Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy

http://www.gobicab.com

by alooPotato • 15 years ago

38 24 15 years ago

alooPotato7• 15 years ago

HN - this was a project I built for a class at HBS (Online Economies). The class covered strategies for solving the network effects problem of a lot of online businesses. I thought it would be great to actually build one of these platforms and then try to apply the strategies discussed in class.

Looking for feedback on the app but happy to discuss strategies for cracking the chicken and egg problem....

jwb119• 15 years ago

thanks for sharing. out of curiosity, since you mention you are at HBS, are you a programmer as well? if not, what strategies did you use for building out the site?

alooPotato7• 15 years ago

Yes, my undergrad degree was in computer science/software engineering - so fairly easy for me to pick up iOS programming

shasta• 15 years ago

The chicken and egg problem would seem to be the obvious problem with something like this. Can you broadly explain what you have in mind? I assume you're only pairing people with other Gobicab users, right?

You have the following testimonial displayed prominently: "GobiCab is so easy to use. As soon as I get off my flight, I enter in my destination and have a match by the time I arrive at the cab stand." Is that experience a fluke or is that what I'd expect to find if I used Gobicab at an airport in a random city of a million people?

DanI-S• 15 years ago

Presumably the testimonial is part of solving the chicken-and-egg problem.

stcredzero3• 15 years ago

alooP, a perfect way to crack the chicken/egg problem would be to offer a "beta" of this service at particular conferences as an exclusive conference perk. This provides you with a high population of people arriving in the same time period, all going to the same place. The fact that it's a beta can be used to manage the expectations. It could also be used to generate a lot of testimonials.

I have been talking to a startup which is targeting such conferences. Send my username email at gmail dot com.

--SCZ

alooPotato7• 15 years ago

Yes this is one class of mobilization of a network effect business - exploit irregular network topologies. In our case that means targeting areas with high trip density (defined as locations where people are all leaving by cab to nearby destinations).

So not only do we want to try and target specific cities, but also specific landmarks within those cities where this will be ultimately useful. We've identified two of these - airports and college campuses. We are working with Boston Logan airport to see if we can do some co-marketing with them and advertise to all the passengers arriving on flights and in the cab stand. As for colleges, there are a lot here in Boston! Its just a matter of reaching out to the right student associations and newspapers who can recommend the service to their students. Any connections here would be greatly appreciated!

I've never thought of the conference idea before, I wonder if cabs a re a primary mode of transportation there or not. I'll contact you offline for more info....

wittjeff3• 15 years ago

Speaking of use at conferences, I have wished for something like this while standing in line (with hundreds of other people) waiting for a cab at Las Vegas airport. Too frequently they have under-loaded cabs going to the same hotels only minutes apart.

In Vegas it scales up further though. You have lots of people hopping from hotel to hotel to see shows etc. So if I want to get from the MGM to Bellagio to see O (particularly at predictable intervals before shows start), it's a good bet a bunch of other people will too.

alexsherrick• 15 years ago

i think its a great idea... any ideas on monetizing?

alooPotato7• 15 years ago

I mainly built it because I wanted to exist so monetization wasn't a top priority for me. That being said, I've thought of a few possibilities:

- clearly can't charge for downloading the app as its success is so network effect driven and you don't want to limit the number of users. However, you could charge for usage after some free quota. I.e. your first 10 matches are free but you pay after that per match

- provide lead generation for black cars and taxi cab associations

- targeted advertising (you know where and when someone will be, targeted local deals, etc). This seems like the least likely to work, you would need serious adoption, sales force, high CPM's, etc.

Love to hear other ideas though.

cherif• 15 years ago

Looks great and it was nice to see Kimball's testimonial on the homepage (I got to Wharton and met him through his cousin who is a close friend).

Would love to see learn more about how you plan to solve chicken and egg problem.

alooPotato7• 15 years ago

Another way we have discussed solving the mobilization challenge in addition to the one I listed above, is to proved so e standalone value of the app in the absence of having critical mass.

For example, a primary benefit of the app is that it saves users money. One thing to do is offer users discounted cab fares if they dont get a match. In order to do this you would partner with cab/black car companies and charge them a lead gen fee for customers using gobicab. Instead of collecting that fee though, you pass it onto consumers in the form of savings or a discounted ride. So either way, if the user finds a match or not, they will receive a cheaper cab ride.

ajju2• 15 years ago

Looks great. Did you also do the design work?

alooPotato7• 15 years ago

I did the UI design myself but paid ~$300 for the actual graphics (image buttons, icons, backgrounds, logo, etc.).

ajju2• 15 years ago

It is excellent work, both the UI and the graphics.

If you don't mind recommending the designer, I'd love to know who did it.

With regards to getting more users, you should at least look into how much it would cost to buy keywords such as "cab sharing" that are targeted to iOS devices. This is a purely anecdotal datum but I don't see any ads when I search for cab sharing on Google so there may not be much competition.

The key question is how you can make enough revenue per user to justify acquisition costs.

oostevo• 15 years ago

I'll second the call to hear who the designer is, if you don't mind sharing.

Actually... could you outline your process of finding the designer? What was the workflow like? Did you send him your .nib files and let him go to town, or did you send him screenshots, or what?

cme• 15 years ago

Solving the chicken an egg problem could be difficult, you may try partnering up with car services or cab companies

You could look into car services instead of cabs..some times these types of services will have specific routes/destinations planned..making it easier to match people up..a possible problem is people not wanting to share a car service though.

You could also look into partnering up with cab services that constantly service airports. you could set it up where someone could use your app to set up a cab ride prior to taking off at another airport. That way cabbies will have passengers set up, instead of having to sit and wait. you could pair people up who are coming in at similar times to share the cabs.

Just thinking out loud. I'd love to talk to you more about the app, I've been looking into developing an idea that involves pairing people up to share cost. (not related to your idea)

k3dz• 15 years ago

suggestion: add scrolling to lightbox for screenshots on home page.

wittjeff3• 15 years ago

I'll dig deeper into your UI in a minute, but have a usage scenario for you to consider. Suppose this thing catches on in the Las Vegas tourists context I mentioned earlier. There might be multiple people queuing up with the same origin and destination. How do you identify your rideshare partners? Second question: Suppose there are people who have heard of this now-ubiquitous app but gasp don't have a smartphone with them. Can they jump in and share a ride? For both situations I think it might be good to have a big distinctive screen-covering photo of the place you're going (if the destinations are among a top list), or the destination spelled out in text with distinctive foreground/background pairs. I'm thinking of this as akin to buying theatre tickets in front of the venue just before a show. Then the prospective partners who have phones can stand around with their smartphone screens not-so-subtly visible, and other prospectives (having smartphones or not) can scan them visually very quickly instead of asking a bunch of people "are you my ride"?

wittjeff3• 15 years ago

Black-on-dark-grey is a bad combination for aesthetics and accessibility.

Speaking of accessibility, blind people are big users of cabs. So that might be another market to focus on.

dotme• 15 years ago

This is an awesome Idea. Always looking for something like this. Cab rentals are too high.

You can talk to Cab Service Providers in different cities. And don't worry about monetizing. Once you have a good userbase, you can charge a minor amount from Cab Service Provider or even users when they book a Cab (and its actually saved them some bucks). No one will mind giving 1 buck each time they book if it is saving them 10.

Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy

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