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- Oct 24, 2011
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2 Bags, 1 backpack, car sold, I'm here.
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Free registration at the forum removes this block.I'm an introvert mainly and I knew 0 people when I moved here. I now have friends I can call on if a need arises. Don't say you can't do it.
- bonus points if you're looking to invest or know someone that would be interesting to meet.
noted, and changed, late night posts aren't always my strong suit, thanks for pointing that out! (thanks for the rule reminder @Supa )Great post, except for this:
Anyway, moving to another city can have a big and positive impact on your life and your actions. Especially moving to an awesome city like SF don't know if you been there yet, but it's really awesome!
Good luck on your journey, gonna follow this thread along.
Sorry, but I can't see your idea taking off. You're pretty late to the ride-sharing game and at the rate shit is going at in NYC I could probably ride free for months on introductory promos. There's Uber. There's Lyft. There's Gett (which is all I use now), there's Via. There's Ride2 something. There's that taxi App that popped up in response to Uber. And there's got to be more I'm missing. You're not going to make a dent in the market just by giving more back to drivers. Have you ever had a conversation with a driver? Would they all not want more cash? They're not idiots and know the market decently well. My Gett driver drives for Lyft and Uber as well. Except Gett is $10 flat, period, and they're expanding. Even if you use Lyft to share a car with strangers or Via, Gett comes out less getting a car to yourself.Hey guys, I made this thread to chart some progress (probably not day by day). Also as an announcement and hopefully to find a few new friends in San Francisco before I hit the deck.
I came up with my variation of my idea a little while back but I finally solidified a great way to make it work after talking to a lot of potential users and editing my plan based on the responses.
I'll break this up into a few sections so it's not a wall of text, hopefully some of what I say will help spark something inside one of you or at least help validate where you are right now.
A little history
Over the last few years I've worked on a business (financial marketing) with my mentor that I was hoping I could scale to fund my next business, some things worked and most didn't. After looking back over the last 5 years I've determined that if I knew then where we would be with the business I would have left two years ago. It's hard being that honest with yourself.
But I needed that experience to move forward, I've learned how to become amazing at sales, how to recruit and manage people, and how to live on a shoestring while working on the next idea. So even though I have some regret about time spent I wouldn't trade that experience and knowledge for anything.
I was waiting for the 'perfect' opportunity, to have enough money in the bank, to have investors on board, you name it, I was waiting on it. (gave me a great excuse not to take a risk) If you identify with that, figure out why you don't want to take the risk and then either take it or admit you're not going to.
But as Jim Rohn says: "If you wait for all the lights to be green, you'll never leave the house."
The lights aren't all green, but it's time to go.
Why San Francisco?
Honestly, my idea was originally going to take me to D.C. because I identified it as a great market to start in, but SF is where the tech is at. The co-founders I'm talking to (still looking for a CTO if anyone wants to chat!) and the investors I'm getting in touch with are all in SF, so rather than fly back and forth I need to be there.
Plus as we all know a location change is usually a catalyst for life/business revolutions. And according to my decision matrix (thanks MJ!) it's time to move.
Why now? (don't take no for an answer)
I applied to YC's Winter batch, right now I'm a solo-founder so I knew there was little chance I would get in, but it would be a great reason to go. I didn't get in but I also didn't take no for an answer.
The same day I didn't get in, I was able to get a hold of one of the YC members email addresses. I emailed him, explained that I would like to be reconsidered and because I was moving to SF once they scheduled my interview I would be there at zero cost to them. I was told all the slots were full.
I emailed him back and told him to keep me in mind in the unlikely event that a slot opened up. But I didn't stop there, I offered to have gourmet cupcakes delivered during the interview process to give the interviewers a little reprieve from their day. (I was also going to have a handwritten letter included with the cupcakes, I just left that detail out). I was told they couldn't accept gifts or food for security reasons, which is understandable.
Just a note, the guy I was talking to was nothing but nice and personable, so for anyone looking to apply to YC, trust me, they're great people.
So they said no, that's awesome (see the next section why), so now I'm going to continue with my plan to move and get this business going.
Why NO is a good thing (hope this is useful for someone here)
This is true in many things but I discovered this in sales.
X number of NO(s) = 1 YES.
Discovering that I needed a certain number of NO(s) to get a YES changed my life in sales. I became eager to talk to people and hear NO because it meant I was getting that much closer to my YES. Knowing the numbers also made me more ambitious, because it removed any excuses I could give myself.
Here's an example of how I perfected the approach I taught other sales people:
- Use approach A with a set sample, say 20 people. So after your sample you can safely say it takes 7=NO to result in 1=YES. So with approach A your ratio will always level to 7N=1Y over a given period of time (average of 4 days to get accurate reproduction of ratio)
(assume A is the sales industry standard, so you're doing pretty good)
- Then use approach B for the same sample. You'll see that your ratio is 5=NO to 1=YES, that's a better ratio, which beats the standard. So your next step is to adopt approach B and split test again with approach C, D,E and so on until you've confirmed which approach yields the best results.
The bottom line is to trust that the numbers always work, it's the only thing that will keep your spirits up on a bad day in sales. That and always test something new!
Honestly it still amazes me that unique individuals all acting independently in their own self interest would uphold the No/Yes ratio so consistently.
Moving forward:
I'm moving to SF the first week of December, my wife is staying here and supporting herself until I can bring her out. A supportive spouse is invaluable, if you're married or dating and working on your fastlane, don't underestimate the power of the person you're partnered with.
The idea + where you my FL brothers and sisters come in: (didn't think I'd get to it did you?)
My idea is one for a ride-sharing company, might as well say like Uber, because I've heard it a lot and I know I'll continue to hear it.
(short version)
The difference in my company: Cruze, is that we're going to pay drivers 95-100% commission on each ride with no strings attached. We're going to partner with advertisers to deliver incentivized ads to our users that will give them discounts on their rides and hopefully make their day more convenient.
In the current field no one has:
-provided advertisers with a better avenue to a target audience.
-provided drivers the ability to keep up to 100% of each fare
-offered riders discounts (+ability to schedule rides)
These three things are huge advantages for each side of the market and gives drivers/riders incentive to switch. (80% of drivers surveyed said they would switch hands down)
My vision is to do for the ride-sharing industry what Google did for search engines, it'll be a lot of hard work, but in my opinion it's the next evolution of the ridesharing/taxi industry.
Honestly, the current ride-sharing leaders didn't disrupt the taxi revenue model, they just reclassified the work force. Allowing for only marginally better experiences for the riders and a lower barrier to entry for the drivers.
So guys and gals, please get in touch with me if:
- you live in or near SF, I'd love to meet you!
- you love my idea and want to talk about it further
- you're a potential CTO or would like to talk about it!
(Thanks @Supa for the rule reminder)
Final thought:
Zig Ziglar said "we all must suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret"
TL;DR: I'm moving to SF to start a ride-sharing startup that will rival Uber/lyft and I'd love to make some new friends along the way!
That's all for now, thanks to everyone for sticking with me through this long post and for everything I've learned from most of you over the years.
If you have any questions, comments, etc feel free to post them and I'll get back to you as I can!
What about piggy backing off of Uber? Lyft? Etc by loading the car with a Tablet with advertisements instead? Of course battery life, mobile connections and how your going to acquire thousands of tablets come into question... but still.
So for the user:
- Same price as Uber.
- A lot slower response time (low number of drivers)
- And then get bombarded with ads the second they get in the car
For the driver:
- Better pay
- No customers
How do you address these issues?
noted, and changed, late night posts aren't always my strong suit, thanks for pointing that out!
thanks for the well wishes as well!
Don't a lot of taxi companies already have advertisements in their cabs? Like on that little tv connected to the CC machine?
I'm just trying to figure out how you will be displaying your ads to the riders. But if those companies are doing it already, would be good to know how much revenue they are able to bring in because of it.
I just don't find those random ads everywhere super engaging.
Curious to see this play out.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sorry, but I can't see your idea taking off. You're pretty late to the ride-sharing game and at the rate shit is going at in NYC I could probably ride free for months on introductory promos. There's Uber. There's Lyft. There's Gett (which is all I use now), there's Via. There's Ride2 something. There's that taxi App that popped up in response to Uber. And there's got to be more I'm missing. You're not going to make a dent in the market just by giving more back to drivers. Have you ever had a conversation with a driver? Would they all not want more cash? They're not idiots and know the market decently well. My Gett driver drives for Lyft and Uber as well. Except Gett is $10 flat, period, and they're expanding. Even if you use Lyft to share a car with strangers or Via, Gett comes out less getting a car to yourself.
I know all this as only a customer and a few Business INSIDERS/Bloomberg article reading. Simply paying drivers better and forcing ads on customers won't divert drivers from Uber/Lyft/Gett/Others and even with the ads, you're not likely to offer much better. Also, you don't need to be in Silicon Valley because you think "that's where the tech is." Tons of tech startups in NYC now. You don't need to physically be there, let alone live there just to get VC backing from California. This market is over-saturated as is, and unless you are giving me a car to myself for less than $10 to play some shitty ad on my phone, I'm sticking with Gett.
The difference in my company: Cruze, is that we're going to pay drivers 95-100% commission on each ride with no strings attached. We're going to partner with advertisers to deliver incentivized ads to our users that will give them discounts on their rides and hopefully make their day more convenient.
Best of Luck!That's a great idea, and there's actually a company that is trying that approach. Tablets/tvs were my first thought so hopefully they'll (that company) do well, but I believe there's a more effective way.
Those are some great points, they are something I've worked on addressing since developing and fleshing out this idea. I purposefully left my description of the company vague. Which I'm sure you can understand.
I'll leave it this way as far as a public reply:
- Drivers/Riders is a chicken/egg problem but there is an approach that I've seen work in similar circumstances that I'll be using.
- My goal is for the rider to welcome the ads - so they'll be seen as a part of the experience and not an intrusion. Bombarding definitely doesn't achieve that.
But if you'd like to know more or have some input you'd like to share please PM me and I'll be happy to discuss it further.
Hey guys!
I know it's been a while since I've been active on the forums. It's because I've been the best kind of busy. I won't go through a lengthy update here but I've been keeping journal entries to pinpoint certain dates and achievements which I'll be releasing on a blog later if you're interested.
So here's a quick recap.
-I arrived Dec. 4th, instantly inserted myself into the startup social scene and started making connections. For anyone interested the best way you can do this is by asking someone "what are two things I can do for you?" or "what do you need help with the most right now" - it's gold and if you ignore it, it's your loss.
(side note to this: I was offered two jobs (even though I wasn't looking) within 7 days of landing because I helped other people without expecting anything in return, don't underestimate helping someone)
-I went to plenty of parties most to network some to build my local friends all while working on my idea. Side note, if you're moving to a new city remember not to get caught up in the party loop, it will create a vacuum of valuable time and I confess I fell victim to it a weekend or two around the holidays.
-I've visited home twice for short stints to talk to investors back home and visit my wife who has been amazing throughout.
- Through networking and putting myself in the right places I have two people willing to come on board for absolutely no pay. One is a definite yes, the other, we'll see.
- I have a source for my MVP and I plan on launching it in the SF area in the next 2 months.
- I've built an excel sheet of drivers who are excited to try out a new service and have all committed to bringing on a certain number of people.
- I've also begun building my network of investors and other CEOs that will be invaluable later, but always trying to provide value.
- No startup story would be complete without some snags, for example, my income source getting halted in it's tracks. I had to go back to the drawing board, come up with a new method and based on conservative projections it will be passively paying my rent/bills within 3 months. (which is better than plan A)
=======================================
Takeaways:
- I'm an introvert mainly and I knew 0 people when I moved here. I now have friends I can call on if a need arises. Don't say you can't do it.
- You don't have to have everything perfect before you act, most people don't.(myself included)
- If you have enough GRIT you can make anything happen, even going 0-60 in 2.5 months in a brand new place.
- Money can be made if you know how to hustle, don't use it as an excuse. (ask all the people better at it than myself)
- Always add value, even if it's helping the host clean up after a party.
- Build your network before you need it (aka dig the well before you're thirsty)
- Be bold, make mistakes.
- Don't wish it was easier, wish you were better.
====================================================
To anyone thinking about doing the same thing: DO IT
I know my recap sounds like everything is coming up roses but please, don't be fooled. There are plenty of days and times you'll doubt yourself and if you're working on the right thing, hell it can even get depressing. But a quote I love is "The treasure you seek lies in the cave you're most scared to go into."
Good luck to everyone and of course let me know if you need anything from SF I'll see if I can hook you up!
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