131–140 of 180 posts
I tried to do the same in 2015 (blablacar for packages, startup name was tomandgo) and we couldn't solve that problem, it is genuinely hard. I think in our case the main problem was incentives, we were suggesting low prices for the people sending packages but we forgot that the drivers need an incentive to drop it. Best of luck!
Co-founder of CoachUp, a two-sided marketplace between sports coaches and athletes, here. We started in a single city (Boston), and just the coach side. The non-technical founder was himself a coach and had lots of friends who were coaches, so it was easy to get the first ~50 coaches across a handful of sports. From there we focused heavily on getting coaches to sign up with the pitch that it was free to them, gives…
Real talk, though, you should already have talked to enough people about solving this problem for them that you have a list of contacts who are eager to sign up. Sounds like you don't have that. I'm kinda going to guess that you fell into the trap of building something without validating the need for it first. Because to be completely honest, no business would ever sign up for this, and no reasonable individuals will…
Then I will say your first sentence is absolutely correct as well!
I just start to dislike the rest not because you're wrong, but, because:
> Because to be completely honest, no business would ever sign up for this, and no reasonable individuals will sign up to carry anonymous packages through customs. The people that would deal with this for whatever $25 you can pay them are exactly the people you should never trust to carry your customers' packages in the first place.
You don't know that! Where's the OP located? How is their culture? Is it high trust? Are they known to pull off shenanigans?
If your assumptions hold, you're absolutely correct, but as I wrote in another comment on this post - AirBnB grew exactly because the initial ecosystem was high trust because it was founded on gratitude. People like myself really appreciated that there was a place to sleep for 1/10th the price of a hotel and never wanted it to stop.
If the OP is in a country where the customs is corrupt, holds packages hostage unless you pay an arbitrary bribe, they could very well have a business where the ecosystem are a self selecting network of high trust individuals.
> I'm kinda going to guess that you fell into the trap of building something without validating the need for it first.
While this is likely, there's evidence that a lot of ultra successful companies started by the founders building something without validating the need for it at all, just like there's ample evidence of companies imploding because they did the same!
While Quibi failed horribly, Justin Kan willed Justin.tv into existence.
I don't want to beat a deadhorse about Dropbox, especially the infamous comment but I don't believe Drew did any market study about the feasibility of Dropbox - atleast the folklore is that he coded it up on a bus trip. He did follow that up with a simple 4-minute demo video showing the product kinda working but I argue that's not what you implied with "building something without validating the need for it first".
I predict that in this age of GenAI, the surface area is going to explode: so many new products will get created and new billionaires be minted that "building something without validating the need for it first" will only be left for people who want to be extraordinarily frugal, cautious and meticulous.
As engineers we don't give enough credit to simple randomness.
Luck and timing should not be underestimated. Sometimes that's the only differentiation.
Beware of drug and cash traffickers. Unlike ride sharing, where the end user, the passenger, is responsible for everything.
you should read the cold start problem (book). it talks a bunch about how uber, airbnb, zoom, github, dropbox solved the cold start problem in different ways. super interesting and well explained. in two words, two sided networks usually have a "hard part". in the case of uber, the drivers. in your case, i'd probably "do things that don't scale" like brian chesky did with airbnb, start with a super small location (pr…
I tried to do the same in 2015 (blablacar for packages, startup name was tomandgo) and we couldn't solve that problem, it is genuinely hard. I think in our case the main problem was incentives, we were suggesting low prices for the people sending packages but we forgot that the drivers need an incentive to drop it. Best of luck!
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bigger problem is that being a casual package courier is not worth the hassle. Let’s say someone doesn’t want to pay FedEx $70 to ship a box next-day from San Francisco to Portland, so OP arranges for you to do it and charges $35, takes $10 off the top and pays you $25. Now you are supposed to drive to random person’s house to pick up the package, carry it across state lines, and drop it off at someone else’s hou…
> Would you agree to do this job? And if not, would you trust your package with someone who would? You're absolutely right BUT I do want to point out a situation where the answer is "Yes" because the model is entirely different. Last mile delivery is expensive because it does't enjoy the economies of scale. I'm increasingly seeing increasing number of random personal vehicles drop off my retail packages that were shi…
I have also seen this, but I’m pretty sure these people are essentially employed as delivery personnel, and their cars are acting as small delivery trucks. I’m not sure how the cost for this work out. Maybe FedEx/whoever is closing the gap when they can’t get everything onto real delivery trucks and this is more cost effective than buying more trucks and hiring more drivers?
I think last mile is an interesting problem but OP seems to be intending to build full transit logistics infrastructure built on casual labor, which seems unlikely to pan out.
Also, get behind the wheel 24/7 and hop cities yourself, again at a loss, but that will help bootstrapping the actual business model instead of completely faking it.
That way the demand side can grow, and you split the supply side into synthetic and organic, synthetic is always 1-organic, but you are never left with imbalanced sides.
Beware of drug and cash traffickers. Unlike ride sharing, where the end user, the passenger, is responsible for everything.
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.
Earlier 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…
A: unpacking and inspecting the packages? B: The company assuming the risk and liability. C: The company collecting evidence through KYC and cooperating in the case of crime?
Probably too much hassle to save some bucks when compared to a courier service, though.