A new take on an old industry., Drop the ego and prove "I could make that so much better"

I mow lawns for a living, what do you do?

Well, if you’re working on a startup it probably sounds a helluva lot cooler than that.  Whether it was my ego, or insecurity I came very close to never even starting LawnStarter simply due to the industry it was in.

After dropping out I was ready to work on something that sounded revolutionary. What I didn’t expect was to stumble upon an industry that needed a full system overhaul.

In the very beginning of working on LawnStarter  I almost always told myself and other people that this was a segue to make some cash until my “real” startup began. I mean, come on, clearly I wasn’t going to make some lawn care company!

As weeks turned into months and progress became rather substantial I started to realize the only thing holding us back was my ego. I felt uncomfortable telling friends what we were doing (in my defense they gave me tons of shit), I undersold the opportunity, and worst of all I was honestly a bit embarrassed.

Looking back, it couldn’t be clearer that I had fallen into a mindset that is all too familiar in our community.

 Why the hell not do a startup to try to change the lawn care industry? It’s a massive industry that could really use some help!

For some reason, I bought into this premium that our community puts on companies that produce gimmicky technology and raise massive rounds without having any real revenue streams. I got so caught up in this mentality that I was literally embarrassed to be working on a company that was making money in a less than sexy industry. Seems ass-backwards to me, and if I had simply ignored my ego for 10 minutes, I would have recognized how ridiculous I was for being embarrassed.

Over the past 5 months I’ve realized just how many opportunities there are to make really shitty industries better. People are willing to pay for a better experience, think Homejoy and Moveline (hopefully one day somebody puts Lawn Starter in that group). Even with money to be made and awesome companies to be built it seems to me like our egos and insecurities are holding us and progress back in dozens of not so attractive industries. Why not ride the wave of awesome customer experience and try to put your stamp on an industry that hasn’t changed in decades?

While everyone is trying to make the next facebook or snapchat - which is cool, I use both of these a lot - you could be trying to reinventing an industry nobody else wants to touch.

We all have a list of things or industries that “we could make so much better”. For me it was lawn care since high school.  I’m finally putting my money where my mouth was and I look forward to seeing if I was right.

 Me, I’ll be mowing lawns in Fairfax and dozens of other places. Where will you be?

-Steve