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?
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...
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.
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/
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?
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.
Doing something similar. Bought a business in the petroleum equipment service space. Building internal tools for ourselves. Pen and paper still dominates the industry.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.)
>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].
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.
53 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 75.7 ms ] threadAssuming 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...
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.
Consider being a platform coop with regional operators as members. See https://platform.coop/
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!
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?
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.
My longterm vision is to be the agent platform for traditional industries, bridging the gap between knowledge work and physical work.
>when I was leaving my boss told me I should start my own company.
Genuinely or sarcastically?
> 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.)
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/
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.