Ask HN: What service would you pay $1k/mo for? - clprogrmr
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yoodenvranx
If I would have that kind of spare money I'd like to have a private secretary
who takes care of all the small things like booking flights, booking hotels,
doing taxes, sorting mail, sorting documents, administrating my software
licenses and netflix/github/dropbox/... subscriptions, and all those other
things.

~~~
stult
If only you could find a (trustworthy and competent) secretary willing to work
full time for $12k/year...

~~~
Bartweiss
That's at 40 hours per week, though. I suspect most people interested in this
service could get a lot of headaches dealt with at ~10 hours, which raises the
possibility of a PA taking on four clients and making median salary.

That's not going to get your grocery shopping done, but 10 hours/week seems
like it would comfortably cover many people's paperwork/bureaucracy hassles.

~~~
jklinger410
This would be an awesome service. You have your emails auto-forwarded to them,
you pay them for 10-14 hrs a week and send them any information you want them
to process. Then they prepare daily emails or phone calls for you.

These people could have like 3 or 4 clients a piece.

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beachwood23
I'm currently paying $2k a month for a service. I pay Remote Year that sum,
and they provide consistent workspaces, living spaces, and travel to a
different country every month.

The jury is still out on whether it is actually worth that value; in many of
the countries, a workspace membership and acceptable housing can be found for
$600-900 / month. They attempt to make up the rest of the value in the
community that they provide.

~~~
kraftman
Do you stick with the same people each month? Seems like quite a markup to pay
for not doing it yourself, and you could use the extra $1-1400 for social
activities?

~~~
storyinmemo
Yes, they move the entire cohort together.

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antjanus
This will sound a little weird but a food service. I eat mainly organic food
and/or local food and always really high quality stuff. I spend over $300/week
on myself, my wife, and my toddler-aged daughter.

If someone can figure out a decent (dietary restricted) meal plan and get me
the food in a box every week, I would not mind paying that $1K for it (as it
would be cheaper than what I currently pay).

A lot of the food box services that are out there currently are either more
expensive than the store (and still charge on top of it for the service) or
have a super crappy selection, or just not enough food.

There is one service that I continuously used until I moved and dropped
$150/week on it and that was Houston's "Rawfully Organic" because it was on
par with store prices, really good variety, and awesome community.

~~~
jotato
+1. My family is in the same boat. A good meal planning/delivery service that
provides healthy meals with local ingredients where possible would be great.
Heck, I would pay the same as my grocery budget now (~1300/mo) just to avoid
going to the store.

The biggest factor for us is dietary restrictions. For example, my wife is
going through a "elimination" plan right now trying to find what foods are
triggering health problems. One ingredient that is off our table is garlic. It
is hard finding a variety of meals that don't include garlic. A service would
be welcome!

~~~
madamelic
Is eliminating certain ingredients the only dietary restrictions in your
family?

Currently working on a product (shameless plug: pantryplan.io) which I am
currently building dietary restriction into.

Grocery delivery is in the roadmap but just trying to get the "meal planning"
bit down first.

~~~
jotato
If you consider dairy an ingredient :P

But yes, For us it is more about allergies than vegan, kosher, etc...

~~~
madamelic
Ah okay.

Yeah, lactose intolerance / no dairy is definitely going to be in there. I am
lactose-intolerant, my SO is lactose-intolerant plus they are also allergic to
gluten, soy and nuts! (I feel so bad for them. :))

Just polling to see what people are more interested in seeing touched.

I likely won't be touching a lot more complex exemptions like vegan or kosher
any time soon but I might see if it can be crowd-sourced.

Thanks!

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tmaly
I think a early education service for toddlers that has play, projects, STEM
etc all built in. Everyone wants the best for their kids and this is one thing
many people spend big on. The local Montessori wants $2k a month for full time
5 days a week, but I think there are other opportunities that could be
realized with some technical input.

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Taylor_OD
Lead/sourcing generation tool with direct dials, cell phones, email (personal
and work), for every software developer, senior developer, lead developer,
architect, dir of sw development, vp of sw development, CTO, and CEO in
Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.

I would pay a lot of money for a tool that actually works, updates its
database, and has companies other than the IBM/mega corporation.

~~~
pvsukale3
Question : If someone starts this type of service , where would they get this
data in the first place?

~~~
Taylor_OD
They would hire a team of sales/researcher people to call into companies and
get this information. That's what the company I currently use does but they
are more focused on the IT vertical than software development.

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impostervt
A guarantee that, after 6 months of this service (or whatever), I won't be fat
anymore.

~~~
johnnyfaehell
Hire a personal trainer, spend that on the personal trainer and just do what
the personal trainer tells you. Even a bad personal trainer will get results
if you're spending that sort of money.

~~~
impostervt
How do I find a good personal trainer? I've met some and don't know how to
distinguish the good from the meh.

I guess for 1k a month I'd want something more than that. I know HOW to
workout and eat right...I just don't. I need a willpower pill. :\

~~~
Bartweiss
Honestly, find someone fit, ideally someone who does some kind of competitive
athletic, who uses the trainer and recommends them.

Personal trainers can be excellent, but the low end is "dangerously
incompetent". The only requirement for starting a service, or getting hired at
many gyms, is being buff and knowing how to look competent on some machines.
As a result, there are plenty of PTs peddling junk-science nutrition, or
giving out plausible-but-harmful workout routines that undervalue stretching
or produce dangerous imbalances and overextensions.

Assuming you don't need someone teaching you how to be healthy, though, things
get easier. Some trainers focus on education and drop unmotivated clients, but
some offer "willpower pill" as a decent chunk of what you're paying for.
Knowing that someone expects you at the gym at 7PM, and will pump you up to
not bail early, can do a lot of good.

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colinbartlett
I would pay that much for a small, private, furnished office within walking
distance of my apartment.

I work from home and generally enjoy it. But living and working along side my
wife in a small one bedroom apartment in New York City presents its
challenges. There are plenty of coworking spaces but none close enough that I
can walk to and I refuse to become a slave of the commute. I simply need a
tiny room with a door I can close, wifi, a desk and a chair.

~~~
adamqureshi
I thought i was the ONLY one in this exact situation. I moved out to long
island. ;-)

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jrbedard
An outstanding Bloomberg terminal alternative

~~~
seppin
with a better design /s

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Rekaiden
A good place to live, not much else.

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edent
A chauffeur.

I currently pay the equivalent of $650/mo to park my car, catch a train, then
a subway to get to my office. But the trains are frequently standing room
only, delayed, and noisy.

My alternative is to pay around $300/mo to park my car, take a coach, then a
subway. The coach is more pleasant (seating! WiFi! Power sockets!) but takes
longer due to the various stops around town.

In both cases, the services are infrequent.

When I've worked in India or ZA, it's quite common to have a chauffeur. But
that only works with the massive disparity in wages. That's less likely in the
industrialised world.

I _could_ rideshare - but that's fraught with risk. I _could_ take a taxi, but
that would quadruple my cost.

So, if you can find a way to make autonomous cars work in the UK - and can
charge a per-journey fare - let me know!

~~~
Bartweiss
I'm really curious what autonomous cars are going to do to urban planning. The
demand for car-fleet services will rise as they become reasonable ways to
commute, but that's not the whole story.

Presumably there will be a lot of people who still want to own a car (e.g. for
weekend trips), but no longer need to park near their office or a train
station. If you have a short commute or predictable schedule, it'd be far
easier to just send your car "home", or even pay for remote parking somewhere
you _don 't_ live and use it like a privately-owned Uber. Great for reducing
parking demand, but with the potential to create a weird reverse-commute of
empty cars streaming out of cities just after 9:00AM.

And on a similar note, there's a possibility of more congestion from circling
traffic. "I'm just popping into the store quick, drive around empty until I
get back". Exactly what someone with a chauffeur might do today, but cheap and
easy.

Hell, will we see a HOV-lane-equivalent arise on highways where non-empty cars
get priority status? Or a reverse solution, where empty cars are low priority
and have to keep right like semis?

...I've completely abandoned your point, but there are _so many questions_!
It's going to be fascinating to see how universal-chauffeur traffic works.

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ian0
Analytics, customer support & automated marketing are converging.

I would pay 1k/mo (scaling far higher with volume) for a solution that is
implemented by a (reasonably) on-site team over the course of a few weeks that
can interact with the various teams responsible to integrate (dev) and use
(marketing/support/management) it.

I would sacrifice features, which seems to be the de-facto differentiator in
these classes, for a product which supports an opinionated but well thought
out product development strategy. One based on the current norms for iterating
products based on feedback from customers and funnel data.

\- I work in payments / e-comm

~~~
doublerebel
I just started using Resend.io, which has all 3 of these features in a simple
package. The founder has been responsive and the product keeps improving. I
was looking for a simple Intercom replacement, Intercom has become very
complex.

------
TorKlingberg
Are you asking us as individuals or business owners/leaders? If the later, say
so or you will get 90% irrelevant answers.

~~~
AimHere
He's asking us as potential customers for his next startup, of course!

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TACIXAT
Anything that gave me a return on that investment.

------
alphydan
A domestic robot to clean/tidy the house (dishes, laundry, dust, vacuum) +
cook at home.

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verteu
A service to fix my chronic back pain. I already spend 1-2k / month on useless
physical therapy and alternative medicine.

~~~
almostkorean
There are real back pain specialists (as in MDs), my brother is one. I
herniated a disc in my spine doing deadlifts and also went through useless
physical therapy. My brother gave me two injections in my spine it's about 90%
better. The pain was so bad I could hardly sit still for more than a couple
hours, so it was affecting my work among other things.

Google "back pain specialist" in your area, it's covered by health insurance
most of the time. Strangely, back pain specialists have a big patient
education problem. Nobody knows they exist even though so many people have
back pain.

~~~
verteu
Thanks for the recommendation :) Unfortunately I've already seen several
physiatrist MDs and gotten 2 epidural injections that didn't help.

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arenaninja
A full-on nanny. Someone who can take my kids to/from: school, doctor's
appointments, activities, prepare/give them food, help with homework if I'm
coming back late.

Child rearing takes a lot of your time!

------
throwaway2016a
I pay this for daycare (actually slightly more).

I also pay about 1/10 of this to membership to a non-profit hackerspace where
I have access to a 3d printer, electronics bench, laser cutter, etc.

Other than that... if one of my side project takeoff, I would pay an
outsourced programmer to work on my side projects that I don't have time to
fix myself. (I'm a programmer myself but there are only so many hours in the
day)

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colept
A service like AirBnB where you can check into any one bedroom apartment
nationwide so you can travel and feel like you have a home.

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smidgen2
Rent. Yup, that's about what I'm paying for rent nowadays. Seriously can't
afford another $1k/mo service.

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andrewmcwatters
A service that can double my income.

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franze
A Meeseks Box
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUYvIAP3qQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUYvIAP3qQk)

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b3lvedere
Unlimited really good food for 10+ people

~~~
Shanea93
If it's truly unlimited, you just need really good food for one person.

~~~
b3lvedere
Aw crap. You are totally right. How i distribute the unlimited resource is up
to me. :)

Still. A good food service for 1k/month could be a nice business. Lots of
dependencies though.

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Raphmedia
Anything that allows 500+ users. As an example, Jira cloud monthly is US
$1,500 for 501-2000 users.

~~~
Bartweiss
There are a bunch of studies showing that you get weird market distortions at
regulatory "cliffs". The classic example is that a company with 49 workers
might see marginal profit from a 50th worker, but would suddenly hit the
health insurance cutoff. Since insuring all 50 workers is expensive, the value
of hiring one more person is massively negative.

...does this happen with B2B software pricing? Jira probably isn't expensive
enough, but are there lots of companies doing elaborate limbo to keep their
user count for a service just under a pricing threshold?

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sandGorgon
slack/hipchat + trello + github/gitlab + jira issues + continuous integration
+ docker repository rolled into one. All with mobile apps.

i would easily pay you 25 bucks per person.

EDIT : i would start with Phabricators codebase and go from there.

~~~
xiaoma
Gitlab is closing in on that pretty fast.

~~~
zegerjan
GitLab doesn't have apps yet, although there are those from other companies
like Trident[1]. Other than that, chat is provided by mattermost, and can be
enabled in 30 seconds.

All other feature are all already available, right now.

[1] [http://somerobots.com/](http://somerobots.com/)

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gkuan
individual: child care, higher education that improves career prospects,
insurance

business: certain high-end dev environments & tool suites, contract automation

~~~
shae
I'd pay $1k a month for _quality_ higher education on topics that interest me.
My interests have a wide range, but I mostly want to learn math and physics
and university classes are too expensive for their quality.

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texthompson
Daycare.

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mtrimpe
Childcare.

~~~
nkassis
Seconded, that would be a good deal around where I live.

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darod
i pay 1200 a month for health insurance for me and my wife.

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tmcpro
Unlimited Uber rides

~~~
chuinard
Sounds ridiculously overpriced.

~~~
Shanea93
I don't know, with unlimited Uber rides I could start a long distance delivery
company:

Want to take a taxi from Manchester to London because you hate the train or
want to arrive overnight? Fantastic, that'll be £50, even cheaper than taking
the train and you don't have to take a taxi from the train station.

Need to same-day-deliver 50 tons of Plywood? Fantastic, I'll order 50 ubers
and we'll move it a hundred KG per taxi and have it done by the end of the
day, how does £250 sound? Cheap enough?

The power of the word "unlimited" is almost magical. Of course, Uber would go
out of business pretty quickly so £1,000 / month wouldn't get them very far,
but to me, it doesn't sound too overpriced. I just hope there's no fine-print.

~~~
Bartweiss
"Unlimited", like "arbitrage", is business-speak for "someone is going
bankrupt". Hence the sad reality that "unlimited" anything is usually just "a
lot".

I remember being pretty disappointed when I learned that deals like "unlimited
candy" generally just deliver more candy than is healthy for one person to
eat. I also remembering being floored by the story of American Airlines
offering actually-unlimited flights for $250,000. And as you point out, that
turned out to be a stunningly bad deal for the company.

[http://business.time.com/2012/05/08/the-250000-airline-
pass-...](http://business.time.com/2012/05/08/the-250000-airline-pass-that-
was-worth-every-penny/)

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xem
taxes. oh wait, it's already the case.

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kapauldo
10 leads

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meira
A service that makes me make $2k/mo before pay

