Social Ridesharing Startup Ridejoy (YC S11) Raises $1.3M

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/06/social-ridesharing-startup-ridejoy-raises-1-3m-from-freestyle-capital-lerer-ventures-and-others/

by jamesjyu • 14 years ago

57 14 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

GraffitiTim• 14 years ago

These guys are major hustlers. They've earned it.

jasonshen3• 14 years ago

Thanks Tim! We're just getting started... =)

chris1232• 14 years ago

Congrats guys. Nice execution so far. Time to take that ball and run, because Steve Blank and others would say that you have taken down a big risk milestone for everybody interested in the market, indeed you have validated it. Now it's time for the second movers join the party :)

To other developers (Rails, anyone?):

Want to create a similar/better/different version (I've got the points of differentiation written up) get in touch. Up to 50% of the equity is on the table (subject to terms, conditions, etc.), plus I seed fund (no salaries until proper milestone and subject to terms, conditions, etc.).

Before you scream "copycat," consider that this project has been on my backlog since before RideJoy existed or registered its domain name. The brands I've got for this include part of my "P2P" line, plus a "_ _ _str" name, both registered prior to RideJoy: p2pRides.com and Ridestr.com.

Why don't I do it myself? Because I can't (yet?). I'm a former venture finance guy who moved to Europe and tried to get some things going, including Airbnb before Airbnb was Airbnb. Google for "BuzzPal Revealing Its Product - ArcticStartup" for the video, which kind of sucks, but is what it is. It was also a bad name for the project, but I didn't yet own p2pRooms.com or any of other better ones for that project yet (do no and it's still on the backlog).

Why did I say "yet" in the paragraph above? Because I am now studying Software Engineering with an emphasis on what I need to learn to launch these kinds of projects myself and/or assess and analyze technical partners, co-founders, etc.

To RideJoy or Airbnb or others who have been and are making offers to acquire domain names: Deals are possible, but probably something with upside vs. straight cash deals like the one I did last year (related to Amazon's $500-million acquisition of Diapers.com).

chris1232• 14 years ago

LOL. Thanks, jasonshen :)

jasonshen3• 14 years ago

Haha, cchurch is definitely not me.

cchurch• 14 years ago

So, you're looking for someone to build you a website for a validated business model? And to the table you bring ... 2 "meh" domain names? And for this, they can get up to 50% equity?

How nice that you're willing to negotiate on licensing your "assets."

vaksel• 14 years ago

yeah, those are some terrible domain names...not even worth the reg fee. Now, if it was something like rideshare.com it might be worth something.

jasonshen3• 14 years ago

Hey chris123, thanks for sharing your thoughts (I upvoted this comment) You are welcome to start your own thing or recruit others to do so and HN is a great place to do it. I appreciate the offer of the domain, but we're pretty happy with the one we've got. =)

joshu3• 14 years ago

Whenever someone presents or executes an idea, there's always some guy who shows up claiming to have had that idea first.

You managed to do it twice in the same post: kudos!

joshu3• 14 years ago

Wow. He really has videos for Wimdu and Airbnb on his p2pRooms.com page. What an asshat.

carl8• 14 years ago

Every year someone comes up with an idea for a ridesharing website. There are over 100+ out there, so it's not like chris123 had this idea first. Some get traction, some don't. Many successful ones are companies you may have never heard of because they sell custom versions to government agencies instead of marketing them directly to end-users.

I had launched a website similar to RideJoy 4 years ago, although I gave up on it before getting as far as they are now since mine didn't get much traction. I even returned Craigslist postings in my search engine similar to what RideJoy does.

I came to realize that with all of the ridesharing systems out there, we really should start working together to keep the userbase from fracturing into too many systems. Any useful rideshare system requires a critical mass for it to be useful, and I worried that having too many websites, each separated on their own island, would divide up the userbase by too much.

The answer to this: Share data between services, or otherwise aggregate searches on multiple services. If we did this, then it wouldn't matter how many new rideshare websites launched as we'd still be able to search the aggregate of trips posted instead of dividing up the pie even further.

A few years ago I invited people from the rideshare industry, then developed and evangelized OpenTrip, a common data exchange protocol for sharing rideshare trips among the various systems.

I had some backing from a government agency at first. Unfortunately, this too didn't end up taking off. Perhaps I was too much of an idealist to think "open sourcing" carpooling could take off.

I am happy to see new interest in this with RideJoy. I hope you guys are successful. I would especially like to see you guys take on Zimride as I feel that they have too much of a monopoly on the university market, and haven't done a very good job innovating. (For example, they've yet to develop a mobile app.)

I'm still interested in this niche field and would be glad to talk with you guys sometime, as I'm also here in SF.

joshu3• 14 years ago

Congrats to the team! (I invested)

rmoh• 14 years ago

Services like these have been around in Europe for at least five years. Glad to see the US is catching up.

jaysonelliot• 14 years ago

Congratulations Kalvin, Randy, Jason, and the whole team.

You're a super-talented bunch with honorable motivations to make a dent in the world. I know you'll do great things!

Social Ridesharing Startup Ridejoy (YC S11) Raises $1.3M

Related Stories