HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam
Background:
Every day in South Africa low income people suffer through 2+ hour commutes into work using public transport. This has a serious impact on their lives, due to long wait times and inefficiencies. I interviewed a single mother, who only got home after 7pm and leaves at 6am in the morning.We have built a ride share matching system:Our goal is to make use of unused seats in cars matching drivers and passengers. We do not put any cars on the road (i.e Uber), We match to drivers on their daily commute.Our Biggest Problems:1. We are quite successful at converting people who are posting to online classifieds etc. We have strategies to get these users. We grew week on week by as much as 50% but then we hit a negative growth week. In order to continue growing, we need to expand into other areas.We also have an un-balanced market. Demand for rides is much higher than rides offered.2. We have not figured out how we will make money yet. Our initial hypothesis was a transaction fee.The passenger and driver will be traveling together on a regular basis. Once we match them, we run the risk of being dis-intermediated.You could make an argument that a payment directly into the bank account is more convenient than cash, though i am not sure that is a strong enough incentive.3. Our churn/attrition is very high, There is no need for the system once they start traveling together. We have churn built in to our model.