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From carpool to deadpool: Ridejoy’s startup journey

220 points by jcampbell1 13y ago

jcampbell1 13y ago
What is the west coast bus situation? The premium bus market on the east coast seems to be booming. The NJ turnpike outside of New York which connects NYC/DC/Philly/etc is full of passenger buses. There are now even "Business Class" buses. http://www.vamoosebus.com/pages/gold.aspx http://www.vamoosebus.com/pages/gold.aspx
- ihaveajob 13y ago
  Recently (last year?) Megabus started offering rides among 6-8 destinations (the 4 bigger cities and a few convenient suburbs, plus Reno). I live across from one of the stops, and I always see the buses nearly full, and it's refreshing to see them cruising down the freeway. Otherwise, urban buses work fine in the bigger cities (LA as well, mind the convention), but most people live in suburbia, which is not conducive to good service. Luckily, the younger generations are moving downtown, hopefully a long lasting trend.
- smackfu 13y ago
  Yeah, do they have the same "Chinatown bus" setup as the East Coast? That seems like what spurred the whole new bus popularity, with very cheap buses between a very limited number of stops. Because if you only run the profitable routes, it's a lot easier to make a profit.
- jaxomlotus 13y ago
  Vamoose bus is genius. They line up people on regular streets (where there are no restrictions on idling) and the bus pulls up and picks them up. There's no expensive terminal rent to maintain or coordinate, so the only costs are the driver, bus costs and maintenance and gas. It's growing fast too. Every day the lines I see for it in NYC are more full.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    Getting accross town and getting into a terminal also adds a sort of stealth time tax (like an airport, but sketchier). The Jitney benefits from this heading east also, it seems.
- jasonshen 13y ago
  One of the Ridejoy founders here. I think the reason why rideshare was more popular on the West Coast is in part because there wasn't a bus system. In turn, the bus system was tough because the West Coast is spread out: even if you land in a station in LA, you still need to get a ride to your actual destination because LA is huge. I guess they are starting to find ways to make this work. What is nice about buses is a set, affordable price and guaranteed ride that meets a minimum standard.
- xntrk 13y ago
  Vamoose seems kind of interesting but they don't do NYC/Philly which is what I would need. It would probably be cheeper then Amtrak which would be awesome.
  - wyclif 13y ago
    Megabus and Boltbus both do NYC-Philly, and there are probably even more competitors now.
deleted 13y ago
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jmathai 13y ago
Congrats on the success you did have. This was a really refreshing and honest deadpool email. This type of post-mortem is so helpful for entrepreneurs in general. I hope we see more of this type of communication from startups. This and the writeup of Everpix were very insightful. Thanks for sharing.
curiouslurker 13y ago
Good read. I am curious, what were the reasons given by the co-founder of Zipcar on why you'd fail?
- kalvin 13y ago
  [Ridejoy] She said: "One day ridesharing will be commonplace in the US, but I don't think we are at that day yet. Here is my rationale: 1. We didn't see any desire even when all the right pieces were in place (origin, destination, timing match, long distance + high cost of parking, compatible and networked ridesharers -- they still couldn't be bothered). 2. In Europe, where ridesharing is catching on, it competes with bus and train travel which is expensive, not car travel. In the US, ridesharing is competing with going in your own car (or nothing) and it isn't very competitive. The costs of car travel are not significant enough (yes yes I know that it is 18% of household income and $8k per year -- remember, I spent lots of money and a couple of years on this business). 3. For short trips, it'll never work because the cost of any minutes of delay just aren't worth the reduced cost of travel to the driver. 4. As I'm sure you are thinking about dynamic real-time ridesharing -- everyone is -- answer this when you set about building your network: Robin driver posts her trip once, twice, four times (?), maybe keeps an open trip pending and gets no response. She stops posting and doesn't tell anyone about what a great service/app/method you are running. Ditto passengers. When you move to real time, you have reduced the likelihood of getting a match because now the window of opportunity is 5-10 minutes (if we couldn't find a match when we said any time you ever go to NYC email me, why would you find one if I said anyone wanna go in the next 5 minutes?) 5. Look at all the past efforts, and figure out honestly why your idea is different. Everyone so far has failed. Smart phone apps, social network connections, through employers, on narrow corridors, etc etc. Driving is still too cheap in the US. People still aren't willing to make the effort in adequate numbers to make it work. Sorry to be such a downer but I get asked this all the time. So many people starting and thinking about this space." Note that she's using rideshare in the traditional sense, before Lyft/etc. took over the word within the tech community. (Lyft is awesome! Just different, for now.) So for short trips, using pseudo-hired drivers on shifts a la Lyft, it obviously works well, just like taxis work well.
  - 13y ago
sudheendrach 13y ago
Thanks for sharing your story! What are your plans? starting something?
brandonb 13y ago
Kalvin, Randy, and Jason are some of the nicest and most capable founders around. Wishing them luck on their next journey!
isalmon 13y ago
I don't understand why deadpool is better than acquihire. You would return at least the same amount of money to your investors, but also you could put this as an exit on your resume and get a significant amount of money personally.
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  Don't acquihires typically require a 3 year commitment? That could be one reason.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I think it's refreshing that they didn't sugarcoat it. Sometimes being blatantly honest can help. ("I had a 6 month sabbatical, look at the class I took" isn't as refreshing as, "The management team missed it's numbers. As head of sales I was let go. I took a technical class while I job hunted.")
- patio11 13y ago
  From an investor's perspective: all small returns round to zero. No outcome other than "Company gets absolutely massive" makes a meaningful difference to my net worth. Accordingly, if one of my CEOs said they were optimizing in the 0x to 2x range to avoid letting me down I'd tell them to do right by their team/family/self and call me when they had a new company to invest in. From a founder's perspective: If you want a job at AmaGooFaceSoft you can get one whenever you want (we're assuming you're very talented and in the current economy). If you want a house worth of money as a result of working at AmaGooFaceSoft, you can get that by getting the job and then waiting. Most people do not get into startups because they are the glide path to AmaGooFaceSoft careers. People might consider the option value of the next thing, or the certainty that the next thing will not involve a manager and HR department, higher than the (not insignificant) amount of money AmaGooFaceSoft will pay for engineers bought in quantity.
  - isalmon 13y ago
    Interesting to know, thanks for sharing that. The question was coming from my personal experience when my previous company was going down and the main investor insisted on selling it for 110% of his investment. He returned his money and the rest 10% went to the founder.
ProblemFactory 13y ago
> We never discovered demand in the way that VC-backed startups need to. (We now no longer believe the market exists in the US, but of course, perhaps we just couldn’t find it.) Could you please tell us more about your opinions on the ride-sharing market? Were there any surprise difficulties or discoveries? Or is the "half a million rides per year on Craigslist" * expected revenue per ride just too small to be worth pursuing as VC-funded startup?
Edmond 13y ago
Doesn't seem like you failed out right, it seems you had real traction so I am a bit baffled that you didn't try harder to make it work (at least it seems that way from your post). I am thinking you could have worked something out with CL or found a way around that? Could this just be a matter of not having enough passion for the idea/product/service itself?
edw519 13y ago
I like to think that there are no failures, just unexpected learning experiences on the way to something else. This sounds like one. Thanks for the post. Looking forward to what's next.
- rewind 13y ago
  I think this is a good attitude in a general sense, but I don't think failure needs to be sugar-coated. If you have a goal, set out to achieve it, and you don't, then you failed. If you learned some valuable lessons along the way, that's great. If you deny failure, I think that's being dishonest with yourself so you don't feel so bad. Failure should feel bad as much as success should feel good.
hyperbovine 13y ago
I have used CL rideshare perhaps 40 times for travel between northern & southern California in the past few years, and I personally am glad to see Ridejoy and other attempts at commercializing it fail. The service works fine as it is: free, informal, fast. The last thing it needs is a bunch of annoying startups invading, all crowing about "untapped markets" and how "passionate" they are to enable social this-or-that--an act which invariably strikes me as mercenary and disingenuous. In short, I can see why CL would issue the C&D. The "anonymous and sometimes sketchy rides posted every year" line is particularly irksome as it so perfectly conveys the annoying disdain techies have for things that don't sport a slick iPhone app and/or (attempt to) make money. The truth is (confirmed over many hours of conversation with fellow riders and drivers) sketchy rides are both obvious and exceedingly rare. A few simple rules (like physically talking to the rider/driver ahead of time, meeting in a public place, etc.) are sufficient to ensure a smooth experience.
- jasonshen 13y ago
  One of the Ridejoy cofounders here. Thanks for sharing your positive experiences with ridesharing. It is because of people like you that we believed so strongly in Ridejoy. If you were willing to put up with all these hurdles of lack of any real search mechanism (some posts say "driving 9/17" and others "next Thursday"), a totally unstructured multi-step posting experience and no form of reputation or review or payment, in order share rides, then if we eliminated those hurdles for others (you might not seem them as hurdles, but other people definitely do) that we could expand the market for rideshare many fold. We've spoken to many people who've shared rides and sketchy experiences do come up from time to time. An app cannot eliminate that completely but it can help alleviate it and kick out offenders. I believe that the system has lots of opportunity to improve and I'm sorry you don't think we were helping.
- kfk 13y ago
  Yes, I did not like the way they were doing things. No, I don't think leaving it up to CL is the solution. I had a guy once screaming very badly at me for being 10 min late, this kind of people cannot be spotted easily, you need some kind of review system. Also, regular travelers can't organize well on CL. What's, say, 10-15 dollars a year to get a decent platform? Yet, I know, nobody wants to pay for that, chicken and egg, etc., but the market is there, of course it's there, people are moving all the time...
hosh 13y ago
I wonder how well Ridejoy would have done if it were launched after self-driving cars were more available?
- kalvin 13y ago
  [Ridejoy] This was a frequent joke around the office (ok, mostly me.) The future of rideshare, long-distance and short-distance [UberX, Lyft, Sidecar] is absolutely in self-driving cars and "everyone" knows it. I assume all three of those companies include it in their long-term-vision slide. Just need to wait a decade... A lot of other bigger consequences too! See Quora for a great answer on societal changes.
flavor8 13y ago
What was your revenue model? If you were doing it again, would you try to do it lean / w/o VC money?
rplnt 13y ago
Could someone elaborate on this? > Craigslist C&D’d us (they didn’t want our users linking to their Ridejoy ride offers or requests) If I understand it correctly, CL sent C&D to ridejoy because someone was posting ridejoy urls on CL? That's absurd if that's the case.. so how was it?
- michaelt 13y ago
  Ridejoy cross-posted adverts to Craigslist automatically. Quite a few compete-with-craigslist companies seem to post to or scrape craigslist as part of their effort to capture CL's userbase - padmapper for instance. Craigslist doesn't seem to like this.
- kalvin 13y ago
  We allowed our users to cross-post to CL if they chose to (it was opt-in, not the default, and they had to sign into CL themselves to do so... so not automatic) and many people did. If they cross-posted to CL, there was all the basic logistical info in the post, plus a small link to their ride on Ridejoy at the bottom of the post (which the user could remove).
jaysonelliot 13y ago
Congratulations on a good run. I was fortunate to meet Kalvin, Randy, and Suelyn near the beginning of Ridejoy, just after they were funded, and I thought it was a great service. It's a shame that the planets didn't align this time for them, but they're all wildly talented and creative individuals who are certain to go on to greater successes. Thanks for providing the wrap-up at the end of the journey. These kind of stories are very inspirational as well.
qwerta 13y ago
From title I thought they moved into funeral services.
- phazmatis 13y ago
  Or chimichamgas.
Edmond 13y ago
By the way, did you guys consider package delivery, instead of just people? I did a b-school project on that concept, ie RideJoy but for package delivery. My test route was going to be I-95. Old beta site: http://web.archive.org/web/20100505134839/http://www.meshipu.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100505134839/http://www.meshipu...
- greenyoda 13y ago
  Delivering a package for a random stranger has all sorts of risks. If the package contains a kilo of heroin and you get pulled over by the cops, it will be rather hard to explain to them that you knew nothing about it. That's a risk that a UPS or Fedex driver doesn't have, since they're not the ones who accepted the package.
  - Edmond 13y ago
    Yea, those are issues that were considered including regulations...but I think ultimately those by them self would not be a reason not to give it a shot. If the business picks up then you can address those concerns. All the new ride sharing services face similar liability issues.
    - gamblor956 13y ago
      Potential criminal liability is not an issue you can pick up when you get bigger. It's an issue you have to deal with before you get started. Willful ignorance is not a defense to a charge of transporting drugs or other contraband.
      - rmrfrmrf 13y ago
        Have you heard of Uber? Airbnb?
jonny_eh 13y ago
They should probably take down that job ad at the end of the blog post.
- ujsfdo 13y ago
  LOLZ
twic 13y ago
We're talking about this like it was a failure. This doesn't look like a failure to me. Look at what they write: > we believed by building a far superior product, and being creative about signing up users, we could turn long-distance carpooling from a niche activity to a modern mode of transportation. > we did succeed at growing steadily (25-30%/mo), creating an Apple-featured iPhone app, building a userbase of 30k+ > we’re able to leave the Ridejoy website and iPhone app up and running for a while, until it starts declining in usage or requires too much maintenance They set out to make carpooling great. They did it, and shipped the greatness to thirty thousand people. The service is still running. They didn't make a fortune (or make their investors a fortune) doing it. So what? It is only in the utterly demented Silly Valley startup mindset that this is a failure.
- jasonshen 13y ago
  I appreciate the vote of confidence and of course we all choose our own definitions of success and failure. As a "venture backed company", the expectation is that we would build a business that will ultimately return 10x the investment. That seems like a lot but the investors also know that many of these ventures will ultimately be worth nothing. Our goal was to build a large, thriving and sustainable business that profitably served lots of people, and eventually have some kind of exit event for our investors. Similarly we wanted to offer our employees an opportunity to build this business together. We weren't able to do that and it's not Silicon Valley, but the expectations of the people who made a bet on us either with their money or their hard work that we feel we've let down, even as we know that most startups do not achieve this goal.
  - zende 13y ago
    > the expectations of the people who made a bet on us either with their money or their hard work that we feel we've let down, even as we know that most startups do not achieve this goal. I'm sorry to hear that you feel like you've let people down. That's a terrible way to feel and live your life. Investors and advisors back you early on because they believe in you. Embracing that philosophy is liberating, and actually, allows you to take more risks and become more success (and happy) from my experience. I'm sure they'll be supportive of your next venture. Thank you for sharing your experience with everyone. I'm sure this wasn't an easy blog post to write.
ipince 13y ago
Have you thought of selling the business to some other developer? I'm not talking a big acquihire to some random bug company, but putting it on one of those sites to sell other sites to folks like you and me.
ajju 13y ago
Ridesharing is a tough business, primarily due to supply side scarcity. Long distance carpools are even tougher. It takes a team with incredible dedication to accomplish what RideJoy has been able to. I noticed that they are STILL a featured app under travel on the app store. RideJoy and Kalvin in particular were very helpful to us at InstantCab at various stages from advice and introductions on fundraising to hiring. I am looking forward to following what each of them does next.
bliti 13y ago
This adds to my opinion that Craigslist needs to have a good (paid) API.
- rgovind 13y ago
  If the services which use CL become popular, they may become a threat to CL.
wehadfun 13y ago
Ride Joy - Social Bus Chartering. People say where and when they ant to go. If enough people sign up charter the bus.
mmayberry 13y ago
It would be interesting to hear from a YC partner about what they saw in Ridejoy, its founders, and what they thought when they made their investment. Its a rare opportunity when a startup publicly speaks about hitting the deadpool (something I admire ridejoy for doing) and hearing the flip-side perspective might be even rarer.
praveenhm 13y ago
I have used a rideshare few times before. can you guys just opensource all your source code.So that the community can build something out of it.
LogicX 13y ago
I'll take this opportunity to throw out an alternative to ridejoy which is still going: https://www.ridepost.com https://www.ridepost.com Based out of Greenville, SC I'm not the founder, but have met him - would love to get his thoughts on what happened with ridejoy.
nkrumm 13y ago
Nice, honest article. Thanks. It's worth noting that Germany's 'Mitfahrgelegenheit' service [1] is highly successful, and includes many of the same features that Ridejoy built. I've used it a few times to travel between cities (large and small) in Germany... it's primary advantage is price-- approximately 50% of the price of a rail ticket (cheaper for the passenger) and takes the edge off the $8/gallon gasoline prices for the driver. While price may be a motivating factor, there are numerous systemic differences that come to mind when comparing ridesharing in the US and in Germany, such as the shorter distance between all major cities (though perhaps similar to NE USA), as well as Germany's love for the cars and the autobahn. One other note: on one of the drives, I learned that the system nearly broke down due to "professional" drivers renting large vans and overselling tickets for each ride to ensure that the vans were full. Then, when enough passengers had arrived, the van left, leaving the remaining passengers hosed. Since you only pay at the end of the ride, passengers started overbooking themselves, hosing other drivers. In the end this was rectified by putting the cost of the trip into escrow from the time of booking to the end of the trip. 1. http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/

220 points by jcampbell1 13y ago

What is the west coast bus situation? The premium bus market on the east coast seems to be booming. The NJ turnpike outside of New York which connects NYC/DC/Philly/etc is full of passenger buses. There are now even "Business Class" buses. http://www.vamoosebus.com/pages/gold.aspx http://www.vamoosebus.com/pages/gold.aspx

ihaveajob 13y ago
Recently (last year?) Megabus started offering rides among 6-8 destinations (the 4 bigger cities and a few convenient suburbs, plus Reno). I live across from one of the stops, and I always see the buses nearly full, and it's refreshing to see them cruising down the freeway. Otherwise, urban buses work fine in the bigger cities (LA as well, mind the convention), but most people live in suburbia, which is not conducive to good service. Luckily, the younger generations are moving downtown, hopefully a long lasting trend.
smackfu 13y ago
Yeah, do they have the same "Chinatown bus" setup as the East Coast? That seems like what spurred the whole new bus popularity, with very cheap buses between a very limited number of stops. Because if you only run the profitable routes, it's a lot easier to make a profit.
jaxomlotus 13y ago
Vamoose bus is genius. They line up people on regular streets (where there are no restrictions on idling) and the bus pulls up and picks them up. There's no expensive terminal rent to maintain or coordinate, so the only costs are the driver, bus costs and maintenance and gas. It's growing fast too. Every day the lines I see for it in NYC are more full.
- 001sky 13y ago
  Getting accross town and getting into a terminal also adds a sort of stealth time tax (like an airport, but sketchier). The Jitney benefits from this heading east also, it seems.
jasonshen 13y ago
One of the Ridejoy founders here. I think the reason why rideshare was more popular on the West Coast is in part because there wasn't a bus system. In turn, the bus system was tough because the West Coast is spread out: even if you land in a station in LA, you still need to get a ride to your actual destination because LA is huge. I guess they are starting to find ways to make this work. What is nice about buses is a set, affordable price and guaranteed ride that meets a minimum standard.
xntrk 13y ago
Vamoose seems kind of interesting but they don't do NYC/Philly which is what I would need. It would probably be cheeper then Amtrak which would be awesome.
- wyclif 13y ago
  Megabus and Boltbus both do NYC-Philly, and there are probably even more competitors now.

deleted 13y ago

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jmathai 13y ago

Congrats on the success you did have. This was a really refreshing and honest deadpool email. This type of post-mortem is so helpful for entrepreneurs in general. I hope we see more of this type of communication from startups. This and the writeup of Everpix were very insightful. Thanks for sharing.

curiouslurker 13y ago

Good read. I am curious, what were the reasons given by the co-founder of Zipcar on why you'd fail?

kalvin 13y ago
[Ridejoy] She said: "One day ridesharing will be commonplace in the US, but I don't think we are at that day yet. Here is my rationale: 1. We didn't see any desire even when all the right pieces were in place (origin, destination, timing match, long distance + high cost of parking, compatible and networked ridesharers -- they still couldn't be bothered). 2. In Europe, where ridesharing is catching on, it competes with bus and train travel which is expensive, not car travel. In the US, ridesharing is competing with going in your own car (or nothing) and it isn't very competitive. The costs of car travel are not significant enough (yes yes I know that it is 18% of household income and $8k per year -- remember, I spent lots of money and a couple of years on this business). 3. For short trips, it'll never work because the cost of any minutes of delay just aren't worth the reduced cost of travel to the driver. 4. As I'm sure you are thinking about dynamic real-time ridesharing -- everyone is -- answer this when you set about building your network: Robin driver posts her trip once, twice, four times (?), maybe keeps an open trip pending and gets no response. She stops posting and doesn't tell anyone about what a great service/app/method you are running. Ditto passengers. When you move to real time, you have reduced the likelihood of getting a match because now the window of opportunity is 5-10 minutes (if we couldn't find a match when we said any time you ever go to NYC email me, why would you find one if I said anyone wanna go in the next 5 minutes?) 5. Look at all the past efforts, and figure out honestly why your idea is different. Everyone so far has failed. Smart phone apps, social network connections, through employers, on narrow corridors, etc etc. Driving is still too cheap in the US. People still aren't willing to make the effort in adequate numbers to make it work. Sorry to be such a downer but I get asked this all the time. So many people starting and thinking about this space." Note that she's using rideshare in the traditional sense, before Lyft/etc. took over the word within the tech community. (Lyft is awesome! Just different, for now.) So for short trips, using pseudo-hired drivers on shifts a la Lyft, it obviously works well, just like taxis work well.
- 13y ago

sudheendrach 13y ago

Thanks for sharing your story! What are your plans? starting something?

brandonb 13y ago

Kalvin, Randy, and Jason are some of the nicest and most capable founders around. Wishing them luck on their next journey!

isalmon 13y ago

I don't understand why deadpool is better than acquihire. You would return at least the same amount of money to your investors, but also you could put this as an exit on your resume and get a significant amount of money personally.

jcampbell1 13y ago
Don't acquihires typically require a 3 year commitment? That could be one reason.
mathattack 13y ago
I think it's refreshing that they didn't sugarcoat it. Sometimes being blatantly honest can help. ("I had a 6 month sabbatical, look at the class I took" isn't as refreshing as, "The management team missed it's numbers. As head of sales I was let go. I took a technical class while I job hunted.")
patio11 13y ago
From an investor's perspective: all small returns round to zero. No outcome other than "Company gets absolutely massive" makes a meaningful difference to my net worth. Accordingly, if one of my CEOs said they were optimizing in the 0x to 2x range to avoid letting me down I'd tell them to do right by their team/family/self and call me when they had a new company to invest in. From a founder's perspective: If you want a job at AmaGooFaceSoft you can get one whenever you want (we're assuming you're very talented and in the current economy). If you want a house worth of money as a result of working at AmaGooFaceSoft, you can get that by getting the job and then waiting. Most people do not get into startups because they are the glide path to AmaGooFaceSoft careers. People might consider the option value of the next thing, or the certainty that the next thing will not involve a manager and HR department, higher than the (not insignificant) amount of money AmaGooFaceSoft will pay for engineers bought in quantity.
- isalmon 13y ago
  Interesting to know, thanks for sharing that. The question was coming from my personal experience when my previous company was going down and the main investor insisted on selling it for 110% of his investment. He returned his money and the rest 10% went to the founder.

ProblemFactory 13y ago

> We never discovered demand in the way that VC-backed startups need to. (We now no longer believe the market exists in the US, but of course, perhaps we just couldn’t find it.) Could you please tell us more about your opinions on the ride-sharing market? Were there any surprise difficulties or discoveries? Or is the "half a million rides per year on Craigslist" * expected revenue per ride just too small to be worth pursuing as VC-funded startup?

Edmond 13y ago

Doesn't seem like you failed out right, it seems you had real traction so I am a bit baffled that you didn't try harder to make it work (at least it seems that way from your post). I am thinking you could have worked something out with CL or found a way around that? Could this just be a matter of not having enough passion for the idea/product/service itself?

edw519 13y ago

I like to think that there are no failures, just unexpected learning experiences on the way to something else. This sounds like one. Thanks for the post. Looking forward to what's next.

rewind 13y ago
I think this is a good attitude in a general sense, but I don't think failure needs to be sugar-coated. If you have a goal, set out to achieve it, and you don't, then you failed. If you learned some valuable lessons along the way, that's great. If you deny failure, I think that's being dishonest with yourself so you don't feel so bad. Failure should feel bad as much as success should feel good.

hyperbovine 13y ago

I have used CL rideshare perhaps 40 times for travel between northern & southern California in the past few years, and I personally am glad to see Ridejoy and other attempts at commercializing it fail. The service works fine as it is: free, informal, fast. The last thing it needs is a bunch of annoying startups invading, all crowing about "untapped markets" and how "passionate" they are to enable social this-or-that--an act which invariably strikes me as mercenary and disingenuous. In short, I can see why CL would issue the C&D. The "anonymous and sometimes sketchy rides posted every year" line is particularly irksome as it so perfectly conveys the annoying disdain techies have for things that don't sport a slick iPhone app and/or (attempt to) make money. The truth is (confirmed over many hours of conversation with fellow riders and drivers) sketchy rides are both obvious and exceedingly rare. A few simple rules (like physically talking to the rider/driver ahead of time, meeting in a public place, etc.) are sufficient to ensure a smooth experience.

jasonshen 13y ago
One of the Ridejoy cofounders here. Thanks for sharing your positive experiences with ridesharing. It is because of people like you that we believed so strongly in Ridejoy. If you were willing to put up with all these hurdles of lack of any real search mechanism (some posts say "driving 9/17" and others "next Thursday"), a totally unstructured multi-step posting experience and no form of reputation or review or payment, in order share rides, then if we eliminated those hurdles for others (you might not seem them as hurdles, but other people definitely do) that we could expand the market for rideshare many fold. We've spoken to many people who've shared rides and sketchy experiences do come up from time to time. An app cannot eliminate that completely but it can help alleviate it and kick out offenders. I believe that the system has lots of opportunity to improve and I'm sorry you don't think we were helping.
kfk 13y ago
Yes, I did not like the way they were doing things. No, I don't think leaving it up to CL is the solution. I had a guy once screaming very badly at me for being 10 min late, this kind of people cannot be spotted easily, you need some kind of review system. Also, regular travelers can't organize well on CL. What's, say, 10-15 dollars a year to get a decent platform? Yet, I know, nobody wants to pay for that, chicken and egg, etc., but the market is there, of course it's there, people are moving all the time...

hosh 13y ago

I wonder how well Ridejoy would have done if it were launched after self-driving cars were more available?

kalvin 13y ago
[Ridejoy] This was a frequent joke around the office (ok, mostly me.) The future of rideshare, long-distance and short-distance [UberX, Lyft, Sidecar] is absolutely in self-driving cars and "everyone" knows it. I assume all three of those companies include it in their long-term-vision slide. Just need to wait a decade... A lot of other bigger consequences too! See Quora for a great answer on societal changes.

flavor8 13y ago

What was your revenue model? If you were doing it again, would you try to do it lean / w/o VC money?

rplnt 13y ago

Could someone elaborate on this? > Craigslist C&D’d us (they didn’t want our users linking to their Ridejoy ride offers or requests) If I understand it correctly, CL sent C&D to ridejoy because someone was posting ridejoy urls on CL? That's absurd if that's the case.. so how was it?

michaelt 13y ago
Ridejoy cross-posted adverts to Craigslist automatically. Quite a few compete-with-craigslist companies seem to post to or scrape craigslist as part of their effort to capture CL's userbase - padmapper for instance. Craigslist doesn't seem to like this.
kalvin 13y ago
We allowed our users to cross-post to CL if they chose to (it was opt-in, not the default, and they had to sign into CL themselves to do so... so not automatic) and many people did. If they cross-posted to CL, there was all the basic logistical info in the post, plus a small link to their ride on Ridejoy at the bottom of the post (which the user could remove).

jaysonelliot 13y ago

Congratulations on a good run. I was fortunate to meet Kalvin, Randy, and Suelyn near the beginning of Ridejoy, just after they were funded, and I thought it was a great service. It's a shame that the planets didn't align this time for them, but they're all wildly talented and creative individuals who are certain to go on to greater successes. Thanks for providing the wrap-up at the end of the journey. These kind of stories are very inspirational as well.

qwerta 13y ago

From title I thought they moved into funeral services.

phazmatis 13y ago
Or chimichamgas.

Edmond 13y ago

By the way, did you guys consider package delivery, instead of just people? I did a b-school project on that concept, ie RideJoy but for package delivery. My test route was going to be I-95. Old beta site: http://web.archive.org/web/20100505134839/http://www.meshipu.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100505134839/http://www.meshipu...

greenyoda 13y ago
Delivering a package for a random stranger has all sorts of risks. If the package contains a kilo of heroin and you get pulled over by the cops, it will be rather hard to explain to them that you knew nothing about it. That's a risk that a UPS or Fedex driver doesn't have, since they're not the ones who accepted the package.
- Edmond 13y ago
  Yea, those are issues that were considered including regulations...but I think ultimately those by them self would not be a reason not to give it a shot. If the business picks up then you can address those concerns. All the new ride sharing services face similar liability issues.
  - gamblor956 13y ago
    Potential criminal liability is not an issue you can pick up when you get bigger. It's an issue you have to deal with before you get started. Willful ignorance is not a defense to a charge of transporting drugs or other contraband.
    - rmrfrmrf 13y ago
      Have you heard of Uber? Airbnb?

jonny_eh 13y ago

They should probably take down that job ad at the end of the blog post.

ujsfdo 13y ago
LOLZ

twic 13y ago

We're talking about this like it was a failure. This doesn't look like a failure to me. Look at what they write: > we believed by building a far superior product, and being creative about signing up users, we could turn long-distance carpooling from a niche activity to a modern mode of transportation. > we did succeed at growing steadily (25-30%/mo), creating an Apple-featured iPhone app, building a userbase of 30k+ > we’re able to leave the Ridejoy website and iPhone app up and running for a while, until it starts declining in usage or requires too much maintenance They set out to make carpooling great. They did it, and shipped the greatness to thirty thousand people. The service is still running. They didn't make a fortune (or make their investors a fortune) doing it. So what? It is only in the utterly demented Silly Valley startup mindset that this is a failure.

jasonshen 13y ago
I appreciate the vote of confidence and of course we all choose our own definitions of success and failure. As a "venture backed company", the expectation is that we would build a business that will ultimately return 10x the investment. That seems like a lot but the investors also know that many of these ventures will ultimately be worth nothing. Our goal was to build a large, thriving and sustainable business that profitably served lots of people, and eventually have some kind of exit event for our investors. Similarly we wanted to offer our employees an opportunity to build this business together. We weren't able to do that and it's not Silicon Valley, but the expectations of the people who made a bet on us either with their money or their hard work that we feel we've let down, even as we know that most startups do not achieve this goal.
- zende 13y ago
  > the expectations of the people who made a bet on us either with their money or their hard work that we feel we've let down, even as we know that most startups do not achieve this goal. I'm sorry to hear that you feel like you've let people down. That's a terrible way to feel and live your life. Investors and advisors back you early on because they believe in you. Embracing that philosophy is liberating, and actually, allows you to take more risks and become more success (and happy) from my experience. I'm sure they'll be supportive of your next venture. Thank you for sharing your experience with everyone. I'm sure this wasn't an easy blog post to write.

ipince 13y ago

Have you thought of selling the business to some other developer? I'm not talking a big acquihire to some random bug company, but putting it on one of those sites to sell other sites to folks like you and me.

ajju 13y ago

Ridesharing is a tough business, primarily due to supply side scarcity. Long distance carpools are even tougher. It takes a team with incredible dedication to accomplish what RideJoy has been able to. I noticed that they are STILL a featured app under travel on the app store. RideJoy and Kalvin in particular were very helpful to us at InstantCab at various stages from advice and introductions on fundraising to hiring. I am looking forward to following what each of them does next.

bliti 13y ago

This adds to my opinion that Craigslist needs to have a good (paid) API.

rgovind 13y ago
If the services which use CL become popular, they may become a threat to CL.

wehadfun 13y ago

Ride Joy - Social Bus Chartering. People say where and when they ant to go. If enough people sign up charter the bus.

mmayberry 13y ago

It would be interesting to hear from a YC partner about what they saw in Ridejoy, its founders, and what they thought when they made their investment. Its a rare opportunity when a startup publicly speaks about hitting the deadpool (something I admire ridejoy for doing) and hearing the flip-side perspective might be even rarer.

praveenhm 13y ago

I have used a rideshare few times before. can you guys just opensource all your source code.So that the community can build something out of it.

LogicX 13y ago

I'll take this opportunity to throw out an alternative to ridejoy which is still going: https://www.ridepost.com https://www.ridepost.com Based out of Greenville, SC I'm not the founder, but have met him - would love to get his thoughts on what happened with ridejoy.

nkrumm 13y ago

Nice, honest article. Thanks. It's worth noting that Germany's 'Mitfahrgelegenheit' service [1] is highly successful, and includes many of the same features that Ridejoy built. I've used it a few times to travel between cities (large and small) in Germany... it's primary advantage is price-- approximately 50% of the price of a rail ticket (cheaper for the passenger) and takes the edge off the $8/gallon gasoline prices for the driver. While price may be a motivating factor, there are numerous systemic differences that come to mind when comparing ridesharing in the US and in Germany, such as the shorter distance between all major cities (though perhaps similar to NE USA), as well as Germany's love for the cars and the autobahn. One other note: on one of the drives, I learned that the system nearly broke down due to "professional" drivers renting large vans and overselling tickets for each ride to ensure that the vans were full. Then, when enough passengers had arrived, the van left, leaving the remaining passengers hosed. Since you only pay at the end of the ride, passengers started overbooking themselves, hosing other drivers. In the end this was rectified by putting the cost of the trip into escrow from the time of booking to the end of the trip. 1. http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/