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Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy
#22HN - this was a project I built for a class at HBS (Online Economies). The class covered strategies for solving the network effects problem of a lot of online businesses. I thought it would be great to actually build one of these platforms and then try to apply the strategies discussed in class. Looking for feedback on the app but happy to discuss strategies for cracking the chicken and egg problem....
alooP, a perfect way to crack the chicken/egg problem would be to offer a "beta" of this service at particular conferences as an exclusive conference perk. This provides you with a high population of people arriving in the same time period, all going to the same place. The fact that it's a beta can be used to manage the expectations. It could also be used to generate a lot of testimonials. I have been talking to a st…
Speaking of use at conferences, I have wished for something like this while standing in line (with hundreds of other people) waiting for a cab at Las Vegas airport. Too frequently they have under-loaded cabs going to the same hotels only minutes apart.
In Vegas it scales up further though. You have lots of people hopping from hotel to hotel to see shows etc. So if I want to get from the MGM to Bellagio to see O (particularly at predictable intervals before shows start), it's a good bet a bunch of other people will too.
Re: Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy
#23I'll dig deeper into your UI in a minute, but have a usage scenario for you to consider. Suppose this thing catches on in the Las Vegas tourists context I mentioned earlier. There might be multiple people queuing up with the same origin and destination. How do you identify your rideshare partners? Second question: Suppose there are people who have heard of this now-ubiquitous app but gasp don't have a smartphone with them. Can they jump in and share a ride? For both situations I think it might be good to have a big distinctive screen-covering photo of the place you're going (if the destinations are among a top list), or the destination spelled out in text with distinctive foreground/background pairs. I'm thinking of this as akin to buying theatre tickets in front of the venue just before a show. Then the prospective partners who have phones can stand around with their smartphone screens not-so-subtly visible, and other prospectives (having smartphones or not) can scan them visually very quickly instead of asking a bunch of people "are you my ride"?
Re: Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy
#24Black-on-dark-grey is a bad combination for aesthetics and accessibility.
Speaking of accessibility, blind people are big users of cabs. So that might be another market to focus on.
Re: Show HN: My "semester" project: cab sharing made easy
#25This is an awesome Idea. Always looking for something like this. Cab rentals are too high.
You can talk to Cab Service Providers in different cities. And don't worry about monetizing. Once you have a good userbase, you can charge a minor amount from Cab Service Provider or even users when they book a Cab (and its actually saved them some bucks). No one will mind giving 1 buck each time they book if it is saving them 10.