yeah, reeks of ai slop.
BigBalli wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
apple still needs to review it. That's why I said "literally
just now".
liamwire wrote 1 day ago:
Agreed, reaction from OP is concerning to say the least
BigBalli wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
thanks
FWIW didn't mean to hurt/insult(?)
skyberrys wrote 1 day ago:
Wow this is a wild read. I can't believe it worked out so well,
although it certainly had it's share of hiccups. Just recently I had an
encounter with a pest at my house and then spent some time trying to
find a company to deal with it for me. The results of my calling were
unsatisfying so I ended up just taking care of it myself. However after
I solved my problem I saw a truck from one of the companies I was
calling driving through my neighborhood. I think I must have managed to
convince my guest to move to another house and apparently that home
owner has less issues than I do with the pest removal methods.
Side note, is it just me or do these services seem designed to be a
short term patch so I have to have a long term, every 6 month, sort of
servicing from the pest control company?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
The regulations for pesticide use are really tightening up,
especially in California. Today's treatments often don't kill the
pest, rather they make them feel a bit sick and they move along to
more welcoming environments like you say.
panavm wrote 1 day ago:
One thing I've noticed building domain-specific SaaS with AI
assistance: the first few weeks feel like magic, but then the codebase
becomes hard to maintain.
The issue isn't the AI output quality â it's that most builders
(myself included, initially) use AI reactively. Ask a question, accept
the answer, move on. No structure for maintaining context between
sessions or verifying that new additions stay coherent with the
existing system.
The builders who get the best results seem to treat Claude/Cursor more
like a junior dev: useful, but you review everything, and you
explicitly maintain shared context about the state of the project.
Domain-specific SaaS is actually a great use case for this because the
problem space is bounded â you can give the AI a really tight
context. "We are building scheduling and invoicing for pest control
companies. Current architecture is X. Today we are adding Y." That
specificity makes the output dramatically better than generic
prompting.
Good luck with the build â the insight to go learn the domain in
person before building is genuinely rare and gives you a huge moat.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
It'll go further - bespoke software for the specific company. The
exam training is a good example - people have different learning
preferences so why can't we cater to that automatically if we already
have all the data and context?
Voice input that actually works to reduce screen time and
distractions while driving or wearing gloves on site. Understanding
and reacting to parking availability in cities, prompting the
technician to upsell in the way the system knows he's most
comfortable with (so he actually does it).
Incumbents will have to base this on Salesforce and adapt it which is
expensive and a grind. Even if they have appetite for that,
retraining the technicians who are used to the existing way will be
horrendous.
tgtweak wrote 1 day ago:
I know about 4 friends that have left their parent company, built a
killer product that same company didn't think to build or didn't
believe in, only to get acquired by that same company after a few
years... some have done it multiple times.
I think this falls in exactly that situation. You see how janky these
national companies are doing things, plot out a disruptive course, then
disrupt them in a particular region so that you can extrapolate how
much that will hurt at national scale and force a buyout that's way
beyond the multiple you bought those small operators for.
charlie0 wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
How did they deal with non-competes? Are they in CA or somewhere
those aren't enforceable?
williamdclt wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
Sounds like they didn't build competing products, they built
products that'd have been very valuable to the parent company.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Ask for forgiveness, not permission!
teleforce wrote 1 day ago:
>I built my own training GPT and passed in 13 days, which was a company
record. The training manager knew I'd built the app but never showed an
interest, which makes sense: it could replace about a quarter of his
role.
I'd really love to read a dedicated article on this side project.
Apparently, Karpathy is into AI based education business with Eureka
Labs [1] Introducing Eureka Labs:
(HTM) [1]: https://eurekalabs.ai/
g947o wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
The whole thing looks dead. I followed a few links but couldn't find
anything meaningful that comes out of this.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
The training was basically to sit and read books all day, and it
could be so much faster. Surprisingly there is no reliable test /
quiz prep tool available online, just some free ones that contain
errors.
Given this company is basically the best, they should really build
their own revision / quiz tool. The most valuable part of training
was a webinar which I took notes from, and turned into revision cards
alongside info from the books and revised the way I know works for
me. They could do this bespoke for each trainee in seconds now.
pier25 wrote 1 day ago:
Domain knowledge is really the most important in any business. If
you're making software for a particular industry you won't get very far
without it.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Agree, and can't be skipped (can be accelerated though)
impish9208 wrote 1 day ago:
The bugs are the feature!
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Bugs are top of funnel.
ozten wrote 1 day ago:
William Burroughs on 1959 HN: I wanted to write Naked Lunch, so I took
a pest control job.
btown wrote 1 day ago:
> Thatâs why selling SaaS or AI to this kind of company isnât for
me - Iâd rather focus my energy on building a company from my own
principles, and hire people who share them from the beginning.
> When I told my manager I was leaving, he said I should start my own
company and give him a call when I do. So that's what I'm doing.
I love hearing stories like this, because it shows a way to be a
builder without the "venture or nothing" narrative that has pervaded
the tech space since the dotcom days.
It is very difficult to make a venture-backed services firm (providing
services, not software) that can be immediately profitable, grow
sustainably, and outperform competitors with in-house technology that's
built for real on-the-ground stakeholders... at a speed that will
satisfy venture investors.
But it is more possible than ever ([0]), to do this (in-house tech and
all) on a bootstrapped basis - since AI reduces the engineering staff
required to build, adapt, and maintain an agile best-in-class solution
at single-tenant/single-customer scale. The outcome is at the least a
lifestyle business, but with upside that can take the form of anything
from franchising to licensing to full-fledged SaaS in the future.
I wish OOP the best of luck, and hope he's found a passion. He could go
far with this approach if he ends up following through.
([0] This is not to say there are no barriers to entry. There's
privilege in the word "founder," and this is no exception. And the
K-shaped economy has left many brilliant would-be founders behind. But
at least some barriers are lower than they once were, and that's worth
appreciating.)
andrew_lettuce wrote 20 hours 5 min ago:
The idea that AI makes adaptation and maintenance easier for non
domain experts seems a stretch at best. All we've seen to date is it
makes building shallow copies quicker for more people, and helps
experts go faster. Neither of these applies to the majority of
bootstrapping vertical domains
wouldbecouldbe wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Out of all things, you have to be a sadist to be passionate about
pest control. Even though necessary at times, it's not a very clean
job.
Sounded more like he likes he is passionate about building a
business.
tezclarke wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
Itâs the business characteristics I like. Recurring and one off
revenue, big market, growing, regulations. The exam barrier to
entry rather than 4y apprenticeship like plumbing
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
On "venture or nothing" - This will be my second company and this
time round I have stripped right back to the problem, which is
actually quite basic - pest control is a big, good business to be in
and it's possible to build a very big, profitable business by doing
the simple things right, consistently.
It will compound over time if the basics are done right (which is
harder to do than I thought before this experiment)
In my previous company, we founded it with the outcome first - "take
over the world" or bust. This time I think the base case is a good
company, and the ceiling is the best in the industry.
theptip wrote 20 hours 13 min ago:
I think there is the potential for a beautiful correction here; the
general narrative over the last 5-10 years is PE buying up good
businesses, enshittifying them and loading up debt to improve
margins, and driving down quality.
But this leaves an opportunity for anyone that cares to build a
business that is higher quality (and even better if itâs possible
to build it efficiently too).
I think with AI lowering the barrier to entry we should expect to
see a lot of new small businesses appear, and perhaps if we are
lucky this trend can drive a reversal in the enshittification.
floatrock wrote 17 hours 27 min ago:
I like the story, I struggle to see how to outplay PE.
Yes, PE enshittifies the experience. You can be a better human
and win customers that way.
The headwinds are the usual david-v-goliath going up against
scale/consolidation stories:
- consolidation gives more purchasing power. When all the
PE-controlled pest control vendors in the state are negotiating
as one, they get bigger cost breaks
- PE has a bigger war chest. They'll enshittify eventually, but
they'll undercut you longer than you can stay solvent. At that
point, they'll happily buy you for pennies.
- The end-game is always monopolization. A PE firm bought up
something like all the concrete mills in Georgia or one of the
southern state. Any building or municipal project in the state
effectively buys from that one company, even though it looks like
a bunch of different local concrete mills.
- Any AI you throw at the problem presumably PE can handle more
efficiently at scale.
What's the strategy that outcompetes?
christoff12 wrote 14 hours 3 min ago:
Service businesses win on service, which notably degrades over
time with PE firms.
So you win by taking the long view and building incrementally
and opportunistically jump in as the incumbent falters.
lotsofpulp wrote 1 day ago:
> which is actually quite basic - pest control is a big, good
business to be in and it's possible to build a very big, profitable
business by doing the simple things right, consistently.
I would have thought the opposite because pest control is the
easiest thing to DIY for most people. All the insecticides and
traps and knowledge for what to use is available online, there is
usually no emergency so research can be done, and no technical
skills to learn most of the time.
tezclarke wrote 19 hours 46 min ago:
On residential - lots of people don't want to get their hands
dirty. For commercial - it's rarely worth doing in-house and in
manufacturing / food industries getting it wrong can lead to
fines / closure losing contracts, so it's not worth penny
pinching.
foobarian wrote 20 hours 1 min ago:
My biggest problem with a service like pest control is I can't
tell what it does. I'm not talking about getting rid of a hornet
nest or squirrels in the attic, I'm talking about the
door-to-door salespeople who want you to subscribe to a quarterly
sprinkling of some magic dust around your house. If I could get
a trustworthy measurement like "number of 2x4s not destroyed by
carpenter ants" or "sqft of siding not rotten because of nests" I
would be a lot more open to it.
tezclarke wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
For the d2d residential services, you're buying peace of mind
and usually the provider will guartantee the service. E.g. if
you see ants and you're not due a visit until next month,
they'll drop in and sort it.
Lalabadie wrote 21 hours 22 min ago:
I think you're assuming that there is no valuable/monetizable
difference between a neophyte, and an experienced expert serving
(and supported by) a solid organization.
Also, I don't know where you live, but the more powerful
substances used by licensed pest control are regulated and aren't
(legally) available to the general public. If you're willing to
run a business model based on unlicensed use of controlled
substances, there are more profitable options than pest control
lol
DaedalusII wrote 1 day ago:
fumigating houses, pest control at commercial food facilities,
commercial premises etc is a big dirty difficult job and involves
expensive equipment and hazardous chemicals etc plus as OP noted
requires exams before you can do it for 3rd parties
seibelj wrote 1 day ago:
My neighbor is the best wallpaper guy in the city, which youâd
think is extremely niche but wallpaper has come back in a big way.
All sorts of businesses out there for those who identify needs and
service wants. And the best way to know about a business is to work
for an established one first
guzfip wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
Iâve always wondered how the hell things like vacuum repair
shops and other niche stores I still see around from time to time
are still around.
Itâs not that I donât think anyone would choose to repair
their vacuum. Itâs more that I canât imagine they get enough
volume to pay the lease/rent/bills on whatever commercial
property theyâre on.
yardie wrote 19 hours 5 min ago:
The smart ones will own their shop outright. If not, they are
on a longterm lease.
Also, don't knock it, a quality vacuum like a Kirby or Miele
will go decades, are incredibly quiet, and just need
maintenance on wear and tear, which these repair shops provide.
I think we got used to thinks being terrible. Like my Dyson,
does good work, it's also very loud compared to my financially
secure friend's Miele.
JDEW wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
> Like my Dysonâ¦
Which is wild because a Dyson has a premium price tag.
tezclarke wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
Tough as consumer goods are generally getting cheaper and
better quality. Canât remember the last time we had a problem
with the TV. We have left them behind when moving apartments as
theyâre relatively cheap now
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Love this one. You are selling people their time back with a
service like wallpapering for sure.
anoojb wrote 1 day ago:
This is amazing. Thanks for sharing the story.
> ...and noticed companies have become less likely to offer their
time for ride-alongs and research calls. They get too many
requests, and vibe coding is drawing their attention to self-build.
Is this ACTUALLY happening? Are entrepreneurs who get into
vibe-coders really eating up time a bunch of time for trades
people?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Much more difficult to get attention from blue-collar decision
makers than it was previously. Also bc there's a ton of
investment in the sector now, so they're bombarded by inbound!
anoojb wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
I see, you're statement is less about product research and more
about customer acquisition.
tezclarke wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
Getting the initial conversation even to research (not just
to sell to) is more difficult than before for these reasons.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
A really good company worth checking out in this vein is
equipmentshare.com. In 10y they started and IPO'd, by being a
better way to rent heavy equipment.
anon291 wrote 1 day ago:
Lifestyle business has been a thing since day zero in this space (the
tech world)
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
I have been surprised by how many tech founders, currently funded
by VC, have side gigs or are running the company knowing they wont'
or can't scale it. I don't think this is a good thing for either
the founders or the VC (who probably don't know)
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
I briefly worked for someone who was funded by Imagine K12, just
before Imagine K12 merged into Y Combinator.
He used his funding to rent four apartments in San Francisco,
which he then sublet, personally, through Airbnb.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
I know exactly who youâre talking about
Paracompact wrote 1 day ago:
Name and shame?
isatty wrote 1 day ago:
The possum is a friend and not a pest though. I hope you arenât
killing them :(
tdb7893 wrote 19 hours 15 min ago:
Possums are stinky bastards but I love them so much! Juvenile possums
are shockingly adorable, just look at these little guys!
( [1] )
(HTM) [1]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Baby_opos...
Joel_Mckay wrote 19 hours 57 min ago:
Possums and Skunks may carry diseases like most wild animals, but
usually only show up if there is a rat/mouse infestation around a
food/garbage source.
Taming wild animals is bad for their long-term well-being around
human populations, as rabies also initially causes
uncharacteristically "friendly" behavior at first.
I agree people should leave nature alone whenever possible. =3
aaronbrethorst wrote 1 day ago:
squish them very gently (and then give them treats)
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Absolutely not.
taude wrote 1 day ago:
You can't offshore pest control.
downrightmike wrote 1 day ago:
We did with the central american hook work fly etc prevention
programs
ozten wrote 1 day ago:
But you can onshore pests... wait, Nutria pest control and generate
demand by ... introducing Nutria to untapped markets!
TZubiri wrote 1 day ago:
Did I read this correctly?
You were on the job for 1 month and you are now starting a competing
company?
>when I was leaving my boss told me I should start my own company.
Genuinely or sarcastically?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
2 months
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
and not competing - we are looking at a different location and
sector, not that I think they'd even consider us as competition
anyway
Aeroi wrote 1 day ago:
I work as a Boat Captain and I've been building Camera Search for 16
months to provide better tools for tradesmen. It's evolved into a
larger platform with multiple clients, but the core use case for me was
building a video and photo first agent that is grounded in actual
manuals and data and provide better diagnostics, parts, and repair
info.
My longterm vision is to be the agent platform for traditional
industries, bridging the gap between knowledge work and physical work.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Diagnosis without the professional having to be on site is a good use
case.
deweywsu wrote 1 day ago:
This might be a bit of a gold rush of sorts at first, in that the first
people to transition from tech to running a small business, whether
tech-enabled or not, will find a bigger piece of the pie waiting for
their taking. But as the stream of many others increases over the
years, the pie's slices will get smaller as competition for the same
market segments increases. Not trying to paint doom and gloom, just
that I'd imagine, as the author says, this kind of white to blue collar
shift will accelerate, and as it does, competition will rise, lowering
the chance for overall profits.
est31 wrote 1 day ago:
The end game is a resource based economy as all sorts of labor
becomes cheap.
Think of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Putin's Russia, or Norway. I.e. risk for
highly nepotic dictatorships, with the potential that it might end up
well despite the odds (Norway).
Before, if you made a product that improved the lives of everyone,
say you invented Google or Heinz ketchup, you could make a lot of
money through that, and you did a good deed and became rich the same
time. The masses of humans would reward you for delivering the
benefits of your invention to them by giving you a piece of their
work output.
As their work becomes less and less worth, why focus on those humans
though? I am asking rhetorically of course.
An economy that thrives from innovation enriches the innovators,
making them powerful. A brute in power causes the innovators to leave
or in the worst case, he mass-executes them outright (think of what
Stalin did in Russia). With AI, you can have a brute in power though,
as an oil rig or datacenter can be protected by a bunch of machine
guns.
An economy with AI everywhere will be, after a short and very
innovative period, just be about who controls which resource, i.e.
water for a datacenter, production lines for robots, mining rights,
operational control of robot fleets, etc.
The working 95% will probably experience a sharp decrease in
purchasing power, making a lot of products unaffordable to them, so
consumption wise we'll have a further shift towards plutonomics. The
owning top 10% will probably be affected by this major shift in
consumption as well, E.g. a tower full of condos becomes worthless if
the tenants can't pay rent because they got laid off, etc.
Need for robots and AI will further increase. Eventually most
economic activity will revolve around those robots. It's a bit like
paperclip optimizer here, whether those robots protect gay luxury
space communism from counterrevolutionaries, or they project the will
of the Davos council of Forbes 400, economically it will be quite
similar.
There will still be human societies, humans will still talk to other
humans. We won't be all exclusively conversing with LLMs, I doubt
that. There will still be social mobility but it will revolve around
nepotism, lying, and various escalation steps of war.
We might end up in different scenarios depending on the country, but
some countries like Germany might lose relevance as most of their
value lies in stuff that is going to be replaced by AI, i.e. they
have less natural resources, or they have been depleted already.
We might also see companies that automate everything from end to end,
from mining to producing and running weaponized robot fleets.
Shareholders of those companies will do great too, if the leadership
of the companies respects minority shareholder rights that is (why
should they though, they will outgun any law enforcement).
Do I like this future? I don't think so. We will probably have solved
cancer, communicable diseases, and aging in the next 30 years if AI
continues its successful trajectory, but not sure if it will be
accessible to 8 billion humans.
TZubiri wrote 1 day ago:
What's the gold rush in this scenario, just business in general?
Doesn't seem like it can be a tulip if it encompasses all productive
endeavors.
linkjuice4all wrote 1 day ago:
In my limited âai transformationâ experience the biggest gains
seem to be just forcing down some of the walls between these
different systems. Larger, more well run places were probably
integrating all of their systems/data/etc so there was none of this
low hanging fruit. It seems AI as a forcing function of combining
data sources to feed into the AI just had the beneficial side effect
of connecting all the crap.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Getting data into the crm without physical input is a good quick
win. Techs will often drive and type at the same time. Another good
win is scheduling the right technician for a job when the customer
call comes in. Lots of companies building these agents at the
moment and a challenge for them is how to get into customers at
scale.
deweywsu wrote 1 day ago:
How did you get such a good sense for business alongside
implementing solutions with programming? Did you have experience
doing this before?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
I'm non-technical so I don't code, although I'm able to do a
lot more myself than a year ago, with AI / claude cowork.
tshaddox wrote 1 day ago:
Sounds great for people who need pest control tool services!
TurdF3rguson wrote 1 day ago:
Is it a gold rush or a pie eating contest? (I need to know if I
should be selling shovels or forks).
deweywsu wrote 1 day ago:
That said, this guy is a superstar. This kind of application of
skill to a totally different business paradigm to improve it is
what I'd love to spend my time doing. Knowing my personality, once
I improved the business, I'd get bored running it and move on to
finding something else to improve.
nomilk wrote 1 day ago:
Love stories like this, where someone learns some completely orthogonal
domain for educational purposes.
system2 wrote 1 day ago:
How long was the employment at the pest company? At any point, did
anyone treat you like you were stealing their business? I thought about
this approach, but I chickened out many times because of the possible
confrontation.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
No, and to be absolutely clear, you should not be dishonest or
fabricate.
I was up front that I was exploring getting back into blue-collar,
coming off the closure of my startup, and that I wanted to get into
sales but wasn't sure if this would be a long term thing as it's a
totally new industry for me.
We were aligned on giving the technician job a try before moving into
sales, and it's common for people to take that path as you can't
really sell the services if you've not done the job for a bit.
Important context - I am not a tech millionaire. The top guys
regionally at these companies earn $500k+, and some are in the $Ms,
so if there was a route to be top pest guy at BigCo, I was up for it!
system2 wrote 1 day ago:
Thank you. This story is a reminder that all these niches we pass
on assuming they are not worth pursuing are actually thriving
quietly in the background.
dsalzman wrote 1 day ago:
Doing something similar. Bought a business in the petroleum equipment
service space. Building internal tools for ourselves. Pen and paper
still dominates the industry.
deweywsu wrote 1 day ago:
Would you recommend buying a business over starting one from scratch
when possible?
diordiderot wrote 1 day ago:
Depends on the industry / multiple / employees.
You want at least a year where you're systemising the owner out of
the business without filling their shoes.
You'd also want some kind of break clause so you can back out if it
turns out the business canât run without the owner, or if the
team wonât adapt and canât be replaced.
Joel_Mckay wrote 1 day ago:
Usually... buying proven technology, and marketing lead lists is
still a gamble. However, the other YC posters are correct in the
"never make what you can buy" advice... if and only if there is
still mileage in the product life-cycle.
In general, there are a lot of serious rules around energy and fuel
industries. Rockwell and Kongsberg technology still dominate for
some very practical reasons. Seeing a few small firms fail hard in
the area, I would still call it a fools errand for those looking at
low hanging fruit. =3
downrightmike wrote 1 day ago:
Buy then build
dsalzman wrote 1 day ago:
Depends on the industry and your experience plus your access to
capital. Sorry for the non-answer
spenczar5 wrote 1 day ago:
Does it matter that pen and paper dominate? How much of the
business's expenses are overhead?
jofzar wrote 1 day ago:
I worked in scheduling and timekeeping industry for a little bit,
when pen and paper is mentioned you think "oh it's just notes
written, and some other things" but in reality it's literally whole
departments storing everything in daily/weekly sheets/binders and
it's like 20 people's job to keep it all in order and keep the ship
running for next week.
When someone asks what the plan is for next week, the answer is
normally, it needs to be written out, or I'll have to find this for
you etc.
christoff12 wrote 12 hours 18 min ago:
Yeah, my first job at a startup was at an oil and gas saas that
ingested unstructured data into a standardized db for smaller
operators.*
"How much money did we make yesterday?" was a nontrivial question
that required a several people a couple of days to compile
manually before our software.
---
* Would probably make a killing today; this was over a decade ago
and the extraction was 98% regex and custom if statements
bashtoni wrote 1 day ago:
I love this, the perfect antidote to all the stupid startup-bro grind
bullshit posts.
You put in real work to understand the business landscape and typical
pain points. With AI, implementing solutions has become much easier but
knowing what the problems are and how to solve them hasn't.
colesantiago wrote 1 day ago:
There is definitely money in the pest control SaaS business, mine is
running at $2M ARR for a few years now.
There are lots of antiquated operators not having newer technology for
pest control, which makes this area lucrative for even $50K MRR.
Go for it!
d675 wrote 1 day ago:
also starting in a blue-collar field soon as an operator-ish in a
facility management company. I've already lined up an awesome new
SaaS in the main industry. Pest control will be one of the verticals
the company has customers fo so I will be keeping an eye for it, was
thinking of just starting a pest control business it self.
Does your software do anything fancy or is mostly for organization,
good workflow, and being the central source of truth?
Did it require a lot of development after getting a few customers on
boarded?
are you a 1 man show?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Congrats - what's the company called?
clcaev wrote 1 day ago:
I liked that you picked a service that has a relatively low barrier to
entry. The real asset are local
operators and referrals. Making them more efficient without being
controlled by a big company would be a boon for everyone involved.
Consider being a platform coop with regional operators as members. See
(HTM) [1]: https://platform.coop/
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve never heard of platform Co-ops. Cool! Lots of people predicted
that a beloved local coffee shop was doomed to fail when the workers
got a loan and bought it to run as a completely flat cooperative.
Itâs been a few years and they are absolutely killing it. Iâd
love to see the tech version of that.
clcaev wrote 1 day ago:
There is still much to be worked out, but some smart people are
working on it. See also
(HTM) [1]: https://e2c.how/
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks! Cool initiative. Iâll look into it.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, the barrier here is the desire to study and pass the exam. If
willing, you are up and running relatively quickly - but only as a
technician under someone else's operating license. To get the
operator license (eg to be a full on pest control company) requires
2+ year documented experience and another set of exams.
The operating license holder is also on the hook for legal action if
(when) things go wrong.
"Control" is interesting and I have found in all trades that people
value their freedom. The good companies don't monitor employees too
tightly, and are rewarded with loyalty and longer tenures generally.
Of course you have to run a good recruitment and referral process to
find the good people!
mememememememo wrote 1 day ago:
I'd love if this ends up being he gets a 1m/y pest control empire going
and quits tech startups as he prefers the sweaty kind.
crystal_revenge wrote 1 day ago:
Not long ago I left a reasonably cool AI startup to join an ops heavy
(like people physically doing work, running warehouses etc) company.
There was some adjustment but the ability to deliver real, concrete,
monetary value to people working in the field is incredibly rewarding
(and oddly the pay is on par with most bay area startups).
I recently talked to a few companies in the AI space, from (smaller)
frontier model labs to companies still looking to build "AI products"
and my take away was that, if you're not working for one of the big
players, the market hasn't really figured out if there is an "AI
engineer" job yet.
I'm increasingly starting to believe that the future of work for
people that have technical skills (more than just 'software') is
likely going to be working in places that are less about "shipping
software" and more about supporting teams doing something physical in
the real world.
These companies are also the most ripe to truly leverage AI: they
have tons of messy problems that need to be solved and iterated on
extremely fast. Operations people tend to be "EoD" deadline people,
not quarterly planners. Getting solutions solved in an actionable way
on time often means really understanding the core business, the
technical space surrounding it, and how to leverage AI to pull of
some miracles. It can be stressful, but when you pull it off your
stakeholder have sincere and real gratitude and you're actually
moving the needle for the company.
I don't think the Bay area, even those sniffing the AI vapors the
hardest, is really willing to accept what AI is going to do to
software and software companies.
z3t4 wrote 1 day ago:
I love working for those companies also, where they are used to
waiting months for a small software update and I can do it in hours
and they think I'm a wizard.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
The best outcome is bespoke software for every company and small
"ops heavy" (in startup context) startups have a window to grow
like weeds. Imagine the culture shock and legal / procurement
process for an established player to bring a vendor in to build
this for them. It won't work, it needs to be an internal team, but
even then, the internal politics, and short term affects to
people's bonuses and incentives will make it almost impossible.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
I give this example as I previously worked at a big European
REIT. My job was to implement renewable energy across the
portfolio which on paper was a no-brainer due to legislation and
grants / feed in tariffs etc.
We got huge pushback from every angle with the local teams,
people paying lip service to drag it out and delay. Eventually I
got to the root cause... The capex had to come out of the
business unit, and the payback would negatively affect their KPIs
and bonus. Next time I came across this kind of issue, I asked to
see the incentive structure before approaching anyone.
jojobas wrote 1 day ago:
Building a vertical backoffice for just 1 company used to be
pointless and probably still is.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
This is going to be the route for a lot of white collar people as
they lose their jobs to AI.
mememememememo wrote 1 day ago:
Absolutely. I am thinking what my blue collar alter ego will be.
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as a recent white->blue
collar convert, (union metalworker,) tech workers are usually far
less qualified than your average vocational high school graduate,
way less physically capable, and waaaaay less tolerant of the
sort of workplace unpleasantries in these types of jobs at the
entry level. Your tech experience gets you pretty much zero
advantage, and there are lots of very smart people outside of
the software world that have put a whole lot more thought into
that industry than you have. Consistently high labor demand meant
companies had to comparatively treat tech workers with kid
gloves, and as a result, most donât realize how much smoke has
been blown up our assess for decades. They start as soft,
arrogant, maladroit noobs who will cosplay as working class for a
couple weeks and either eat crow and stick with it long enough
for their boss to not want to throw them off a bridge, or give
up/get fired and try to pay the bills doing zero-entry-barrier
gig work. I was fortunate enough to have been a blue-> white
collar covert a couple of decades ago so I knew what I was
getting into. The fantasy that a tech worker landing in a blue
collar field will naturally rise above the rabble and shoot to
the top is a workplace version of the fantasy where a white
person finds themselves in some jungle full of âsavagesâ and
is so inherently impressive and sophisticated that theyâre
immediately made king.
Jbird2k wrote 1 day ago:
Blue collar guy here who started working construction at 13
years of age. I concur that many white collar people wonât
have an easy time adjusting to blue collar jobs. Some people do
switch and thrive. Many however donât have the mental
fortitude to push through the misery of a non stimulating brain
numbing endless job that could kill somebody if you stop paying
attention.
There are also a lot of geniuses who might barely know how to
read but can do incredible work and figure out some really
difficult problems.
I consider myself blue collar even though I am a school teacher
currently. Itâs in my blood. I donât especially like the
work but I can do it and I am skilled at it.
My advice to anyone moving in to the blue collar world is to be
respectful. If you are educated Donât ever let on that your
education makes you superior somehow. You will make a lot of
enemies by being that person.
You will likely run in to people who really are quite
unintelligent just be considerate and donât get into debates
with them. A lot of people come from poverty or really tough
backgrounds and many are quite sensitive about it so donât
make a big deal about it.
On the other side there are many people who are quite
intelligent and have the skills and knowledge of engineers even
though they do not have any formal training or education.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
A lot of people have been sold a lie about uni education (and
willingly bought it in a lot of cases).
pocksuppet wrote 1 day ago:
IF you're reading Hacker News, you're probably not one of
those people. You're probably someone for whom a university
education, and working in software, are actually good fits.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Agree.
juddlyon wrote 1 day ago:
This made me laugh. âWeâll computerize it and get filthy
rich! Theyâre stuck in 2015!â
Iâm guilty of this type of thinking and occasionally get
reminded when Iâm way out of my lane.
gnarcoregrizz wrote 1 day ago:
yeah. there absolutely are lots of very smart and capable
people outside of tech. as someone who has seen the blue collar
world "up close" (family businesses), its a different breed...
the culture and attitude gap is enormous. shockingly so. most
tech workers I know couldn't hang (don't hustle as hard, risk
averse, liberal), but some skills may transfer, like problem
solving and diagnosis, i.e. debugging.
mememememememo wrote 1 day ago:
Why is risk averse a thing. Blue collar jobs are just jobs
unless you are going self employed and buying all the gear
etc.
SoftTalker wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
> buying all the gear
Most blue collar jobs require this. A mechanic usually has
to provide his own tools. This can be tens of thousands of
dollars just for a basic set that lets you do standard
jobs. Then you might have specialty tools for specific
equipment.
Even a framer or roofer is bringing his own hammers, saws,
PPE, and anything else that's required. You don't just roll
up to a job and get handed everything you need like a
software job.
DrewADesign wrote 10 hours 49 min ago:
Big time money on tools and professional tools are not
fucking cheap. I have about $1800 in measuring equipment
alone that I had to buy out of pocket. Add in wrenches I
can put my entire body weight into all day long, a drill
index, multiple top-end hammers, screwdrivers, grinders,
deburring tools, punches, clamps, handheld grinders, etc.
etc. etc.
I think mechanics have it worse though. In my shop I
mostly only need imperial tools, at least.
rambambram wrote 1 day ago:
From above: "endless job that could kill somebody if you
stop paying attention"
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Cash flow and accounts receivable management is a headache
for these guys
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
This is a great example of the perspective disconnect.
In trades, the risk is usually not financial. I come home
every day smelling of petrochemicals, with minor to
moderate injuries, having been on my feet for 8 hours,
sometimes up on ladders with greasy boots on, climbing on,
into, and out of machines that could maul me without even
making an unusual sound, and carrying 100lb sharp steel
parts up stairs because itâs more efficient than waiting
forces the shop hands to do it.
While the risks certainly have financial components,
theyâre more âget cancer, brain damage, lose a limb, or
maybe even your lifeâ risks. Risk averse is career death.
Antoniocl wrote 1 day ago:
At least in the factory I worked in prior to becoming a
software engineer, there was a significantly higher
component of physical risk than in any of the software jobs
I've worked in
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
I mean, brains transfer to any job, and itâs tough to be a
developer if youâre genuinely stupid. So in that respect,
sure. But Iâm definitely not saying that developers
arenât smart enough to do blue collar work.
lelanthran wrote 1 day ago:
> But Iâm definitely not saying that developers arenât
smart enough to do blue collar work.
Fine. I'll say it: developers aren't smart enough to
survive a blue collar environment.
My credentials? I worked in a factory in my youth. 12hr
shifts, nightshift only, 7 days a week, on assembly lines.
Your average developer is definitely not risk averse enough
to keep all their limbs. Where I worked, two people on two
different lines lost limbs.
If you have ever used npm install on your daily driver
without sand boxing it, you're too stupid to work in a
factory.
SoftTalker wrote 18 hours 34 min ago:
Well to be fair the risk of "npm install on your daily
driver without sand boxing" is that you might have to
wipe and reinstall everything, or even deal with a
persistent malware and loss of data. There's no risk of
going home missing a limb. That sort of risk does tend to
grab your attention a lot more.
DrewADesign wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
There are some really important distinctions in the types
of smart weâre talking about, here.
intrasight wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
> you have ever
That's way too strong. I would say "if you've ever done
it and had an issue and not learned from the mistake then
you're too stupid".
The trades differ from software and that there's a lot
more "learning on the job" and making rookie mistakes in
terms of how the physical world works.
There is learning on the job with software, but it's a
much smaller component and much of that is being replaced
with AI skills.
qwertyuiop_ wrote 1 day ago:
Agree having made the switch from construction -> Tech job.
Having sat around at least 25,000 tech related meetings until
now worked with thousands of people in various roles in tech, i
could count on my one hand the number of people from each tech
company I worked that could qualify to survive the real blue
collar world.
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
I just imagine random scenarios that would definitely
happenâ like some pallid, heavily moisturized former lead
developer in $500 work clothes deciding to jockey for
smartypants cred by âdebatingâ a shop
supervisor/foreman/whatever about their approach to something
as itâs being executed, or in a meeting in front of
everyone, like they might interject about an architectural
decision at a dev meeting⦠saying something like âwell
itâs basically a traveling salesman problemâ and spewing
some seriously flawed approach without realizing that the
super is using a technique unequivocally proven superior in
like the 1940s. Or arguing with an actual engineer about an
engineering decision because they âread this substack
article written by a software developer that puts a ton of
research into this stuff.â
I then nearly die of internal cringe.
refulgentis wrote 1 day ago:
Hate to see you in gray, I went from dropout waiter to Google
via my own startup in between. And you nailed e v e r y t h i n
g, I am screenshotting this and reading it over and over again
for years to come. Great writing too. Cheers.
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
Haha, thanks. Itâs bobbed up and down around that zero a
few times. People that know itâs true vs. people that may
soon find out that itâs true.
mememememememo wrote 1 day ago:
I agree. I am not naive! I would not be doing it as a lifestyle
choice though. I'd do it because I need to. I have worked in a
factory before so culture shock wont be there at least. I get
my pay would half (luckily I am not on the US West Coast
monster TC so merely it would half).
DrewADesign wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs far worse in the restaurant industry. Weâre going to
see a lot of really awkward concept restaurants and bars open
and close in quick succession.
mememememememo wrote 1 day ago:
Yes. Although if we can get more robot sushi restaurants
for a while I will not complain.
DrewADesign wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
Yeah if software developers have anything to do with
that, itâs providing the software or the money. Running
a restaurant is extremely complex, specialized knowledge
with a dizzying number of moving parts. Something like
40% of restaurants close their first year, and the large
majority donât make it 5.
Funding someone that knows how to run a restaurant and an
engineer with food processing expertise, HAACP compliance
and all that? Sure. But I was in that business in the
Boston area and saw SO many tech geniuses blow through
their funding before they even opened.
lazyasciiart wrote 14 hours 54 min ago:
I'm sure there are many software engineers and
similarly unqualified people in that 40%.
DrewADesign wrote 11 hours 54 min ago:
They donât make up the majority of that 40%â
itâs tough even for experienced peopleâ but the
majority of that crowd ends up in that 40%⦠or soon
after if theyâre good at convincing other people
who have no idea what theyâre doing to invest in
it. The NRA (the other one) stats that Iâm probably
misremembering slightly are actually pretty
eye-opening.
The problem is that the business requires showing the
customer just enough of the labor, planning, etc that
goes into their experience to make them feel like
theyâre getting a lot for their money, but not so
much that they feel bad for enjoying it.
Unfortunately, the customer doesnât see most of
that labor, and so often they think âwell Iâve
been to so many restaurants that I b know how they
work⦠I could do thisâ¦â Theyâre almost always
totally wrong.
lazyasciiart wrote 7 hours 57 min ago:
Oh for sure. I worked in a restaurant for years
through college: eventually the mildly famous
chef/owner retired (staff found out by guests
commenting on the newspaper story that night).
Turned out he had sold it to an up-and-coming local
star chef, a couple years past his âapprentice of
the year awardâ and back from working in major
kitchens overseas. We were convinced it would be
dead within months: it was a 26yo chef who had
never run a business, backed up by his wife (who
was waiting tables for the first time ever as her
second shift after a day job covering the
mortgage), and his parents, who came across as
thought they had never been inside a restaurant
kitchen before that.
Turned out his dad had just been pushed into
retirement from head of purchasing and logistics at
a multi-state department store, so he ran the
paperwork and it was a dream team. Mom was not my
type of person but worked her ass off cleaning the
whole place every day, very impressive. After about
a year they were doing well enough that his wife
got to quit working night shift there.
johnea wrote 1 day ago:
GTM? Does that mean Get The Money?
Assuming everyone knows your acronyms is just not a good writing style.
Since I couldn't understand how s/w was going to get opossums out of
anyone's basement, I think the correct decision was made: hands on!
You deserve accolades for making this choice. Good Job!
Like any physical trade, this is by it's nature a local only endeavor.
So a web presence that is primarily visible to geographically local
potential customers would be most effective.
Any aggregation is really just a way to skim some of the profits from
the people actually doing the job. That is to say, GTM according to my
definition above.
Personally, when I can't get an in-real-life personal referral to some
trade, and I'm forced to do web search, I always spend extra time to
try to find a web page that is put up by a local company, not an
aggregator.
Things like plumers.com (this is a totally made up example, not
referring to any real website) I find to be extremely irritating. Since
they have absolutely nothing to do with whoever will eventually show up
and do the work.
This form of aggregation through, is extremely common today, and a very
large part of why the modern internet sucks.
craigslist.com (the actual website) used to be a good example of
referring local services, until it was overrun with spammers and
scammers.
Will this correct? Will we proceed to the dead internet? Who knows!
What next weeks exciting episode to find out...
parallel wrote 1 day ago:
s/w? Does that mean sidewalk?
stbtrax wrote 1 day ago:
bizarre take and writing style. if the saas enables them to be more
efficient it's overall net positive
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Go to market - e.g. how to sell your thing.
For residential / consumer markets, referrals are the gold standard
and I agree to an extent about the local focus. A lot of PE (private
equity) backed roll-ups result in a worse customer and worker
experience as they try to force scale too fast.
Some PE companies will open a local market by initiating acquisition
conversations with all local players, low ball everyone, buy some and
for a short period dramatically reduce pricing to force the hold-out
cohort to sell at an even lower price. Not good for communities.
The unlock to balancing scale and customer / worker experience is
creating the right incentives for people to adopt the behaviors
you're after. This is why bolting on SaaS or AI to established
companies is tough, as the staff often don't want to change and will
leave - which is bad in a tight labor market.
Searching for home services online is totally broken and is a tax on
buyers and operators. HVAC contractors pay on average $600 for a
closed lead from online ads, and close about one in four / one in
five leads.
TurdF3rguson wrote 1 day ago:
I read it as Google Tag Manager, lol.
9x39 wrote 1 day ago:
[1] GTM is ubiquitous on the business side.
If you read his post, there's significant effort not "catching
opossums" but waiting or churning through admin overhead - wasted
time, which maybe he can translate into $. This much inefficiency
is...common in many businesses.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-to-market_strategy
MisterTea wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting pivot. What I don't understand is how the SaaS software
fits into it or helps grow a pest control company.
clcaev wrote 1 day ago:
The software for businesses like this is tightly intertwined with
operations. Hence, it's less of a SaaS and could be more like a
franchise model.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
I agree a lightweight franchise would be attractive, though I don't
like most franchising options due to the fees and lack of equity
build up for the operator.
Some franchising platforms (window cleaning is a good example)
don't offer much beyond sales and marketing support and some nicely
designed uniforms. There's not much to window cleaning other than
basic equipment, so a person's route can easily be disrupted by a
new entrant who doesn't have the franchise rake to contend with.
There's a model between employment, ownership and franchising that
will probably emerge as sales, marketing, ops gets easier
technically.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
I don't believe SaaS is a good option in this sector - the incumbent
VSaaS is decent, cheap, and ubiquitous. By "tech-enabling", I mean
layering tech into the ops where it adds value and helps to scale the
business. Obvious wins are upselling, hands-free data entry to the
CRM, smart traps/stations. My choice is to compete as a tech-enabled
operator, rather than sell AI/SaaS to incumbents.
petesergeant wrote 1 day ago:
I did this for a small recruitment niche, and made good money. I
burned out for various reasons, so when the niche (Perl
programming) dried up, I didn't have the energy in the tank to push
into other niches, but I think there's a _lot_ of meat still on
that bone. I'll almost certainly have another crack at it if I can
find the right tech-recruiter partner.
alberth wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm genuinely inspired by your journey.
One question for clarity: why donât you see an opportunity to
sell AI or other technology into this space again? Is it just
because incumbents already have it locked up and itâs cheap?
The reason I ask is that this feels like one of those moments in
history similar to mobile. PlanGrid succeeded because tradespeople
suddenly had iPhones and iPads in the field, which made it possible
to digitize blueprints and collaborate in real time.
Put differently, what could be the new âPlanGridâ for your
industry - that AI makes possible now, the way mobile once did for
construction?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Pest control is about 60% consolidated, and I don't want to pick
the fight of convincing the top 5-6 to buy more SaaS or AI.
Realistically they're looking to Salesforce for leadership there.
I see today's consolidation as fragile though, and it's not
locked in forever. I'm better at building a competitor where I
have full influence of the customer and worker experience, and I
have the patience to see it through.
Part of shaping my thinking here is 1) knowing what I'm good at,
much better than I did before, and 2) in my previous company we
built a heavy equipment telematics platform which was used on
about 1/3 of the UK's infrastructure projects. JCB (an equipment
OEM with their own bad version of what we were doing) threw the
kitchen sink at field sales and account management, and they had
reach into all the sites across the country. It was an eye opener
and good lesson about go to market for enterprise sales in
traditional industries.
fma wrote 1 day ago:
Similar boat here. Many of these service industries are cheap. I've
built my own CRM/management system that no big company will ever
touch. Even if I can sell to 1000 companies and charge them $25 a
month...I'd have staff overhead, maintenance to support it. SaaS
isn't some little photo editing app or something you can just
launch and forget.
I'd rather grow my business and make as much money. If I can crush
it with my business I'd make more than that.
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah agree - software needs to either do a ton more, be much
cheaper, have network effects (such as connecting supply and
demand), or some data benefit to avoid being built in-house or
replicated.
Also for me there's an element of picking the pain I want to
solve for. I've run a software company before, and prefer the
tech-enabled route personally.
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
So how is hiring going to be handled at this new company? Is he
expecting people to just show up and start working?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
We will recruit technicians who are aligned with the tech-enabled
approach.
zhainya wrote 1 day ago:
You took a job as a tech in order to learn about pest control business
so you could build a SaaS platform? Do I understand that correctly?
In the end you decided not to build a SaaS and started your own pest
control company?
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
I wanted to get in the field for real, see how it works. There is
going to be a lot more people exploring blue-collar work as white
collar jobs are eliminated. I plan to acquire the traditional
operator I've identified, and tech-enable it. If that works, grow it
as a platform by either acquiring other companies or attracting
technicians over.
truetraveller wrote 1 day ago:
Congrats, and genius move. And great hustling, show's there's no
way out of hard-work.
Reminder to myself to pick an industry that's always gonna have
demand. We recently paid ~$200 for a 30 minute visit to seal off
like 3 tiny holes around the perimiter of our house because of mice
(actual cost of materials ~$5).
tezclarke wrote 1 day ago:
Lots of guys working at the big companies do this type of work
(called exclusion) on the side. One guy where I worked charged a
restaurant $8k for exclusion work that took 2-3 days out of hours
and $500 in materials. I asked the company why we let this work
go - they don't want the liability and relative hassle compared
to steady service routes.
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