I love this story. This is also why I bristle when many in the Valley - PG included - keep disparaging non-technical people when they want to start a tech company.
I never understood this.
For a group of people (programmers) that presumably have been ostracized, shunned, and picked on in their formative years, why do so many in the valley do this to 'MBAs'.
It's ignorant at best.
The fact is, as has been shown time and time again, the #1 factor for success in a startup is not technical knowledge (or even business knowledge). It's just an unshakeable will to figure it out and get it done.
If you are a technical startup with non-technical founders, that's just 1 set of challenges you have to deal with. However, if you are a technical founder and are bad with finance and other business stuff (and are trying to raise money or do a partnership deal with another company) you will have a commensurate amount of problems.
I wish we all, on HN (at the very least), would stop painting with a broad brush and bashing large swathes of people.
Everybody here wants the same thing. To build a lasting business. Who cares what background they have.
Congrats to you guys for doing this - despite, what I am sure, were incessant snarky comments you got from geeks.
P.S. I apologize for the rant, but I am both a geek & an MBA - both of which I would never apologize for, and both of which have completely changed my life.
- "Idea people" telling them what to do and taking all the credit.
- A non-technical manager setting unreasonable deadlines.
- A non-technical manager trivializing a complex task.
- "Oh we'll just get him/her to write some code".
- Being treated as if their talents are a commodity.
- Being treated as if they cannot communicate like other humans.
- Putting in blood, sweat, and tears into a project for little or no pay.
- Studying like mad in college while everyone else seemed to be partying
(or this could just be me)
"This is also why I bristle when many in the Valley - PG included - keep disparaging non-technical people when they want to start a tech company."
I realize this is probably just semantics but I want to chime in on one little tidbit here. These guys didn't start a technology company in the sense that they needed technology innovation to succeed. They started an innovative cleaning business that uses some technology. They were building software in well trodden territory with a clear scope and execution path.
If you want to revolutionize web search, or be the first company to create an eCommerce store, or run a PaaS hosting business, then you probably have a tech company. If you're starting one of these, you damn well better have a nerd or two around. :)
You're attacking a straw man here. We've funded lots of companies started by people who weren't programmers. In the YC FAQ, we recommend that such people find cofounders who are, if they can. But we don't insist even on that.
This is such macho-induced cliche drivel that I feel like you're caricaturing one of these 'MBAs'.
First you try to belittle geeks for having been friendless, then call them ignorant. Then you break out the whole 'number one' nonsense, and even utilize a pound sign. And my favorite part is when you turn to the tautology of the 'unshakeable will to figure it out and get it done'.
Ha. Yeah, people who do can do X are the ones who can get X done. Hard to argue with that. And this group of 'MBAs', while they posses no uses that can actually be communicated or quantified, they have tons of je ne sais quoi to get it done with. And they'll fucking pwn the shit out of business with their endless supply of je ne sais quoi. And nerds? Ha, MBAs have more je ne sais quoi leaking out of them after slaying two 10s.
The point of dismissing these so-called 'MBAs' is not that a masters in business is some inherent flaw, but it's in calling that degree (or the concept of doing nothing, but 'being' awesome) an asset. It's in the type of person who does nothing, but wants to take from everyone else's pool of human capital and ride in their wake while pretending that the 'decisions' they make on the golf course while other employees are off actually working mean anything.
For a group of people (programmers) that presumably have been ostracized, shunned, and picked on in their formative years, why do so many in the valley do this to 'MBAs'.
It is hard to classify any group as being monolithic, but it has been my experience that an MBA really prepares you to be a good middle manager or consultant. Indeed, this is what MBA programs were originally designed to do and it still shows.
It also makes sense that middle managers would be the last people you'd want to hire at a startup (literally, middle managers are the last to get hired).
Of course, there are exceptions. A lot of exceptions in this case. If you have the startup bug, MBA or not, you'll start a company, but let's not pretend like this train of thought is completely unwarranted.
"This is also why I bristle when many in the Valley - PG included - keep disparaging non-technical people when they want to start a tech company."
"I wish we all, on HN (at the very least), would stop painting with a broad brush and bashing large swathes of people."
Pretty conflicting statements. Asking HN not to disparage people while disparaging people in Silicon valley himself.
If a non-technical founder wants to build a photo-sharing app, how would she/he even build a minimum viable product without learning how to code or getting a technical partner?
It depends on the business. Some ideas like MyClean don't need much technical skills to start.
It's pretty disappointing that this is the top comment on this thread.
I think a lot of the disparagement comes mainly from interactions many of us have with a lot of these types of individuals.
A lot of the time the "MBAs" place an overemphasis on the ideas themselves being more important than the ability to execute on them from a technical perspective (although i'd have to say that a lot of developers may have the reverse disposition)
Because people make the mistake of constant blanket statements:
Technical people say: "MBAs always suck."
Non-Technicals say: "Techies are incessant and snarky geeks."
One blanket statement results in the retort of another statement, and then group polarization takes effect. So by making this rant, you're just setting a precedent for Techies to be flamed at MBAs even more.
Thank you for the supportive comments Marcamillion. Mike Scharf hired me to offset his technical inefficiencies. He in turn is the type of entrepreneur and business visionary who is great to work with.
"why I bristle when many in the Valley - PG included - keep disparaging non-technical people when they want to start a tech company."
PG's outlook (if you are correct) is based on his background perhaps - this from his wikipedia page:
"Graham has a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University.... He then attended Harvard University, earning Master of Science (1988) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees in Applied Sciences with a specialization in computer science.... He has also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence."
From this I can deduce that PG wasn't "business minded" in high school although maybe he did run some business on the side etc to make money (I don't know). But he wasn't interested enough in it to attend a business school as an undergraduate. If that had been the case instead of going to Cornell he might have chosen Wharton for undergraduate business. In Wharton UG (I graduated) most of the people - the majority of people that I met - knew that they wanted to be in business just like some people know growing up they want to be doctors. Only difference is those people can do something before college obviously nobody is going to practice medicine prior to training.
So I would suspect that PG's view of the world was based upon his ability to program and put together viaweb and without that programming skill (especially back then) viaweb probably wouldn't have happened. (Morris on the other hand, while a programmer, is a bit devious (worm) so that definitely is a quality that is helpful in business.
This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties. myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website. They allow both parties to meet without issue. No wonder they are doing well.
Now, can you do this too? Yes. Yes, you can. Go and research markets where there is a lot of interest in a service or product, but there is a lot of friction is purchase. Remove that friction and allow people to interact easily. No need to do much else, but market it directly (which is rather simple). You can even launch this without writing any code. A simple Wordpress blog with a free theme and some manual labor. That's it.
Hello ovi256, we received some excellent press early on (Thrillist was huge for us), ran a Gilt campaign, and listed ourselves on free directories. We did not spend any money (outside of the money we lost with Gilt) in customer acquisition to begin with.
I'm not convinced the web site drives the revenue. Alexa rank of 1 million. That means there's probably less than 30,000 visitors per month.
I bet the company does most of their marketing offline, and the site is more of a brochure. So it's a bit misleading to say that a $20k bootstrapped web site led to all the growth in this business.
I wrote a quote simulator for my mom's cleaning business a while back.
You give it the room count, floor type, wc count, etc... and it produces an estimate of the size of the property and how much it would cost to hire the service.
To estimate room sizes I actually used my body as a ruler since I didn't have a measuring device at the time.
Fun project, too bad the economy in Portugal is so bad.
>>>>"choosing to focus on their strengths instead of role-playing Steve Jobs paid off."
This a thousand times.
Too many times I've heard founders bragging to me about how awesome their website looks while completely missing how crappy the user experience is which is driving away business. Good to hear these guys really focused on the core of the business and what made it great.
Thanks at-fates-hands, we're a service business and care about our clients. Mike preaches this quote: “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” ~ Sam Walton
Were there difficulties, or things you had to learn business-wise, when switching to the model where you employ the cleaners yourselves? Can you talk about what was involved in that in terms of researching liability (e.g., is your company liable if there are injuries on the job or while traveling to the job?), taxes, paperwork, things like that?
Lots of challenges Bratsche. Most of the liability is handled by carrying very expensive insurance. The taxes are also expensive and there is a lot of paperwork involved with having so many employee's.
Good read. I recently became a father and suddenly the need for hiring baby sitters,nannies, house cleaners is critical and like the blog says "it is not rocket science but not as easy as ordering book on amazon", I totally concur. My wife and I have been struggling to find "good" and "reliable" cleaners, or babysitter even though we have tried craigslist, care.come (for nannies) etc.
Basic household needs have many pain points that are asking for innovation. Some of my pain points specially as a family with a kid :
- how to hire good/reliable house cleaners
- how to hire good/reliable nannies/baby-sitters (part/fulltime)
- I hate going to the groceries for items that are pretty much recurring. Eg.: milk,eggs,fruits etc. are mandatory and every time we run out, a trip to the store is needed.
In the same situation here. A couple of things that made a huge difference on the food and grocery front for us were:
- Ordering regular organic vegetable and meat boxes (we get a vegetable box once a week and meat once a fortnight). Find who does that in your area and give it a try. We use http://www.riverford.co.uk/ and I can't say enough good things about them.
- Online groceries. For the longest time, I thought people shopping for groceries online were weird. Now I understand. Give it a try - it will save you so much time and energy. The first shop is a bit of a pain but the subsequent ones are really quick as you can just go through what you bought previously and pick what you're running out of. In the UK, we tried ASDA (messed up every delivery - awful customer service), Tesco (can't remember why we don't use them anymore. Think they were neither really good nor really bad) and Ocado (absolutely wonderful in every respect. And, just as they say, not more expensive than ASDA or Tesco).
Wow... so first you choose "the family life", then proceed to outsource every last tiny aspect of (used-to-be) "normal" day-to-day ops? You guys must be very, very busy indeed!
I can't help you with the rest of your pain points, but I do own a great house cleaning service. We cover the San Diego, LA and Orange County areas, and we'd love to see if we can take care of item #1: http://goldenshine.com.
There's a company here in Austin (can't remember the name) that will deliver fresh organic groceries to your door in a plastic box. They have a form and you just click the interval you want for the "recurring" stuff.
My only advice is to pay your nanny salary rather than hourly. You will get way more quality candidates. Also, try sitter city in addition to care.com.
There is a certain STIGMA against MBAs in the valley. Some of it well-found, some of it completely out of context and ridiculous.
I have an MBA, and my sense is that part of the blame has to be on MBA education itself.
MBA programs teach everything but the "Two skills absolutely necessary" as an entrepreneur: 1) ability sale (your idea, vision, team, product, etc.) and 2) ability to execute.
Luckily, I had one professor who focused on execution part of the experience by creating a class that simulated what happens when you start a company.
I remember what she always said: "If you give me a great idea, I'll give a $1 as thats all they are worth. Real value comes from executing it the right away."
A lot must depend on the average salary they pay cleaners. If it's around or under $20K/year, then probably doing quite well despite having 100 cleaners on payroll.
Clients who won't pay for retainers (with optional SLA attachments for emergencies, if required) shouldn't make public quips about their contract developers being at the movies. The market is such that I do not have to be available 24/7 for $100/hour, billable in 15-minute increments, no matter how much startup CEOs wish this wasn't the case.
For people interested in starting a similar business, there is a subreddit on this: http://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/ where someone shows how he builds a service business from scratch.
Wow! Very inspiring story! I'm glad to hear you stuck to your strengths and didn't desperately force a non-programmer to learn programming. It was a critical part of your business but your full-time employees focusing on their expertise worked out for the best.
@mkbrody - Panel 3 'We clean' on the front page of your site - 'professionaly' should probably be 'professionally'. And before anyone steps in to be disparaging or #irony, lots of creative people have dyslexia and this is a typical error.
Congratulations. With that kind of success, I hope you treat your employees well. Most are probably poor women supporting their families. If I were ever to use a service like yours, the cleaners' wellbeing would be the deciding factor.
[+] [-] marcamillion|13 years ago|reply
I never understood this.
For a group of people (programmers) that presumably have been ostracized, shunned, and picked on in their formative years, why do so many in the valley do this to 'MBAs'.
It's ignorant at best.
The fact is, as has been shown time and time again, the #1 factor for success in a startup is not technical knowledge (or even business knowledge). It's just an unshakeable will to figure it out and get it done.
If you are a technical startup with non-technical founders, that's just 1 set of challenges you have to deal with. However, if you are a technical founder and are bad with finance and other business stuff (and are trying to raise money or do a partnership deal with another company) you will have a commensurate amount of problems.
I wish we all, on HN (at the very least), would stop painting with a broad brush and bashing large swathes of people.
Everybody here wants the same thing. To build a lasting business. Who cares what background they have.
Congrats to you guys for doing this - despite, what I am sure, were incessant snarky comments you got from geeks.
P.S. I apologize for the rant, but I am both a geek & an MBA - both of which I would never apologize for, and both of which have completely changed my life.
[+] [-] physcab|13 years ago|reply
Because every technical person has a story about:
[+] [-] jconley|13 years ago|reply
I realize this is probably just semantics but I want to chime in on one little tidbit here. These guys didn't start a technology company in the sense that they needed technology innovation to succeed. They started an innovative cleaning business that uses some technology. They were building software in well trodden territory with a clear scope and execution path.
If you want to revolutionize web search, or be the first company to create an eCommerce store, or run a PaaS hosting business, then you probably have a tech company. If you're starting one of these, you damn well better have a nerd or two around. :)
[+] [-] pg|13 years ago|reply
http://paulgraham.com/identity.html
[+] [-] ThomPete|13 years ago|reply
MBAs aren't making you a good businessman anymore than studying philosophy is making you a good philosopher.
You still need the experience and the insights in order to create something like this.
But I wholeheartedly agree that you don't need to be a technical co-founder to do a company like this. However you do need someone to do it for you.
[+] [-] kolbe|13 years ago|reply
First you try to belittle geeks for having been friendless, then call them ignorant. Then you break out the whole 'number one' nonsense, and even utilize a pound sign. And my favorite part is when you turn to the tautology of the 'unshakeable will to figure it out and get it done'.
Ha. Yeah, people who do can do X are the ones who can get X done. Hard to argue with that. And this group of 'MBAs', while they posses no uses that can actually be communicated or quantified, they have tons of je ne sais quoi to get it done with. And they'll fucking pwn the shit out of business with their endless supply of je ne sais quoi. And nerds? Ha, MBAs have more je ne sais quoi leaking out of them after slaying two 10s.
The point of dismissing these so-called 'MBAs' is not that a masters in business is some inherent flaw, but it's in calling that degree (or the concept of doing nothing, but 'being' awesome) an asset. It's in the type of person who does nothing, but wants to take from everyone else's pool of human capital and ride in their wake while pretending that the 'decisions' they make on the golf course while other employees are off actually working mean anything.
[+] [-] Aloisius|13 years ago|reply
It is hard to classify any group as being monolithic, but it has been my experience that an MBA really prepares you to be a good middle manager or consultant. Indeed, this is what MBA programs were originally designed to do and it still shows.
It also makes sense that middle managers would be the last people you'd want to hire at a startup (literally, middle managers are the last to get hired).
Of course, there are exceptions. A lot of exceptions in this case. If you have the startup bug, MBA or not, you'll start a company, but let's not pretend like this train of thought is completely unwarranted.
[+] [-] dannyr|13 years ago|reply
"I wish we all, on HN (at the very least), would stop painting with a broad brush and bashing large swathes of people."
Pretty conflicting statements. Asking HN not to disparage people while disparaging people in Silicon valley himself.
If a non-technical founder wants to build a photo-sharing app, how would she/he even build a minimum viable product without learning how to code or getting a technical partner?
It depends on the business. Some ideas like MyClean don't need much technical skills to start.
It's pretty disappointing that this is the top comment on this thread.
[+] [-] modarts|13 years ago|reply
A lot of the time the "MBAs" place an overemphasis on the ideas themselves being more important than the ability to execute on them from a technical perspective (although i'd have to say that a lot of developers may have the reverse disposition)
[+] [-] colemorrison|13 years ago|reply
Because people make the mistake of constant blanket statements:
Technical people say: "MBAs always suck."
Non-Technicals say: "Techies are incessant and snarky geeks."
One blanket statement results in the retort of another statement, and then group polarization takes effect. So by making this rant, you're just setting a precedent for Techies to be flamed at MBAs even more.
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrys|13 years ago|reply
PG's outlook (if you are correct) is based on his background perhaps - this from his wikipedia page:
"Graham has a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University.... He then attended Harvard University, earning Master of Science (1988) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees in Applied Sciences with a specialization in computer science.... He has also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence."
From this I can deduce that PG wasn't "business minded" in high school although maybe he did run some business on the side etc to make money (I don't know). But he wasn't interested enough in it to attend a business school as an undergraduate. If that had been the case instead of going to Cornell he might have chosen Wharton for undergraduate business. In Wharton UG (I graduated) most of the people - the majority of people that I met - knew that they wanted to be in business just like some people know growing up they want to be doctors. Only difference is those people can do something before college obviously nobody is going to practice medicine prior to training.
So I would suspect that PG's view of the world was based upon his ability to program and put together viaweb and without that programming skill (especially back then) viaweb probably wouldn't have happened. (Morris on the other hand, while a programmer, is a bit devious (worm) so that definitely is a quality that is helpful in business.
[+] [-] orangethirty|13 years ago|reply
Now, can you do this too? Yes. Yes, you can. Go and research markets where there is a lot of interest in a service or product, but there is a lot of friction is purchase. Remove that friction and allow people to interact easily. No need to do much else, but market it directly (which is rather simple). You can even launch this without writing any code. A simple Wordpress blog with a free theme and some manual labor. That's it.
Edit:
Why does your logo link to your blog!?
[+] [-] ovi256|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JimWillTri|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n9com|13 years ago|reply
Is it 4m/year revenue with 1m in profit, or is 50k in profit... makes a big difference.
[+] [-] marcamillion|13 years ago|reply
They are likely reinvesting everything into the business, thereby leaving them with little to no profit.
[+] [-] sixQuarks|13 years ago|reply
I bet the company does most of their marketing offline, and the site is more of a brochure. So it's a bit misleading to say that a $20k bootstrapped web site led to all the growth in this business.
[+] [-] jazzychad|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yeureka|13 years ago|reply
You give it the room count, floor type, wc count, etc... and it produces an estimate of the size of the property and how much it would cost to hire the service.
To estimate room sizes I actually used my body as a ruler since I didn't have a measuring device at the time.
Fun project, too bad the economy in Portugal is so bad.
If you understand Portuguese: http://abelhinha.net
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|13 years ago|reply
This a thousand times.
Too many times I've heard founders bragging to me about how awesome their website looks while completely missing how crappy the user experience is which is driving away business. Good to hear these guys really focused on the core of the business and what made it great.
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bratsche|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patmcguire|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codegeek|13 years ago|reply
Basic household needs have many pain points that are asking for innovation. Some of my pain points specially as a family with a kid :
- how to hire good/reliable house cleaners
- how to hire good/reliable nannies/baby-sitters (part/fulltime)
- I hate going to the groceries for items that are pretty much recurring. Eg.: milk,eggs,fruits etc. are mandatory and every time we run out, a trip to the store is needed.
- Food and cooking. ??
[+] [-] MehdiEG|13 years ago|reply
- Ordering regular organic vegetable and meat boxes (we get a vegetable box once a week and meat once a fortnight). Find who does that in your area and give it a try. We use http://www.riverford.co.uk/ and I can't say enough good things about them.
- Online groceries. For the longest time, I thought people shopping for groceries online were weird. Now I understand. Give it a try - it will save you so much time and energy. The first shop is a bit of a pain but the subsequent ones are really quick as you can just go through what you bought previously and pick what you're running out of. In the UK, we tried ASDA (messed up every delivery - awful customer service), Tesco (can't remember why we don't use them anymore. Think they were neither really good nor really bad) and Ocado (absolutely wonderful in every respect. And, just as they say, not more expensive than ASDA or Tesco).
[+] [-] dualogy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _sentient|13 years ago|reply
I can't help you with the rest of your pain points, but I do own a great house cleaning service. We cover the San Diego, LA and Orange County areas, and we'd love to see if we can take care of item #1: http://goldenshine.com.
</shameless plug>
[+] [-] pjbrunet|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcampbell1|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffyee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpeterso|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehuln|13 years ago|reply
I have an MBA, and my sense is that part of the blame has to be on MBA education itself.
MBA programs teach everything but the "Two skills absolutely necessary" as an entrepreneur: 1) ability sale (your idea, vision, team, product, etc.) and 2) ability to execute.
Luckily, I had one professor who focused on execution part of the experience by creating a class that simulated what happens when you start a company.
I remember what she always said: "If you give me a great idea, I'll give a $1 as thats all they are worth. Real value comes from executing it the right away."
Just my $0.02.
[+] [-] dia80|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djsla|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tejay|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nthj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkbrody|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aymeric|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andy_boot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielfriedman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jefff8|13 years ago|reply
Excellent story. Thanks, mkbrody.
[+] [-] peripetylabs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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