Nobody is going to fly internationally with a random person’s package in their bag. The only reason you’d use it is to ship bombs or drugs.
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#112My bigger question is how you would validate this isn't drugs because this seems like the perfect low effort way to send high value drugs.
Check-in explicitly asks you "have you packed your bags yourself", and then you have to either say "no I have this random package from a stranger which might contain anything" or lie to customs. TBH, I can't really think of a market for this that isn't contraband. The "last mile" looks really annoying as well. Edit: I think it's a legit marketing question for OP. Name three different kinds of item someone might want…
The only way in which this makes sense in international is something like courier flights. I don't know if this even really exists in the form it used to, but there used to be small-scale services that would buy regular airline tickets (in advance but transferable) and then resell the seat but not the luggage allowance for major city pairs like NY-London. A person who can fly on short notice with no baggage allowance gets a cheap ticket, and the customers get their essential items delivered more cheaply than last-second air freight.
A key element is that the passenger was contracting out their baggage allowance and so didn't ever interact with the items - they never even saw it. So no liability.
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#113This is a really bad idea for reasons already mentioned in other comments. Personally, I travel a lot and there's zero chance I would ever take someone's random package. I think you should instead think of this as a B2B2C type business. As in, Business (You) helps Businesses (B) find people (C) that would help deliver freight packages. Even then, it's not really clear why UPS or DHL or whomever would trust a random p…
> This is a really bad idea for reasons already mentioned in other comments.
Agreed, although that doesn't mean it won't be successful.
> Personally, I travel a lot and there's zero chance I would ever take someone's random package.
Me neither, but I'd never cart random strangers around, or let them into my house either when I wasn't there, so I'm not the best judge of these things.
One thing that I will predict is that, if this does, in fact, take off, it will only hasten the enshittification of airline travel. You think you have a hard time trying to find a place to stuff your small carry-on now??!? Just wait. And checked baggage pricing will be through the stratosphere.
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#114There was a startup years ago that tried this. They shut down because people were afraid to carry a stranger's package.
Personally, I also would never trust a random stranger with carrying my stuff. Delivery companies have tracking systems and insurances.
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#115This is a really bad idea for reasons already mentioned in other comments. Personally, I travel a lot and there's zero chance I would ever take someone's random package. I think you should instead think of this as a B2B2C type business. As in, Business (You) helps Businesses (B) find people (C) that would help deliver freight packages. Even then, it's not really clear why UPS or DHL or whomever would trust a random p…
> Even then, it's not really clear why UPS or DHL or whomever would trust a random person in their car vs. their sophisticated logistics networks.
Amazon seems to have a sophisticated logistics network that is built at least 50% on random people in their car in Southern California. What I don't get is why someone with an existing logistics network of any kind would rely on a third party to integrate the random person rather than doing it in-house.
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#116As someone who has worked on multiple marketplace startups, I highly highly recommend this resource: https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-bible
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#117[dead]
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#118> Every marketplace founder says "focus on one side
Unless you already have demand lined up, I would solve the supply side of the problem first. People who either travel routinely or are planning to, or just a lot of people from a specific, large community in order to target your recruiting campaign.
I would also spend a lot of time figuring out the user journey for both the supply and demand side. See if you can reduce the work someone on the supply side has to do to sign up. You might have to run this like a modeling agency in the beginning until there is sufficient demand to force suppliers to do more work.
Constraining to one route (SFO -> Honolulu) is how DHL got started.
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#119This is a really bad idea for reasons already mentioned in other comments. Personally, I travel a lot and there's zero chance I would ever take someone's random package. I think you should instead think of this as a B2B2C type business. As in, Business (You) helps Businesses (B) find people (C) that would help deliver freight packages. Even then, it's not really clear why UPS or DHL or whomever would trust a random p…
> Even then, it's not really clear why UPS or DHL or whomever would trust a random person in their car vs. their sophisticated logistics networks. Amazon seems to have a sophisticated logistics network that is built at least 50% on random people in their car in Southern California. What I don't get is why someone with an existing logistics network of any kind would rely on a third party to integrate the random person…
Liability. I.e. when they get sued they can try to argue the contractor is an employee of the nothing firm and doesn't need an equivalent retirement plan to Bezos.
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#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Stated another way, you need to start by either: fulfilling existing demand yourself....or being the demand yourself.
Interview with Lugg (YC S15) with some details on how they did it: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/interview-with-lugg-founder...
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