7 ms·

Build Uber-for-X within a day using HyperTrack

163 points by thesanerguy 9y ago

chrissaad 9y ago
This is super cool. I've been looking at HyperTrack for the last couple of weeks. I'm curious what other use-cases or features others might imagine with this platform?
- kdeorah 9y ago
  Thanks Chris. This is Kashyap, HyperTrack's founder/ceo. Your work with Uber APIs and Trip Experiences was awesome and remains an inspiration. I would love to see an integration between HyperTrack and Trip Experiences. When we started, we imagined that apps for work would find us most useful. We have been surprised with the number of apps for consumers who tinker with our stack for building live location sharing and geofencing use cases. For example, a messaging app used us so groups that were meeting up (for beer, say) could track each other in the same map fragment. Another developer used us to profile the places (bars, say) where a user's social graph hangs out. They used it to make better recommendations. Do you think stuff like that has room to grow?
rtpg 9y ago
This is a great example of using this API. Seems like a no-brainer for HyperTrack to make a template app so that this becomes even simpler. Their example setup seems very agnostic to the system.
- thesanerguy 9y ago
  Agreed. We did open source an example app for service-visit use case (https://github.com/hypertrack/service-visit-example-android https://github.com/hypertrack/service-visit-example-android) some time ago. To make it even simpler, we developed a walkthrough (https://dashboard.hypertrack.com/onboarding/ https://dashboard.hypertrack.com/onboarding/). Do you think the walkthrough is what's required? P.S. There are a few more example apps (that use HyperTrack) that we open-sourced. Do check https://github.com/hypertrack https://github.com/hypertrack. Would love to get your thoughts.
  - secfirstmd 9y ago
    Awesome idea!
derrida 9y ago
If you're considering building an Uber-for-x, why not incorporate as a co-operative - a business model where there is either 1 worker 1 vote or 1 consumer 1 vote (as opposed to 30% of shares being a result as 30% of capital investment)? The reason for this is I think there's a lot of 'bullshit jobs' but this way at least people have ownership over what they are getting involved in and can elect a board etc. Could be a great experiment! There's also unique instruments for fundraising in this sector and opportunities for government funding. There's still a board of directors (elected) and a usual employee hierarchy stemming down from there. Founders can take all that they need to reasonably live on (and retire) in the form of some salary compensation package, with a legacy that creates a social enterprise and goodwill & a recession proof business model (when times are hard - co-opertives are more resilient because of this shared ownership & goodwill. When times are good, profits can be distributed - in addition to everyone's usual pay etc).
- joeblau 9y ago
  I'm sure you've already seen Juno's attempt at this experiment[1]. - Drivers said they joined Juno on the premise that they would receive equity from the company. - Gett acquired Juno for $200 million and the equity program was done away with. - Drivers are suing for breach of contract, false advertising and securities fraud. In order for that structure to work, the company would need a new fund structure that would make it both scalable and impossible to dilute the worker. From my limited knowledge, most of the funding power goes to investors and since these types of businesses generally rely network effects, it seems difficult to kick this system off. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to get the ball rolling. [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/19/drivers-sue-uber-rival-juno-for-securities-fraud.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/19/drivers-sue-uber-rival-juno-...
  - will_brown 9y ago
    >In order for that structure to work, the company would need a new fund structure that would make it both scalable and impossible to dilute the worker. Why not make it a non-profit corporation, then there is no ownership (stock) and the company can't be sold. Basic structure: You have members (drivers), they vote the board and in turn the board votes the officers who run the operations (corporate compliance). There would obviously be salaries for the officers, but they wouldn't/couldn't exactly get out of control because they would be set/approved by the Board, and if the Board would be put in check (voted out) by the members (drivers). And that is just the default, you can get far more creative with the actual business agreements and corporate governance documentation to ensure no funny business for the get go.
bkor 9y ago
A logistic version would be way more beneficial. Basically an pick up a container and deliver it option. A lot of effort is spend on just contacting either individual drivers or many small companies just to see who can pick up 1 container. This often done via multiple phone calls. This "Uber-for-X" assumes you need it right now. Usually in logistics you don't; it's just the hassle or figuring out who can do it ahead of time.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Isn't that what uShip is for? I only know about it from having watched a couple of episodes of Shipping Wars, but seems more or less hassle free, you just post your job and accept a bid.
  - bkor 9y ago
    Didn't know about uShip! It's still not exactly what I mean. This seems a customer to trucker option. I mean more _loads_ of offers to various truckers. uShip seems to be about the goods themselves. I mean just picking up a container. To pick up a container you need a truck capable of doing that, various documentation (incl something that proves you're allowed to pick it up), passport, etc. Cannot just go to a terminal and expect to get a container because someone asked you ;) Despite that, seems fairly similar. The number of truckers is quite impressive though wonder if those are capable of trucking a container.
    - dcole2929 9y ago
      I think this is one of the things Convoy does. It's a startup out of Seattle I believe based around that idea. Seems to be doing very well.
- Zach_the_Lizard 9y ago
  https://freight.uber.com/ https://freight.uber.com/ Seems Uber is looking at tapping into the larger logistics market itself
  - 9y ago
amelius 9y ago
Would it be possible to move away from HyperTrack at some point, without losing all your customers to HyperTrack? Iow, do they "control the gates"?
- arjun27 9y ago
  Arjun from HyperTrack here. We are building a developer tool that integrates with your in-house stack. Here's how some one can move away from HyperTrack. - HyperTrack does not store any information about your end customers, or reach out to them. We empower you with information that can be sent to them. Eg, "your order is being delayed by x mins" is available as a webhook, which you can potentially use to fire a notification to your customers. - In addition, all data that is collected and visualised is accessible via APIs. Developers can retrieve data, and store it in-house. - The HyperTrack mobile SDKs will be open source, and it will be possible to hook it up with a different backend. This will allow you to utilise the robustness of the SDK without relying on our backend. Does that answer your concerns?
  - amelius 9y ago
    Yes, thanks.
mannanali413 9y ago
In the recent past there had been a burgeoning of startups that wanted to be the uber-for-x, specially in India. HyperTrack was created to address this segment of the market. However, many of these Uber-for-X hyperlocal vendors died a quick death after burning pile loads of investor money.With other startup's providing more end-to-end solutions in terms of route-scheduling and freight packaging(locus.sh) and also the downfall in the number of startups trying to be Uber-for-X, it surely will be interesting to see if HyperTrack's offerings are still relevant. Btw in 2016, at my previous startup we had used HyperTrack services for tracking of sales personnel on the field. We had issues with accurate location reporting and also there were quite some bugs. We then decided to stop using their API's. I hope that by now these issues are resolved.
- kdeorah 9y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I am the HyperTrack founder. The customer you are referring to is still using us and volumes are growing. We pushed out a major re-architecture in March 2017. The release added a key dimension to the accuracy model - activity. Activity is computed based on non-location sensors on the device - accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, pedometer, etc. Please give us another shot with your new employer and tell us what you think. Uber-for-X and on-demand have become bad words just like ecommerce and dot com did in 2000/01. We are long on the Uberification of every industry out there. And are seeing forward thinking companies of all shapes and sizes use the power of the smartphone location/activity to build awesome features to grow revenues and reduce costs.
philfrasty 9y ago
Just a hint: https://www.hypertrack.com https://www.hypertrack.com on iOS Firefox (current version) is just a white page for me.
micael_dias 9y ago
I guess they're selling shovels ;)
heedlessly2 9y ago
Why does everyone call it Uber for X and not AirBnb for X?
skrebbel 9y ago
Shameless plug: I'm one of the founders of TalkJS, which is essentially the HyperTrack of messaging. If your brand new Uber-for-X needs great user-to-user chat (like Uber itself recently added), consider adding TalkJS within the same day. https://talkjs.com https://talkjs.com
- skrebbel 9y ago
  Oh wow, HN changed! A few years ago, posts like this were frequent and well appreciated. Are my downvotes just some lone angry people or am I losing a sense of the community rules?
  - ludicast 9y ago
    I think some people might not like you crowding out hypertrack's show hn post. That said, I was looking for something very similar to talkjs and am going to try it out thanks to your post. So for me it was very useful and would like to ask you some follow-up questions off of hn.
    - skrebbel 9y ago
      Cool! Happy to help. My contact info is in my account, or just use the chat on our homepage. Curious to hear what you think.
  - catshirt 9y ago
    i don't think i'm lonely or angry. i'm just not super fond of irrelevance or self promotion. so using one as a platform for the other kind of rubs me the wrong way. on one hand, who am i to arbitrate relevance? on the other hand, i really think you're pushing it. "HyperTrack of messaging" -- you are using "HyperTrack" here, the proper noun, as an analogy for "SaaS". TalkJS is "SaaS of messaging". and i think "hey i have a SaaS product too!" is too broad to be contextual. a similar scenario would be an employee of Stripe posting in this thread, promoting Stripe. sure they could argue it is relevant. i'd argue they are trying a little too hard to make it so. forgive me if i've missed something.
alphaomegacode 9y ago
Tried looking at their FAQs link off that page but it doesn't open to any page, static or not static. I'm guessing it's a course or tutorial for a tool or a service but if the FAQs don't show up from the outset, not sure I could take it to my bosses at this time.
- kdeorah 9y ago
  Ouch! A recent content reorg led to the trailing html getting nuked. Use this: https://www.hypertrack.com/faq https://www.hypertrack.com/faq. Fixing it on the blog... Thanks.
- rishabhgrg 9y ago
  Oops, sorry for that! Links are alright now, thanks for pointing it out
joshmn 9y ago
Just two months ago was I looking for something like this! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14600873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14600873
aj_g 9y ago
This comment is slightly OT, but this post prods at something I've been thinking about lately. Pessimistically, most programming is just writing a CRUD app with a layer of business logic over the top. Why haven't we been able to abstract or at least vastly accelerate that? Does anybody have any related reading/longform articles on this idea?
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  I've been irked by this issue for quite some time. My temporary conclusion is that the MVC pattern and defining constraints in a text-based programming language (as opposed to the visual drag-n-drop languages commonly used in software generation systems) is the best abstraction we can come up with without making the framework so rigid it suffers from leaky abstractions and hence comes apart rapidly. It might seem like mostly clerical work and it isn't exactly accessible to non-programmers but the tools and frameworks commonly used for creating CRUD apps already abstract away a lot of the plumbing code that used to be necessary to do this. Although on the surface most CRUD apps at least conceptually look exactly the same the devil often is in the details: Legacy databases, weird interfaces and data formats, data has to be imported from Excel, you name it. Regenerating / modifying an app upon model changes can become particularly arduous depending on how frequently those changes occur. If your data model conforms to some constraints though creating a run-of-the-mill CRUD app with tools like Spring Boot, Swagger and a generic, declarative UI is both fairly easy and robust. As soon as the UI has to accommodate more specific use cases or you want to provide a more focused, less one-size-fits-all UX a mostly automatically generated UI however will fall apart rather quickly again. By the way, at its core Uber is a CRUD app, too, isn't? Perhaps we don't need a generalised CRUD app generator but rather very specific app generators like this one.
- jtmarmon 9y ago
  we have, to some degree. see: parse, firebase, etc. but the reality is most people need more fine grained control than is simple to layer over a crud interface. there's a reason parse shut down: as soon as people's apps had an inkling of success - and often times, even before that - people need to do more than just CRUD

163 points by thesanerguy 9y ago

This is super cool. I've been looking at HyperTrack for the last couple of weeks. I'm curious what other use-cases or features others might imagine with this platform?

kdeorah 9y ago
Thanks Chris. This is Kashyap, HyperTrack's founder/ceo. Your work with Uber APIs and Trip Experiences was awesome and remains an inspiration. I would love to see an integration between HyperTrack and Trip Experiences. When we started, we imagined that apps for work would find us most useful. We have been surprised with the number of apps for consumers who tinker with our stack for building live location sharing and geofencing use cases. For example, a messaging app used us so groups that were meeting up (for beer, say) could track each other in the same map fragment. Another developer used us to profile the places (bars, say) where a user's social graph hangs out. They used it to make better recommendations. Do you think stuff like that has room to grow?

rtpg 9y ago

This is a great example of using this API. Seems like a no-brainer for HyperTrack to make a template app so that this becomes even simpler. Their example setup seems very agnostic to the system.

thesanerguy 9y ago
Agreed. We did open source an example app for service-visit use case (https://github.com/hypertrack/service-visit-example-android https://github.com/hypertrack/service-visit-example-android) some time ago. To make it even simpler, we developed a walkthrough (https://dashboard.hypertrack.com/onboarding/ https://dashboard.hypertrack.com/onboarding/). Do you think the walkthrough is what's required? P.S. There are a few more example apps (that use HyperTrack) that we open-sourced. Do check https://github.com/hypertrack https://github.com/hypertrack. Would love to get your thoughts.
- secfirstmd 9y ago
  Awesome idea!

derrida 9y ago

If you're considering building an Uber-for-x, why not incorporate as a co-operative - a business model where there is either 1 worker 1 vote or 1 consumer 1 vote (as opposed to 30% of shares being a result as 30% of capital investment)? The reason for this is I think there's a lot of 'bullshit jobs' but this way at least people have ownership over what they are getting involved in and can elect a board etc. Could be a great experiment! There's also unique instruments for fundraising in this sector and opportunities for government funding. There's still a board of directors (elected) and a usual employee hierarchy stemming down from there. Founders can take all that they need to reasonably live on (and retire) in the form of some salary compensation package, with a legacy that creates a social enterprise and goodwill & a recession proof business model (when times are hard - co-opertives are more resilient because of this shared ownership & goodwill. When times are good, profits can be distributed - in addition to everyone's usual pay etc).

joeblau 9y ago
I'm sure you've already seen Juno's attempt at this experiment[1]. - Drivers said they joined Juno on the premise that they would receive equity from the company. - Gett acquired Juno for $200 million and the equity program was done away with. - Drivers are suing for breach of contract, false advertising and securities fraud. In order for that structure to work, the company would need a new fund structure that would make it both scalable and impossible to dilute the worker. From my limited knowledge, most of the funding power goes to investors and since these types of businesses generally rely network effects, it seems difficult to kick this system off. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to get the ball rolling. [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/19/drivers-sue-uber-rival-juno-for-securities-fraud.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/19/drivers-sue-uber-rival-juno-...
- will_brown 9y ago
  >In order for that structure to work, the company would need a new fund structure that would make it both scalable and impossible to dilute the worker. Why not make it a non-profit corporation, then there is no ownership (stock) and the company can't be sold. Basic structure: You have members (drivers), they vote the board and in turn the board votes the officers who run the operations (corporate compliance). There would obviously be salaries for the officers, but they wouldn't/couldn't exactly get out of control because they would be set/approved by the Board, and if the Board would be put in check (voted out) by the members (drivers). And that is just the default, you can get far more creative with the actual business agreements and corporate governance documentation to ensure no funny business for the get go.

bkor 9y ago

A logistic version would be way more beneficial. Basically an pick up a container and deliver it option. A lot of effort is spend on just contacting either individual drivers or many small companies just to see who can pick up 1 container. This often done via multiple phone calls. This "Uber-for-X" assumes you need it right now. Usually in logistics you don't; it's just the hassle or figuring out who can do it ahead of time.

icebraining 9y ago
Isn't that what uShip is for? I only know about it from having watched a couple of episodes of Shipping Wars, but seems more or less hassle free, you just post your job and accept a bid.
- bkor 9y ago
  Didn't know about uShip! It's still not exactly what I mean. This seems a customer to trucker option. I mean more _loads_ of offers to various truckers. uShip seems to be about the goods themselves. I mean just picking up a container. To pick up a container you need a truck capable of doing that, various documentation (incl something that proves you're allowed to pick it up), passport, etc. Cannot just go to a terminal and expect to get a container because someone asked you ;) Despite that, seems fairly similar. The number of truckers is quite impressive though wonder if those are capable of trucking a container.
  - dcole2929 9y ago
    I think this is one of the things Convoy does. It's a startup out of Seattle I believe based around that idea. Seems to be doing very well.
Zach_the_Lizard 9y ago
https://freight.uber.com/ https://freight.uber.com/ Seems Uber is looking at tapping into the larger logistics market itself
- 9y ago

amelius 9y ago

Would it be possible to move away from HyperTrack at some point, without losing all your customers to HyperTrack? Iow, do they "control the gates"?

arjun27 9y ago
Arjun from HyperTrack here. We are building a developer tool that integrates with your in-house stack. Here's how some one can move away from HyperTrack. - HyperTrack does not store any information about your end customers, or reach out to them. We empower you with information that can be sent to them. Eg, "your order is being delayed by x mins" is available as a webhook, which you can potentially use to fire a notification to your customers. - In addition, all data that is collected and visualised is accessible via APIs. Developers can retrieve data, and store it in-house. - The HyperTrack mobile SDKs will be open source, and it will be possible to hook it up with a different backend. This will allow you to utilise the robustness of the SDK without relying on our backend. Does that answer your concerns?
- amelius 9y ago
  Yes, thanks.

mannanali413 9y ago

In the recent past there had been a burgeoning of startups that wanted to be the uber-for-x, specially in India. HyperTrack was created to address this segment of the market. However, many of these Uber-for-X hyperlocal vendors died a quick death after burning pile loads of investor money.With other startup's providing more end-to-end solutions in terms of route-scheduling and freight packaging(locus.sh) and also the downfall in the number of startups trying to be Uber-for-X, it surely will be interesting to see if HyperTrack's offerings are still relevant. Btw in 2016, at my previous startup we had used HyperTrack services for tracking of sales personnel on the field. We had issues with accurate location reporting and also there were quite some bugs. We then decided to stop using their API's. I hope that by now these issues are resolved.

kdeorah 9y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I am the HyperTrack founder. The customer you are referring to is still using us and volumes are growing. We pushed out a major re-architecture in March 2017. The release added a key dimension to the accuracy model - activity. Activity is computed based on non-location sensors on the device - accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, pedometer, etc. Please give us another shot with your new employer and tell us what you think. Uber-for-X and on-demand have become bad words just like ecommerce and dot com did in 2000/01. We are long on the Uberification of every industry out there. And are seeing forward thinking companies of all shapes and sizes use the power of the smartphone location/activity to build awesome features to grow revenues and reduce costs.

philfrasty 9y ago

Just a hint: https://www.hypertrack.com https://www.hypertrack.com on iOS Firefox (current version) is just a white page for me.

micael_dias 9y ago

I guess they're selling shovels ;)

heedlessly2 9y ago

Why does everyone call it Uber for X and not AirBnb for X?

skrebbel 9y ago

Shameless plug: I'm one of the founders of TalkJS, which is essentially the HyperTrack of messaging. If your brand new Uber-for-X needs great user-to-user chat (like Uber itself recently added), consider adding TalkJS within the same day. https://talkjs.com https://talkjs.com

skrebbel 9y ago
Oh wow, HN changed! A few years ago, posts like this were frequent and well appreciated. Are my downvotes just some lone angry people or am I losing a sense of the community rules?
- ludicast 9y ago
  I think some people might not like you crowding out hypertrack's show hn post. That said, I was looking for something very similar to talkjs and am going to try it out thanks to your post. So for me it was very useful and would like to ask you some follow-up questions off of hn.
  - skrebbel 9y ago
    Cool! Happy to help. My contact info is in my account, or just use the chat on our homepage. Curious to hear what you think.
- catshirt 9y ago
  i don't think i'm lonely or angry. i'm just not super fond of irrelevance or self promotion. so using one as a platform for the other kind of rubs me the wrong way. on one hand, who am i to arbitrate relevance? on the other hand, i really think you're pushing it. "HyperTrack of messaging" -- you are using "HyperTrack" here, the proper noun, as an analogy for "SaaS". TalkJS is "SaaS of messaging". and i think "hey i have a SaaS product too!" is too broad to be contextual. a similar scenario would be an employee of Stripe posting in this thread, promoting Stripe. sure they could argue it is relevant. i'd argue they are trying a little too hard to make it so. forgive me if i've missed something.

alphaomegacode 9y ago

Tried looking at their FAQs link off that page but it doesn't open to any page, static or not static. I'm guessing it's a course or tutorial for a tool or a service but if the FAQs don't show up from the outset, not sure I could take it to my bosses at this time.

kdeorah 9y ago
Ouch! A recent content reorg led to the trailing html getting nuked. Use this: https://www.hypertrack.com/faq https://www.hypertrack.com/faq. Fixing it on the blog... Thanks.
rishabhgrg 9y ago
Oops, sorry for that! Links are alright now, thanks for pointing it out

joshmn 9y ago

Just two months ago was I looking for something like this! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14600873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14600873

aj_g 9y ago

This comment is slightly OT, but this post prods at something I've been thinking about lately. Pessimistically, most programming is just writing a CRUD app with a layer of business logic over the top. Why haven't we been able to abstract or at least vastly accelerate that? Does anybody have any related reading/longform articles on this idea?

BjoernKW 9y ago
I've been irked by this issue for quite some time. My temporary conclusion is that the MVC pattern and defining constraints in a text-based programming language (as opposed to the visual drag-n-drop languages commonly used in software generation systems) is the best abstraction we can come up with without making the framework so rigid it suffers from leaky abstractions and hence comes apart rapidly. It might seem like mostly clerical work and it isn't exactly accessible to non-programmers but the tools and frameworks commonly used for creating CRUD apps already abstract away a lot of the plumbing code that used to be necessary to do this. Although on the surface most CRUD apps at least conceptually look exactly the same the devil often is in the details: Legacy databases, weird interfaces and data formats, data has to be imported from Excel, you name it. Regenerating / modifying an app upon model changes can become particularly arduous depending on how frequently those changes occur. If your data model conforms to some constraints though creating a run-of-the-mill CRUD app with tools like Spring Boot, Swagger and a generic, declarative UI is both fairly easy and robust. As soon as the UI has to accommodate more specific use cases or you want to provide a more focused, less one-size-fits-all UX a mostly automatically generated UI however will fall apart rather quickly again. By the way, at its core Uber is a CRUD app, too, isn't? Perhaps we don't need a generalised CRUD app generator but rather very specific app generators like this one.
jtmarmon 9y ago
we have, to some degree. see: parse, firebase, etc. but the reality is most people need more fine grained control than is simple to layer over a crud interface. there's a reason parse shut down: as soon as people's apps had an inkling of success - and often times, even before that - people need to do more than just CRUD