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When I think about marketplace problems, I ideally want to solve one side of the equation at a time. That means understanding whether this is supply constrained
by kevin 11y ago
When I think about marketplace problems, I ideally want to solve one side of the equation at a time. That means understanding whether this is supply constrained or demand constrained. Looks like you have an abundance of demand (people who want rides) and not enough supply (drivers). So all your efforts should be focused on how to get people to offer rides.
Usually the incentive for drivers when I've seen other companies work on this problem is they get to drive in the carpool lane. Does that not work in your instance?
Why couldn't you have drivers be paid by passengers and you take a cut of that process?
I think a lot of people are selfish about their cars because they're valuing efficiency and control of their commute over everything else. Adding a passenger reduces those primary values. Can you think of other values that might overcome those? Money is one, but considering the lack of interest to meet that demand, it might not be enough.
If I were creating a ridesharing program that I wanted people to talk about organically, I'd want to design it in a way that commuting via my program was FAR better than commuting by myself. Off the top of my head, the best part of my commute is listening to a great podcast. If you could get exclusive content that only ridesharers can get access to if they ride together...that could be interesting.
Doesn't need to be entertainment. Could be learning a language together or business skills, etc.
Why did you think you had a negative growth week?
- ismail 11y agoThanks for the response Kevin. - Yes we realize that the supply side is constrained, and lacking. Passengers seek out a solution and find us easily. - There are no car-pool lanes in South Africa, they had a trial a few years back but did not continue with it. We have spoken to people at a few municipalities. For the city, they have parking constraints so ride-sharing is something they want to encourage. However, passing new legislation may take quite a while. We can not be sitting around in the hope of this. - This was our initial plan. The current behavior is: The driver & passenger will agree on pricing, timing etc. Then they pay weekly or monthly. This happens mostly in cash, currently. The passenger and driver will now travel together for the foreseeable future until something changes (i.e someone moves, new job etc). At this point, there is no incentive for the driver to continue receiving payment via the platform. The triggers to search for a new ride share per a year is quite low. So strategies like ratings, and reviews do not encourage keeping transactions on the system. People on the passenger side may not even have a credit card or bank accounts. - Yes people are selfish, and value convenience. Spending an extra 10-15 minutes to pick-up and drop-off is an issue. Which is why most people do not do it. In an ideal world, if we had complete information on all drivers and passengers, we could match person x with y who is just 2 minutes away. One of the other blockers to offering a ride, is the 'commitment'. They now need to think twice, if they want to sleep in late or if they want to call in sick. - This is a great idea, do you think having a PR stunt like "Ride with someone famous" Or "Ride in a cool car" would work? The content idea seems feasible, we would need to figure out what content is important to our market. From our analytics our #1 segment is Jobs/Employment - Growth example: Week 1 our growth was +86% # trips posted. The following week we had -26% # trips posted based on the previous week We are saturating our current acquisition methods. Other strategies have not been working as well (Off-Line) The # people searching for a ride on classifieds are small, the market of people commuting via public transport is massive, the people using public transport are not searching online for a solution.
- kevin 11y agoYes, people are selfish. That's why you should think of what you can offer them that will make them want to sit in the car for 10-15 minutes longer. That's why unique content came to my head, I've sat in driveways much longer just to hear the end of a good radio program. Also, I don't like stunts. It's not sustainable and it's short term thinking. I think you should shoot for building a great community. That means thinking for the long term and building a lasting relationship with your customers and have them build those relationships with each other. You seem more focused on what you can extract from your users. It's better to start with what can you give that they can't help themselves but want to take.
- ismail 11y agoWe are also seeing the network effects kicking in (which is a massive positive). Our matches keep increasing at a much higher rate than trips posted.
- ismail 11y agoApologies for delayed response. Tethering from mobile was choppy and had to get to more stable wifi. Should we pivot to a different market/model?