
Why ‘Do It for Me’ Is the Next Big Thing - carlchenet
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/19/why-do-it-for-me-is-the-next-big-thing/
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timdaub
Can we please stop to assume that younger generations don't want to own and do
things?

I don't know where this self-proclaimed fact comes from but hell I know a lot
of people that define themselves __not __as non-materialistic AirBnB-Homejoy-
Uber users. Instead, like everyone else on this planet, they want to express
status with watches, cars and houses. Some maybe even enjoy mowing their lawn
and cleaning their house, as it cleans their mind from stressful work related
stuff.

Yes, Uber and AirBnB are great services and we will use them a lot more in the
future, but this doesn't mean that everyone will use a dogfood-delivery or
brush-my-teeth service. The DIFM-Economy surely will exist, but it will
probably be far smaller than silicon valley based journalist imagine it.

~~~
mcdougle
You're definitely not wrong. Of course there are those in the younger
generation who want to own things. I bet _most_ of them do, in fact. I own my
car, of course, and although I'm happy renting an apartment now, I'll be
getting a house once I settle down and have a family.

But there's no denying that there are those who just don't want the hassle. I
have a friend who uses Uber to get anywhere -- even if it's a 5 minute drive.
Most of my friends don't own homes and don't intend to (anytime soon, at
least). I have a tenant who makes a very good living, has a very large savings
account, and a very high credit score, owned his own home previously, and
chose to rent from me because it's just easier.

There's a pretty big market for those sorts of people -- and I think that's
what the article was getting at.

~~~
timdaub
Alright, I accept that and I don't think its a phenomena caused by our wealthy
society for a specific generation, as some self-proclaimed millennial-
educators suggest. Essentially what they're saying is that we millennials do
not want to own things, because we already did had strong abundance of that in
our childhood. Firstly, that is certainly not true for most people I know.
Secondly, people I know that had strong abundance in their childhood, strive
towards even more now.

I think its owed to the fact of these peoples' current living situation as
well as the state of the economy that there are some people that actually
don't want to own things.

But lets face it: To much of your money (at least in percentages) in a bank
account ultimately is worth nothing. Spending it on services does - on the
long term - not yield as much value as ownership. Think about it: You can sell
your car after using it for 5-10 years. Same goes for your house, phone,
watch, laptop, apartment. Ownership returns securities, and people need
securities!

I think people from our generation just ride this wave because of convenience
but will ultimately converge to the ownership-game as everyone else.

~~~
nine_k
> _You can sell your car after using it for 5-10 years. Same goes for your
> house, phone, watch, laptop, apartment._

Seriously?

Well, all right, _houses and apartments_ are still securities. But how much
does a 10-year-old car depreciate? I'd expect it to lose 70%-90% of the price
of a new one. Phones, laptops, even non-mechanical watches — they lose close
to 100% of value over 10 years unless you can sell them as collector items.

Imagine that you could own a nice jug and come buy your milk with it. Nice,
and your children could reuse the jug or sell it. But most people prefer to
buy milk in disposable cardboard and plastic containers. Possibly, in 30 years
they will use a different (but still disposable) container entirely.

Technology moves too fast.

~~~
timdaub
Good point, but selling an item is not the only security/value ownership
provides.

I can do what ever I want with the item. I can use the item whenever I want. I
can still lend the item to someone. Etc...

Also, you don't have to necessarily sell the item once its lost all its value,
but prior to that. And actually, I do this with my MBP every few years. I buy
it intentionally, because I know its value isn't going to decline as fast as
other laptops.

Still, after 5-10 years you at least get SOMETHING out of your car for
example, in contrast to all those Uber-rides you took 5 years ago.

BTW.: These examples were probably not the best ones. I'm trying to think
about better ones right now...

~~~
nine_k
I see your point: ownership provides better _control_. You can do things that
are not possible with a rented item. Sometimes this makes perfect sense. I'm
glad I'm not renting my computers and can do whatever I please with them.

Still for some other items for which the amount of control you need over them
is acceptably low, you can rent them. I'm fine buying a ride in a subway train
or a taxi.

These two approaches have different strong and weak sides, so they will
probably coexist for a long time. What we see now is that people start to
_need_ less control or maybe even _less use_ of certain things. I don't own a
car which is perfectly reasonable in NYC; if I lived outside a metropolis I'd
own one. Not owning a house has drawbacks but also has _upsides;_ possibly
these upsides, like more mobility, start to overweigh the downsides. For
instnace, living in San Francisco or on Manhattan is quite possible when you
rent an apartment, but buying a house there is mostly for millionaires.

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Bostwick
Reading this article leads me to believe the writers at Techcrunch are slowly
discovering basic economics, and they think it's revolutionary.

    
    
      Instead of selling “software-as-a-service,” these DIFM companies are
      delivering “software-with-a-service.” The result is awesome customer
      experience that can only be delivered with a human touch.
    

Techcrunch has it reversed. These companies are selling a service, and happen
to effectively use software to create their competitive advantage.

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amelius
So suddenly everybody is rushing to build a human dispatch service for
everything, and the end result will be that there will be one winner, who
cashes in a big percentage of every transaction in the particular market
segment. The actual AI can wait, because what matters now is the cornering of
the market.

As you can see, this development does not make me happy.

~~~
netcan
Why not? I'm not trying to be snarky, what specifically don't you like?

~~~
throwaway9324
Many of these companies aspire to things that are great for themselves, like
controlling markets and integrating vertically, but not so great for everyone
else.

~~~
netcan
Is this generally different from the world of business and entrepreneurship
where companies aspire to have market share, profits, etc..? IE, specific to
the ‘Do It for Me’ market?

~~~
amelius
The problem is mostly that these companies seem to try to put a wall around a
market and try to become the gate-keeper for that particular market, and will
then become the regulator of that market. This goes against the principle of
"free markets".

Besides these "do it for me" markets, roughly the same pattern is seen with
app-stores, and probably many more markets.

(Of course, in a truly free market it should in theory be possible to create
such nested markets, but this just shows that the concept of a totally free
market is nonsense, and that we should act against these patterns.)

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Nursie
>> This is the first generation of teenagers that doesn’t universally wish to
own their own cars, many instead preferring to be shuttled around with the
help of a smartphone app.

Alternatively, people like taxis. Especially young, urban people who have a
bit of spare cash and like to drink.

~~~
ams6110
... and this is not really a new thing. Car ownership in dense urban areas has
been a hassle for decades. You have typically exhorbitant local permit
fees/taxes, you pay for parking, or have to hunt endlessly for street parking,
your insurance rates are higher, gasoline is more expensive, etc. and none of
those things are recent developments.

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mattnewton
As a young "millennial" myself, my rent/service oriented lifestyle is based
around how free it makes me feel to not own anything. Ownership comes with
hassles, and upkeep costs that I would rather not pay if I can just solve a
problem directly, and it is hard to change course once you have bought things.
I felt anchored by my car, the amount of time I spent servicing it, parking
it, driving it and paying for it until I spent all the time selling it for a
fraction of it's original cost. Money in a bank account represents any asset I
can imagine. Today solving problems quickly through services is so
frictionless, committing that money to a particular form often seems like a
losing proposition.

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barrystaes
Seriously? This needs to be a buzzword? Jeez!! It is how the economy has
worked since.. always.

I hire a carpenter to do it for me. A cleaner to do it for me. IT company X to
do it for me. Contractor Y to build it for me. Baker Z to bake it for me.

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InclinedPlane
This should be obvious. Concierge style services married to digital
communication and software dispatch, it's a natural combination.

~~~
netcan
"Concierge" is an analogy in this context, I think. That is, it's a starting
point for your brain to have something to graft onto. In reality, the service
is bound to be very different from a concierge once it hits legit MVP (with
enough 'V' to genuinely validate a business) levels of traffic, the concierge
analogy will start to be something deep in the identity of the actual product
rather than the product.

You might have "classrooms" in your elearning software, but it's relationship
to an actual classroom is metaphorical.

Anyway, the actual work is figuring out how to scale this. If scaling means a
linear increase in people, you've got a hard problem to solve. It's not
impossible. Uber needs another physical car for each simultaneous passenger.
But, it's fundamentally different difficulties than "scaling" of a software.

Metaphors are tricky.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Certainly. But "concierge" gives you a good handhold to understand a lot of
the potential businesses that haven't emerged yet. Using the concierge model
makes things like shyp and magic seem pretty obvious, for example. From there
I think it's a lot easier to see what's possible, where the easy money is, and
what the outlines of a viable product look like.

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richardbrevig
DIFM = the "whole product" as described by Geoffrey Moore in "Crossing the
Chasm." He suggests that you partner with third-parties so that your customers
get a complete use case, usually your technology only solves part of the
problem and leaves the customer coming up with the rest.

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halfmoon
Stop jerk tech

We don't want more slaves to increase inequality

