"Focus on one side first" means get in your car and start fulfilling orders.
“But that wouldn’t be profitable!”
Untitled topic
81–90 of 180 posts
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#82I’ll add another piece of feedback.
It’s easier to narrow the domain of your market as specific as possible so as to maximize transactions and matching early on.
For instance, Uber launched in one city. This is so that all the growth efforts on both sides go to helping the markets meet. Twitch had to win with gamers before it could win in other categories. Pick a narrow domain for your business, perfect that user experience, then, as other have stated, prop up one side of the market yourself (probably the one least likely to churn forever) until the market can support itself organically.
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#83Most common advice is that you have to be at least one of the sides somehow. Reddit famously did this with lots of sock puppet accounts to foster discussions and create pseudo activity. In your case, I'd probably start by reaching out to businesses in mid-size metro markets, ones where bike couriers don't already exist, and offer to save them on shipping small packages. Build up a list of clientele and encourage them…
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#84A recent episode of [David Senra's podcast with Tony Xu]( https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/tony-xu ), founder of DoorDash has some interesting points on this topic. Essentially there, they restricted the service to one locality, and he and his co-founders were the first drivers. Once demand was proven and slowly scaled, there was an incentive for other drivers to join, and with more drivers it opened up a wider geo…
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#85Every platform has this problem. Ycombinator even asked explicit to come up for ideas for this problem. This being said, your idea is not new https://www.traveltechnation.com/companies/piggybee
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#86I'm the cofounder of Infura.io and we were building a 2-sided marketplace of API providers for blockchain infra. We bootstrapped it by doing exactly what you said: focus on one-side first. We focused on the provider side but we had that luxury. We had demand on the customer side already with our existing SaaS product. What we wanted to do was evolve our product to serve our existing customer base with a marketplace instead of solely by our product team. This is because of the evolution in the blockchain space of people interacting with dozens of APIs instead of 8 years ago when it was just our main Ethereum API. Serving the existing customers with a marketplace of providers made a ton of sense and so that is the direction we took the product. Over 2 years we grew it to a network of over 40 providers serving several dozen blockchain APIs.
For your idea I’d start narrower. One route or type of sender/package. Pick a high volume popular route and see if you can bootstrap the 2 sides just on that route alone and then expand. Then manually match people for the first 50-100 transactions. It takes some manual work to get that flywheel going
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#87Partner as overflow, or undesirable route coverage, for a specific niche market of couriers in your existing location.
Practical examples from a US perspective, where the existing customer has a strong anchor for timely delivery:
1. McMaster-Carr couriers tons of stuff to industrial and commercial facilities. Partner with one of their exist carriers.
2. Local automotive repair shops need parts delivered.
3. Durable medical equipment delivery.
4. Overflow capacity on your local contract FedEx routes.
5. Emergency runs for event or wedding planners.
6. Fresh produce, greens, and fish for restaurants.
7. Airport to hotel lost luggage courier.
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#88Most common advice is that you have to be at least one of the sides somehow. Reddit famously did this with lots of sock puppet accounts to foster discussions and create pseudo activity. In your case, I'd probably start by reaching out to businesses in mid-size metro markets, ones where bike couriers don't already exist, and offer to save them on shipping small packages. Build up a list of clientele and encourage them…
Agree, and for the delivery-riders side, you and some vlose people can start making the deliveries if possible.
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#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was my first thought when I saw "travelers going between countries." You're going to have a problem getting carriers to sign up because they are assuming all of the risk. Unfortunately, "oh you don't understand - I got paid $27 by CarrierPigeon™ to bring this unmarked, brick shaped package into the country" just isn't going to fly with customs/feds.
I missed the “different countries” bit. Hell no. OP, I hope you are on good terms with Trump, because you’re going to need that pardon.
This whole idea is dead on arrival because of this.
Most nations actively warn their citizens never to carry packages from someone you don't know, and never to carry packages you didn't pack (or saw opened) yourself even for people you do know. And still people agree to carry sealed packages for someone they had a few nice nights with on holiday before boarding the plane back home. That tends to end in a little room on the same airport with security/police grilling you before sending you on to the judicial system where the tough-on-drugs judge will sentence you to a couple of years of extra holiday. In a cell with rats.
There is no way to clear this legally and ethically.
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#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I missed the “different countries” bit. Hell no. OP, I hope you are on good terms with Trump, because you’re going to need that pardon.
This whole idea is dead on arrival because of this. Most nations actively warn their citizens never to carry packages from someone you don't know, and never to carry packages you didn't pack (or saw opened) yourself even for people you do know. And still people agree to carry sealed packages for someone they had a few nice nights with on holiday before boarding the plane back home. That tends to end in a little room…
Even across state lines is a big risk but carrying unknown packages into another country is astronomically stupid. You don’t get to play the “I didn’t realize” card, either, when you lie to a customs agent and claim you didn’t accept packages from anyone else.