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Comment by jaysonelliot | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty neat hackathon idea, but as an actual business, I'm afraid it falls into the vanishingly large set of services aimed entirely at well-paid young urbanites who haven't matured into basic life skills yet.

We've probably seen enough startups aimed at people who don't want to cook, do laundry, shop for clothes, manage their budgets, go grocery shopping, or other life skills that everyone has to learn after you leave home.

It's a nice alternative interface to Yelp. As a business, though, I'd look for a bigger problem to solve.

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Specialization and comparative advantage are fundamental to human progress.

Not that long ago, most ppl on Earth grew their own food. Now, only a few percent farm and the rest buy it from them.

Why is it better for 100 people to each do their own laundry, vs paying a shop that does it efficiently, in bulk?

> well-paid young urbanites who haven't matured into basic life skills yet

> life skills that everyone has to learn after you leave home

This is condescending. People make different choices with their time and money and that's fine.

> It's a nice alternative interface to Yelp. As a business, though, I'd look for a bigger problem to solve.

This is the Middlebrow Dismissal, my least favorite pattern on HN.

Local search is a totally reasonable challenge, and Just Get Me Food is a nice prototype. What bigger problem are you solving?

I disagree with your premise that specialization is much more efficient. In many cases, it is, but in the sort of services that have historically been in-sourced to the domestic sphere, it isn't. Once you account for capital investment, labor, overhead, profit margin, taxes paid by the customer, and taxes paid by the business, services such as these are priced high enough to be luxuries. If they were efficient, the price would be so low that they would be considered commodities, and they would be the default choice for most families just from a pragmatic perspective.

Keeping a cow for milk is not usually economical, and that is why most people dont do that. Doing your own laundry, cooking, and cleaning are economical. Some things are more marginal- tasks such as doing your own car maintenance and taxes require enough investment of tools and skills that many people should not do them themselves, but many people should, too.

The special case where it is in your best interest to outsource everything other than your own career best applies to people that have a high income, are very busy, and can easily adjust their working hours per week. These folks are relatively rare.

Cost is king.

Super markets fall into the vanishingly large set of services aimed entirely at well-paid young urbanites who haven't matured into basic life skills (growing food) yet.

:hmmmm:

You talk about those things you listed as an irrevocable part of maturity, but back in the day, wealthy people did not have to do them. They had servants who cooked for them, did their laundry, cleaned their homes, bought their groceries, etc. And that's still true today, and even more so in certain places.

And frankly, if you have a high enough salary to pay someone else to take of the mundane parts of your life, I don't see why you shouldn't.

The trend of "Programming must be for business!" is so tiring. Also the trend of dismissing the next generation's preferences as nothing more than a fad, or somehow detrimental to human civilization. Life goes on.

It's just as easy to call it a preference as a fad.

Making clothes by hand and growing or hunting food used to be basic life skills, too.

A writer (I forget who) noted the number of ideas that fall into the category of:

"Things 20 something software engineers wish their mother still did for them."

Brutal, but accurate.

This seems useful, with a few tweaks, for an office setting, where it takes ten people arguing over slack using three different services about where to go eat.

As someone who has frequently traveled for work I have to disagree. When you're in an unknown area and just worked through lunch to finish something up, anything that will shave time between you and access to food is greatly appreciated. I can't investigate the app as the api limit was hit, but based on the name, I'd be very interested in this.

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