
iCracked (YC W12) Takes On The Geek Squad With Worldwide Local iPhone Repair - pg
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/02/icracked-launch/
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rdl
1) Focusing on Apple products is really smart. I know people who are quite
happy with iPhone 3 or 3GS still. I don't know a lot of people using early
non-Apple smartphones (I probably know more people using old Nokia 1100s or
even T34s than old smartphones, because they work in places where cameras are
banned on campus, and phones are ok in some areas otherwise). Apple products
are also well engineered, but have weird special parts which are otherwise
hard to source.

2) Having retail, mail-in, and DIY together is more than the sum of the parts.
There are some products where I want retail, others where mail in is ok, and
others where I'd DIY; depends on the product, the data on the product, and
where I am (I ended up buying new laptops to replace broken ones when
overseas, since I couldn't be without one for a month to have it shipped off
for service).

This could be the Amazon of aftermarket repair -- the one place I go to first
and don't bother looking elsewhere to save 5-10% on price.

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samstave
How is this different than iFixit.com's offering?

Sometimes I wonder about the YC investments on things that I just dont find
all that novel, or revolutionary...

I mean - I guess its cool because they expanded/franchised out to college
campuses or something, but I don't find this to be particularly interesting.

It would seem that they must have sold a grander vision to YC; "We will be the
Geek Squad of college campuses, everyone on campus has a machine and a phone!"
-- there is a real business there, sure, but I am not very excited about it.

Even coming from a career IT background, commoditizing helpdesk/repair and
deploying an army of iTech's to college campuses just doesn't interest me.

I am sure that this could make a lot of (boring) money in the future though,
so good for them.

~~~
pg
_Sometimes I wonder about the YC investments on things that I just dont find
all that novel, or revolutionary..._

That's why it's nontrivial to do what we do. The best ideas always look like
bad ideas.

A good test for your reaction to a startup idea is "would I have said the same
thing about Dropbox when it was first started?" On the face of it, there was
nothing revolutionary about Dropbox. There were already dozens of similar
things.

There are a lot of domains where the people with least experience tend to have
the most definite opinions, but startups are an extreme case of it. I find
that as I get more experience with startups, I am extremely reluctant to
dismiss ideas that seem unsexy, or crazy, or (my favorite) "toys." In fact,
when we use those terms to describe ideas to one another during YC interviews,
we usually mean them as compliments.

~~~
andrewl
I'm reminded of Danny Hillis' description of telling Richard Feynman his idea
for the connection machine:

 _One day when I was having lunch with Richard Feynman, I mentioned to him
that I was planning to start a company to build a parallel computer with a
million processors. His reaction was unequivocal, "That is positively the
dopiest idea I ever heard." For Richard a crazy idea was an opportunity to
either prove it wrong or prove it right. Either way, he was interested. By the
end of lunch he had agreed to spend the summer working at the company._

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dataminer
About 2 years ago I helped a local cellphone repair shop to promote its
services online. Here is what I did to make the shop's iphone repair business
very successful.

1) Get it listed on Google maps with the right keywords, this was the top walk
in traffic generator and best bang for bucks because local listing was free.

2) Created a webapp to generate ads for Kijiji and Craigslist, app saved adds
for later use, this could have been done with any word processor but I found
that the owner liked the specialized app more.

3) Get it featured in Kijiji's repair section, after Google this was the best
driver of traffic. Craigslist came in last but still a very valuable source of
customers.

This was enough to get the owner and his tech too busy. I didn't test
facebook, twitter and adwords, but the owner showed me one of his competitor
using facebook really well for promotions. If iCracked can somehow streamline
management of these channels then it has the potential to become a very
valuable service.

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aam1r
ICracked doesn't seem like the typical internet startup: an app/platform.
Instead, they're solving a problem that a lot of people face by having a more
local solution/presence.

I find it interesting how YCombinator is diversifying the type of companies in
their portfolio. Kudos to YC for doing this -- I think it definitely opens up
more opportunities for people.

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juxta
There was an interesting video on Mixergy about a similar strategy (fixing
iPhones): <http://mixergy.com/magnabosco-milliamp-interview/>

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johngalt
There will be a need to re-create support infrastructure as smartphones and
tablets supplant laptops/desktops. The more important and expensive devices
become the more likely people will pay to fix rather than replace them.

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cgislason
It seems that the 'worldwide' claim a bit of a stretch. I can only search for
an iTech in the US and the front page has a US map on it. (Though it seems you
can sign up to be an iTech worldwide.)

~~~
aj_icracked
Cgislason, We have a GeoIP service on the site so when your in other
countries, our iTechs show up for those specific countries. We are working on
broader integrations as well, apart from expanding 4-5 new locations a week.

We also get a ton of mail in repairs from around the world in places we don't
have iTechs yet. This has been very popular for US military abroad which we
offer extremely discounted prices to get their devices up and working again.
We are trying to expand as fast as possible now, so any referrals for iTechs
are greatly appreciated!

~~~
rdl
It might even be worth buying an ad in the deployed Stars & Stripes (CENTCOM;
I think you can buy Afghanistan + Kuwait + Qatar + Bahrain edition as a
package, and it's not that expensive CPM). This is a perfect service for that
market -- when I was overseas, we did this informally based on my purchases of
bulk supplies and air force biomedical equipment techs with spare time. The
only tricky part is the fee for service thing; it's fine to do cost recovery,
but charging another soldier for service sometimes runs afoul of policy.
Running the payments through your site might help with that, I'm not sure.

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boca
I find it interesting how a lot of businesses have spawned because of the
whole apple ecosystem. Just wonderful. There's a problem out there and they
are solving it. Wish these guys the best!

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pritam2020
Well, I found buying repair kit from Amazon and finding videos on youtube was
way cheaper. Replaced iPhone screen with repair kit done just for $7.99

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ZanderEarth32
This is definitely a service I can see myself using in the future if I ever
bust my iPhone. Congrats.

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callmeed
Nice to see more startup action coming out of SLO/Cal Poly and getting press.

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chemmail
What in the world is the YC Special at icracked?

