In an Age of Disruption, Starchup Aims to Empower
In the wake of Uber’s and Airbnb’s multi-billion dollar valuations, “disruption” — a term popularized by Clayton Christiansen in The Innovator’s Dilemma and closely related to Joseph Shumpeter’s idea of “creative destruction” — has become the tech buzzword, not least because it implies a yellow brick road to Tech Unicorn status for the disruptors.
Disruption describes a market entrant utilizing an innovative business model to provide customers greater value than industry incumbents, often through new technology. It instantly renders incumbents less competitive, if not irrelevant, as the new entrant seizes large chunks of market share and the wealth that the industry previously created is re-concentrated. (To be fair, Uber and Airbnb may reduce wealth concentration by enabling drivers and renters to turn consumption goods into capital goods.)
For Uber and Airbnb, disruption has occurred in industries governed by protective regulation (taxis & hotels) or where previous operators added relatively little specialized value and often a poor experience (sorry, taxis).
What about industries that aren’t quite so ripe?
Disrupting Laundry
At first glance, laundry and dry cleaning might seem like an ideal industry for disruption. Laundry is a hassle even for those with in-home washer/dryers, dry cleaning can be worse depending on your options, and outsourcing common chores has become an urban mantra. If a would-be disruptor can build an Uber-for-laundry, will your dry cleaner go the way of the taxi cab?
Possibly.
Uber-for-laundry is disrupting laundry, at least to some extent. But dry cleaning and laundry is different from taxis. Thousands of top-notch operators with years of experience efficiently clean large amounts of clothing, while keeping a relatively high customer service rating, every day. Many already offer delivery service.
But very few have the resources to build a mobile solution to a problem of distribution. Without innovation, disruption may be unavoidable.
Empowering Cleaners
A little over a year ago, my co-founder Dan Tobon and I had a conversation about his dad’s laundry business, competition from laundry apps, and disruption. We determined to build technology that would enable the best local cleaners to provide customers with that same great mobile experience. Starchup was born.
We spent the next year studying the industry and speaking with operators and experts in order to build a technology platform truly customized to the needs of cleaners. Along the way, Starchup benefited from an unparalleled support structure when we joined the first cohort of Bunker Labs, a veteran-owned startup incubator in Chicago’s 1871. (Dan served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a U.S. Army infantryman.) Soon after, we raised a small round of funding and partnered with our first few cleaners to beta test the platform.
The Starchup Platform gives cleaners the technology to efficiently manage their delivery process, including a dashboard and driver app, and the ability to reach customers through two mobile channels: the Starchup marketplace app, where customers can shop for cleaners servicing their address, and a private label, cleaner-branded app that cleaners can market directly to their customers. Indeed, one cleaner commented, “if I could have done it myself, this is exactly what I would have built.”
Rather than disrupt, Starchup empowers local cleaners to provide the user experience that today’s customer demands: Uber-for-laundry-for-cleaners.
As we prepare to launch the Starchup App in Chicago next Monday, it is exciting to reflect on the potential that startup innovation has to empower, not just to disrupt, industries of operators large and small. As the Unicorns show, technology can create immense value; how that value is distributed may be the key to its future.
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