[brianmcconnell]

While the VC backed services drop like flies, neighborhood businesses continue as if nothing happened. I've lived in the same neighborhood in San Francisco for 20 years. The local dry cleaner is still doing just fine, though a bit older and grayer.

I think the lesson here is that the Uber for X model was predicated on people being so unhappy with the incumbents that they would switch. Pre-Uber taxi services were criminally awful enterprises that deserved to get a beating. Local neighborhood businesses might be a bit low tech, but they know what they are doing (so there isn't much to disrupt).

[jonnathanson]

Yes, plus there's also the size and frequency of the pain point to consider. Uber makes sense; millions and millions of us need to get somewhere at any given point in the day, and many of those millions have that need multiple times a day. An on-demand solution, conveniently at the click of a button on your phone, makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Laundry and dry cleaning? First, that's definitely not a daily need. Debatably a weekly need. Second, it's not really a mobile need, and I don't just mean in terms of the device. It's not an on-the-go problem. Sure, the idea of on-demand pickup and dropoff sounds mildly more convenient than the traditional method -- but not so much more so that it's worth the price premium.