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When I saw this question, only one jumped to mind: flightcar On the surface I understand why the idea was thought to be a good one. But getting sued by SFO bec

When I saw this question, only one jumped to mind: flightcar On the surface I understand why the idea was thought to be a good one. But getting sued by SFO because they didn't have the proper licensing agreements pretty much killed that company. There may have been more, but I remember that particularly. There was also the personal lingering questions about insurance, questionable whether the customers would be good (one damage incident spoils the well), etc.

raarts 9y ago
I was a huge fan of flightcar. They suddenly disappeared on me. The remains (I found it later) were bought by Mercedes. Anybody know more?
- tedmiston 9y ago
  The idea was always pretty cool. It's not super well known but they went through another accelerator before YC (The Brandery). The founders were really really young, just out of high school if I recall, so some mistakes were probably related to that. Nonetheless, what they were able to accomplish at the time was impressive. https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/06/03/flightcar-san-francisco-sues-unruly-sfo-car-rental-startup-from-santa-clara/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/06/03/flightcar-san-francis... https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/employees-deplane-from-flightcar-as-it-undergoes-major-restructuring/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/employees-deplane-from-fli... These days it seems like Uber and Lyft have really captured the airport pickup/dropoff market. It looks like Turo (formerly RelayRides) is still active in the P2P space though, and they've raised $172M. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/turo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/turo
  - raarts 9y ago
    Thanks for these. For posterity I'd like to add that the Series B round for $20 million happened in sep 2015, investors were very optimistic at that time, and in June 2016 I received notice that they were shutting down. The former CEO/Co-founder now works for AirBnB.

raarts 9y ago

I was a huge fan of flightcar. They suddenly disappeared on me. The remains (I found it later) were bought by Mercedes. Anybody know more?

tedmiston 9y ago
The idea was always pretty cool. It's not super well known but they went through another accelerator before YC (The Brandery). The founders were really really young, just out of high school if I recall, so some mistakes were probably related to that. Nonetheless, what they were able to accomplish at the time was impressive. https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/06/03/flightcar-san-francisco-sues-unruly-sfo-car-rental-startup-from-santa-clara/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/06/03/flightcar-san-francis... https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/employees-deplane-from-flightcar-as-it-undergoes-major-restructuring/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/employees-deplane-from-fli... These days it seems like Uber and Lyft have really captured the airport pickup/dropoff market. It looks like Turo (formerly RelayRides) is still active in the P2P space though, and they've raised $172M. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/turo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/turo
- raarts 9y ago
  Thanks for these. For posterity I'd like to add that the Series B round for $20 million happened in sep 2015, investors were very optimistic at that time, and in June 2016 I received notice that they were shutting down. The former CEO/Co-founder now works for AirBnB.