Lugg doing things that don't scale

In the world of startups, there’s a well-known piece of advice from Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: “Do things that don’t scale.” This counterintuitive wisdom suggests that in the early days of building a company, founders should embrace labor-intensive, manual processes that could never work at scale—but might be exactly what’s needed to get initial traction. Few companies embody this principle more vividly than Lugg, the on-demand moving and delivery service founded by Jordan Brown and Eric Kreutzer in 2014.

The Genesis of Lugg

Like many successful startups, Lugg was born from the founders’ personal pain points. Jordan Brown, who had previously worked in healthcare, found himself frustrated when trying to build his own desk. After purchasing wood from Home Depot, he faced a significant challenge: how to transport the materials back to his apartment without a truck. On another occasion, Brown needed to move just a few items—a mattress and a dresser—to a new apartment across town. Traditional moving companies charged $300-$400 with a three-hour minimum, which seemed excessive for such a small job.

These experiences highlighted a gap in the market: there was no easy way for people without trucks to move large items on demand. Brown texted his longtime friend Eric Kreutzer with a simple question: “What if there was an Uber for just moving stuff?” The concept immediately resonated with Kreutzer, who recognized it as a “no-brainer” idea addressing a universal problem.

The vision for Lugg was straightforward: create an app that would allow users to request someone with a truck to help move large items—furniture, appliances, or building materials—on demand, without the high minimums and advance scheduling required by traditional moving companies.

The Early Days: Renting Trucks and Doing It Themselves

With the concept in mind, Brown began building the app while still living in Utah. In October 2014, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to be closer to Silicon Valley and to start acquiring users. The early days were characterized by extreme bootstrapping—Brown slept on a friend’s floor in Concord, California, and put the initial version of the app in the App Store.

But having an app in the store was just the beginning. The real challenge was getting people to use it. This is where Brown and Kreutzer embraced the philosophy of doing things that don’t scale in the most literal way possible: they did all the Luggs (moving jobs) themselves for the first four months.

Each morning, they would rent a truck through services like Getaround or RelayRides (now Turo). Without a network of drivers or movers, they personally fulfilled every order that came through the app. This hands-on approach wasn’t just about providing a service—it was a crucial learning experience that helped them understand every aspect of their business from the ground up.

As Brown explained in an interview with Y Combinator: “Doing Luggs ourselves helped us to really identify the qualities of what Luggers should be.” By personally handling deliveries, they gained insights into what made a good mover, how to efficiently pack a truck, how to navigate apartment buildings, and how to provide excellent customer service during what can be a stressful experience for users.

This direct involvement also allowed them to collect immediate feedback from customers. After completing a delivery, they would often sit down on the couch they had just moved and have a 30-minute conversation with the customer about what they should build next. These conversations led to important product improvements, such as integrating Stripe for in-app payments instead of swiping credit cards with Square readers.

Camping at IKEA: The Ultimate Unscalable Growth Hack

Perhaps the most striking example of Lugg’s commitment to doing things that don’t scale was their approach to customer acquisition. Rather than relying on digital marketing or paid advertising, Brown took a remarkably direct approach: he went to IKEA and camped out in the parking lot.

Every morning, Brown would drive his rented truck to the IKEA store in Emeryville, California, and spend hours watching shoppers struggle with large purchases. He would approach people who were trying to tie furniture to the tops of their cars or waiting in line to schedule delivery through IKEA’s service. His pitch was simple: “Hey, instead of doing all this, what if you could just push a button and get someone with a truck to do it for you?”

If interested, the potential customer would download the Lugg app and request a pickup. Brown would then run to his truck in the parking lot, accept the request through the app, and return to help the customer load their purchases. The customer would often be surprised to see the same person who had just pitched them the service now arriving as their mover, creating moments of recognition: “Oh hey, it’s you!”

This direct, person-to-person marketing approach was labor-intensive and impossible to scale, but it was remarkably effective at creating the initial user base Lugg needed. It also provided immediate validation of their concept—people were willing to use an app to solve this specific pain point.

The IKEA strategy wasn’t without challenges. Some potential customers were understandably skeptical, asking, “How do I know you’re not just going to run away with my items?” Brown occasionally had to offer his driver’s license as collateral to build trust. And after about two months of this guerrilla marketing approach, IKEA management eventually asked them to leave the premises.

But by then, the strategy had served its purpose. Lugg had begun receiving organic requests through the app—people who had discovered the service without being directly approached. As Brown recalled, there was a moment of triumph when he was eating in the IKEA cafeteria and received a notification for a pickup at that same IKEA from someone he had never met. He threw away his food and ran to the parking lot, excited that the app was working without his direct intervention.

Living the Startup Life: Extreme Bootstrapping

The founders’ commitment to their vision extended beyond their customer acquisition strategy. In the early days, Brown and Kreutzer lived and worked in a friend’s office loft, without even basic amenities like a shower. They would try to make it to the gym by 8 AM each morning to shower before Lugg requests started coming in around 9 AM.

They also spent time living in Airbnbs, always doing “the bare minimum of what we needed to go to the next level,” as Kreutzer put it. This extreme bootstrapping mentality extended to their business decisions as well. When someone suggested they should simply buy a truck instead of continuously renting vehicles, they resisted the temptation.

As Brown explained, “If we’re really building something that’s a marketplace, we shouldn’t be doing that. We wanted to build a platform where people who own trucks and vans could make money themselves. If we got into the business of owning trucks, we’d be going against what we were trying to accomplish.”

This clarity of vision—building a platform rather than a traditional moving company—guided their decisions even during the most challenging early days.

The Y Combinator Connection

Like many startups with unconventional beginnings, Lugg’s path to institutional support wasn’t straightforward. The founders initially applied to Y Combinator, the prestigious startup accelerator, but were rejected. Brown had only a prototype at that point, and the app wasn’t even in the App Store yet.

Months later, after launching their service and beginning to gain traction, they did a Lugg for a customer who happened to have connections to Sam Altman, then the president of Y Combinator. This chance encounter led to an introduction, and Altman encouraged them to apply again.

In a particularly memorable moment that demonstrated their commitment to their vision, Brown and Kreutzer did a Lugg for someone who knew Sam Altman and arranged an introduction. They met Altman for coffee, shortly after which they were accepted into Y Combinator’s summer 2015 batch.

For the founders, who described themselves as “two Utah guys who knew absolutely nobody,” Y Combinator provided not just funding but crucial guidance and connections. As Brown put it, “Being in YC was like having a compass, telling us to only build what’s going to impact growth. We took that to heart.”

Scaling Beyond the Unscalable

As Lugg began to gain traction, the founders gradually transitioned from doing everything themselves to building a sustainable business. They developed systems for onboarding and training Luggers (their term for the movers on their platform), created more sophisticated dispatching and routing tools, and expanded their service beyond the initial focus on IKEA pickups.

They also began building relationships with retailers. What started as an unauthorized service helping IKEA customers eventually evolved into formal partnerships with major stores. By August 2015, Lugg had partnered with 17 retailers who referred business to them, including Costco, IKEA, Home Depot, Pottery Barn, and West Elm.

This transition from guerrilla marketing to established partnerships represented a key evolution in Lugg’s growth strategy. But importantly, the insights gained during those early, unscalable days informed every aspect of how they built their scaled operations.

For instance, having personally completed hundreds of deliveries, the founders understood exactly what made a good Lugger and how to train new team members. Having manually matched customers with movers, they knew what factors were most important in creating an efficient dispatching system. And having built relationships with customers one delivery at a time, they understood the importance of trust and reliability in their service.

The Adrenaline of Solving Pain Points

One fascinating insight from Lugg’s founders was their recognition of the unique satisfaction that comes from helping people move. As Brown explained, “Moving is such a different thing. There are born and bred movers. A lot of them, they get adrenaline off of helping people. When they do the impossible, and at the end, the customer is just so ecstatic—they just solved a pain point for that customer that’s often been there for months.”

This understanding—that the best Luggers weren’t just people looking for gig work but individuals who genuinely enjoyed the challenge and satisfaction of moving—informed their hiring and onboarding processes as they scaled. They looked for people who shared this mindset, creating a team of Luggers who were motivated not just by income but by the positive impact they could have on customers’ lives.

Brown himself acknowledged this satisfaction, noting that even as the company grew and his role became more focused on business development, “I still to this day love to Lugg. It’s very satisfying. You’re really interacting with people… It’s also a great workout.”

Lessons from Lugg’s Unscalable Beginnings

Lugg’s journey from camping at IKEA to building a successful on-demand moving platform offers several valuable lessons for entrepreneurs:

1. Solve your own pain points. The most compelling startup ideas often come from the founder’s personal experiences. Brown’s frustration with moving large items without a truck led to a business that solved this problem for thousands of others.
2. Do the work yourself first. By personally fulfilling orders for months, the founders gained insights that would have been impossible to obtain any other way. This hands-on experience informed every aspect of their business as they scaled.
3. Go where your customers are. Rather than trying to attract users through digital marketing, Brown physically went to IKEA, where people were actively experiencing the pain point his service addressed. This direct approach created immediate conversions and valuable feedback.
4. Embrace extreme bootstrapping. The founders’ willingness to sleep on floors, live in office spaces, and shower at the gym demonstrated their commitment to making the business work with minimal resources.
5. Build for the long term, even when doing unscalable things. Despite the temptation to buy their own trucks, the founders stayed focused on their vision of creating a platform rather than becoming a traditional moving company.

The Legacy of Doing Things That Don’t Scale

Today, Lugg operates in multiple cities across the United States, has raised millions in venture funding, and has formal partnerships with major retailers. The company has evolved far beyond its humble beginnings of two founders camping at IKEA and doing all the deliveries themselves.

But those early, unscalable efforts were crucial to Lugg’s eventual success. By doing things that couldn’t possibly work at scale—personally approaching customers, doing every delivery themselves, living in office spaces without showers—Brown and Kreutzer were able to validate their concept, build an initial user base, and gather the insights needed to create a sustainable business.

Their story is a powerful reminder that in the early days of a startup, efficiency and scalability often matter less than learning and adaptation. By embracing the messy, labor-intensive work of doing things that don’t scale, Lugg’s founders built the foundation for something that eventually could scale—one IKEA delivery at a time.