[HN Gopher] I wanted to build vertical SaaS for pest control, so...
___________________________________________________________________
I wanted to build vertical SaaS for pest control, so I took a
technician job
Author : tezclarke
Score : 423 points
Date : 2026-03-24 21:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.onhand.pro)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.onhand.pro)
| zhainya wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 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:
| We will recruit technicians who are aligned with the tech-
| enabled approach.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Interesting pivot. What I don't understand is how the SaaS
| software fits into it or helps grow a pest control company.
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| fma wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| alberth wrote:
| I'm genuinely inspired by your journey.
|
| One question for clarity: why don't you see an opportunity to
| sell AI or other technology into this space again? Is it just
| because incumbents already have it locked up and it's cheap?
|
| The reason I ask is that this feels like one of those moments
| in history similar to mobile. PlanGrid succeeded because
| tradespeople suddenly had iPhones and iPads in the field,
| which made it possible to digitize blueprints and collaborate
| in real time.
|
| Put differently, what could be the new "PlanGrid" for your
| industry - that AI makes possible now, the way mobile once
| did for construction?
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| petesergeant wrote:
| 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.
| clcaev wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| johnea wrote:
| 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...
| 9x39 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-to-market_strategy
|
| GTM is ubiquitous on the business side.
|
| If you read his post, there's significant effort not "catching
| opossums" but waiting or churning through admin overhead -
| wasted time, which maybe he can translate into $. This much
| inefficiency is...common in many businesses.
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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:
| I read it as Google Tag Manager, lol.
| stbtrax wrote:
| bizarre take and writing style. if the saas enables them to be
| more efficient it's overall net positive
| parallel wrote:
| s/w? Does that mean sidewalk?
| mememememememo wrote:
| 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.
| tezclarke wrote:
| This is going to be the route for a lot of white collar people
| as they lose their jobs to AI.
| mememememememo wrote:
| Absolutely. I am thinking what my blue collar alter ego will
| be.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| 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 don't realize how
| much smoke has been blown up our assess for decades. They
| start as soft, arrogant, maladroit noobs who will cosplay
| as working class for a couple weeks and either eat crow and
| stick with it long enough for their boss to not want to
| throw them off a bridge, or give up/get fired and try to
| pay the bills doing zero-entry-barrier gig work. I was
| fortunate enough to have been a blue-> white collar covert
| a couple of decades ago so I knew what I was getting into.
| The fantasy that a tech worker landing in a blue collar
| field will naturally rise above the rabble and shoot to the
| top is a workplace version of the fantasy where a white
| person finds themselves in some jungle full of "savages"
| and is so inherently impressive and sophisticated that
| they're immediately made king.
| mememememememo wrote:
| 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:
| It's far worse in the restaurant industry. We're going to
| see a lot of really awkward concept restaurants and bars
| open and close in quick succession.
| mememememememo wrote:
| Yes. Although if we can get more robot sushi restaurants
| for a while I will not complain.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Yeah if software developers have anything to do with
| that, it's 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 don't 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:
| I'm sure there are many software engineers and similarly
| unqualified people in that 40%.
| refulgentis wrote:
| 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:
| Haha, thanks. It's bobbed up and down around that zero a
| few times. People that know it's true vs. people that may
| soon find out that it's true.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| 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:
| I just imagine random scenarios that would definitely
| happen-- like some pallid, heavily moisturized former
| lead developer in $500 work clothes deciding to jockey
| for smartypants cred by 'debating' a shop
| supervisor/foreman/whatever about their approach to
| something as it's 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 "well it's basically a traveling salesman
| problem" 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 "read this substack article written
| by a software developer that puts a _ton of research into
| this stuff_."
|
| I then nearly die of internal cringe.
| gnarcoregrizz wrote:
| 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.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| I mean, brains transfer to any job, and it's tough to be
| a developer if you're genuinely stupid. So in that
| respect, sure. But I'm definitely not saying that
| developers aren't _smart_ enough to do blue collar work.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > But I'm definitely not saying that developers aren't
| 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.
| intrasight wrote:
| > 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.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| There are some really important distinctions in the types
| of smart we're talking about, here.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| mememememememo wrote:
| Why is risk averse a thing. Blue collar jobs are just
| jobs unless you are going self employed and buying all
| the gear etc.
| Antoniocl wrote:
| 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:
| 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 it's more efficient than
| waiting forces the shop hands to do it.
|
| While the risks certainly have financial components,
| they're more "get cancer, brain damage, lose a limb, or
| maybe even your life" risks. Risk averse is career death.
| tezclarke wrote:
| Cash flow and accounts receivable management is a
| headache for these guys
| rambambram wrote:
| From above: "endless job that could kill somebody if you
| stop paying attention"
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > 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.
| juddlyon wrote:
| This made me laugh. "We'll computerize it and get filthy
| rich! They're stuck in 2015!"
|
| I'm guilty of this type of thinking and occasionally get
| reminded when I'm way out of my lane.
| Jbird2k wrote:
| Blue collar guy here who started working construction at
| 13 years of age. I concur that many white collar people
| won't have an easy time adjusting to blue collar jobs.
| Some people do switch and thrive. Many however don't 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. It's in my blood. I don't 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 Don't 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 don't get into
| debates with them. A lot of people come from poverty or
| really tough backgrounds and many are quite sensitive
| about it so don't 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:
| A lot of people have been sold a lie about uni education
| (and willingly bought it in a lot of cases).
| pocksuppet wrote:
| 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:
| Agree.
| jojobas wrote:
| Building a vertical backoffice for just 1 company used to be
| pointless and probably still is.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| 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.
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| z3t4 wrote:
| 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.
| clcaev wrote:
| 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 https://platform.coop/
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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!
| DrewADesign wrote:
| I've never heard of platform Co-ops. Cool! Lots of people
| predicted that a beloved local coffee shop was doomed to fail
| when the workers got a loan and bought it to run as a
| completely flat cooperative. It's been a few years and they are
| absolutely killing it. I'd love to see the tech version of
| that.
| clcaev wrote:
| There is still much to be worked out, but some smart people
| are working on it. See also https://e2c.how/
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Thanks! Cool initiative. I'll look into it.
| colesantiago wrote:
| 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!
| tezclarke wrote:
| Congrats - what's the company called?
| d675 wrote:
| 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?
| bashtoni wrote:
| 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.
| dsalzman wrote:
| Doing something similar. Bought a business in the petroleum
| equipment service space. Building internal tools for ourselves.
| Pen and paper still dominates the industry.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Does it matter that pen and paper dominate? How much of the
| business's expenses are overhead?
| jofzar wrote:
| 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.
| deweywsu wrote:
| Would you recommend buying a business over starting one from
| scratch when possible?
| dsalzman wrote:
| Depends on the industry and your experience plus your access
| to capital. Sorry for the non-answer
| downrightmike wrote:
| Buy then build
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| 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
| diordiderot wrote:
| 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 can't run without the owner, or
| if the team won't adapt and can't be replaced.
| system2 wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| nomilk wrote:
| Love stories like this, where someone learns some completely
| orthogonal domain for educational purposes.
| deweywsu wrote:
| 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.
| TurdF3rguson wrote:
| Is it a gold rush or a pie eating contest? (I need to know if I
| should be selling shovels or forks).
| deweywsu wrote:
| 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.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Sounds great for people who need pest control tool services!
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| In my limited "ai transformation" experience the biggest gains
| seem to be just forcing down some of the walls between these
| different systems. Larger, more well run places were probably
| integrating all of their systems/data/etc so there was none of
| this low hanging fruit. It seems AI as a forcing function of
| combining data sources to feed into the AI just had the
| beneficial side effect of connecting all the crap.
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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:
| How did you get such a good sense for business alongside
| implementing solutions with programming? Did you have
| experience doing this before?
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| TZubiri wrote:
| 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.
| est31 wrote:
| 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.
| Aeroi wrote:
| 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:
| Diagnosis without the professional having to be on site is a
| good use case.
| TZubiri wrote:
| 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:
| 2 months
| tezclarke wrote:
| and not competing - we are looking at a different location
| and sector, not that I think they'd even consider us as
| competition anyway
| taude wrote:
| You can't offshore pest control.
| ozten wrote:
| But you can onshore pests... wait, Nutria pest control and
| generate demand by ... introducing Nutria to untapped markets!
| downrightmike wrote:
| We did with the central american hook work fly etc prevention
| programs
| isatty wrote:
| The possum is a friend and not a pest though. I hope you aren't
| killing them :(
| tezclarke wrote:
| Absolutely not.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| squish them very gently (and then give them treats)
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| 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
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Possums are stinky bastards but I love them so much! Juvenile
| possums are shockingly adorable, just look at these little
| guys!
|
| (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Baby_opos..
| .)
| btown wrote:
| > That's why selling SaaS or AI to this kind of company isn't for
| me - I'd rather focus my energy on building a company from my own
| principles, and hire people who share them from the beginning.
|
| > When I told my manager I was leaving, he said I should start my
| own company and give him a call when I do. So that's what I'm
| doing.
|
| I love hearing stories like this, because it shows a way to be a
| builder without the "venture or nothing" narrative that has
| pervaded the tech space since the dotcom days.
|
| It is very difficult to make a _venture-backed_ services firm
| (providing services, not software) that can be immediately
| profitable, grow sustainably, and outperform competitors with in-
| house technology that 's built for real on-the-ground
| stakeholders... at a speed that will satisfy venture investors.
|
| But it is more possible than ever ([0]), to do this (in-house
| tech and all) on a bootstrapped basis - since AI reduces the
| engineering staff required to build, adapt, and maintain an agile
| best-in-class solution at single-tenant/single-customer scale.
| The outcome is at the least a lifestyle business, but with upside
| that can take the form of anything from franchising to licensing
| to full-fledged SaaS in the future.
|
| I wish OOP the best of luck, and hope he's found a passion. He
| could go far with this approach if he ends up following through.
|
| ([0] This is not to say there are no barriers to entry. There's
| privilege in the word "founder," and this is no exception. And
| the K-shaped economy has left many brilliant would-be founders
| behind. But at least some barriers are lower than they once were,
| and that's worth appreciating.)
| anon291 wrote:
| Lifestyle business has been a thing since day zero in this
| space (the tech world)
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| I know exactly who you're talking about
| Paracompact wrote:
| Name and shame?
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| anoojb wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| I see, you're statement is less about product research
| and more about customer acquisition.
| tezclarke wrote:
| Getting the initial conversation even to research (not
| just to sell to) is more difficult than before for these
| reasons.
| seibelj wrote:
| My neighbor is the best wallpaper guy in the city, which
| you'd 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
| tezclarke wrote:
| Love this one. You are selling people their time back with
| a service like wallpapering for sure.
| guzfip wrote:
| I've 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.
|
| It's not that I don't think anyone would choose to repair
| their vacuum. It's more that I can't imagine they get
| enough volume to pay the lease/rent/bills on whatever
| commercial property they're on.
| tezclarke wrote:
| Tough as consumer goods are generally getting cheaper and
| better quality. Can't remember the last time we had a
| problem with the TV. We have left them behind when moving
| apartments as they're relatively cheap now
| yardie wrote:
| 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:
| > Like my Dyson...
|
| Which is wild because a Dyson has a premium price tag.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > 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.
| DaedalusII wrote:
| 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
| Lalabadie wrote:
| 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
| foobarian wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| theptip wrote:
| 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 it's
| 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:
| 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:
| 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.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| 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:
| It's 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
| andrew_lettuce wrote:
| 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
| ozten wrote:
| William Burroughs on 1959 HN: I wanted to write Naked Lunch, so I
| took a pest control job.
| impish9208 wrote:
| The bugs are the feature!
| tezclarke wrote:
| Bugs are top of funnel.
| pier25 wrote:
| 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:
| Agree, and can't be skipped (can be accelerated though)
| teleforce wrote:
| >I built my own training GPT and passed in 13 days, which was a
| company record. The training manager knew I'd built the app but
| never showed an interest, which makes sense: it could replace
| about a quarter of his role.
|
| I'd really love to read a dedicated article on this side project.
|
| Apparently, Karpathy is into AI based education business with
| Eureka Labs [1].
|
| [1] Introducing Eureka Labs:
|
| https://eurekalabs.ai/
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| g947o wrote:
| The whole thing looks dead. I followed a few links but couldn't
| find anything meaningful that comes out of this.
| tgtweak wrote:
| 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.
| tezclarke wrote:
| Ask for forgiveness, not permission!
| charlie0 wrote:
| How did they deal with non-competes? Are they in CA or
| somewhere those aren't enforceable?
| williamdclt wrote:
| Sounds like they didn't build competing products, they built
| products that'd have been very valuable to the parent
| company.
| panavm wrote:
| 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 -- 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 -- 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 -- the insight to go learn the domain in
| person before building is genuinely rare and gives you a huge
| moat.
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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.
| skyberrys wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| BigBalli wrote:
| That's wild. I literally just launched https://pestpro.app and
| find this extremely fascinating.
| tezclarke wrote:
| AI slop - you've sent me the same message on linkedin and you
| vibe coded that two minutes ago.
| truetraveller wrote:
| 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.
| liamwire wrote:
| Agreed, reaction from OP is concerning to say the least
| BigBalli wrote:
| thanks
|
| FWIW didn't mean to hurt/insult(?)
| jvidalv wrote:
| 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:
| apple still needs to review it. That's why I said
| "literally just now".
| Jn2G3Np8 wrote:
| 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:
| yeah, apple still has to review it... hence the broken
| link
| BigBalli wrote:
| 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:
| Really quite disturbing that you can now generate this kind
| of slop in minutes.
|
| https://pestpro.app/blog/
|
| 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?
| vlinx wrote:
| 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:
| They killed it. "A better way to rent"
| lexro_ai wrote:
| 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 -- 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.
| Fokamul wrote:
| 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 :)
| jamesjolliffe wrote:
| 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.
| skizm wrote:
| > We have an acquisition of a small residential operator lined
| up, which we'll build the tooling for and grow a platform around
| once we've proven the model works and can scale.
|
| This is the exact process private equity tries to do at scale,
| right?
| tezclarke wrote:
| 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:
| Hopefully I didn't come off as dismissive. Love the hustle
| here. It's always been a dream of mine to quit big tech and
| do something local like this. Glad to see others have made
| the jump successfully.
| vicchenai wrote:
| 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:
| 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?
| _spduchamp wrote:
| 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:
| It's only going to get easier, cheaper and faster to build
| these things for yourself. Thanks for sharing.
| cestith wrote:
| There's no way to build domain knowledge like working in the
| field you want to target. This could be a reusable model for
| people looking to serve a well-targeted vertical with one's own
| software company for that vertical.
| tezclarke wrote:
| Yes, and the other way around is increasing now. Industry
| insiders building their own tools to solve specific problems.
| sizzle wrote:
| I have annoying carpenter ants does anyone recommend Taurus SC?
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