Sidecar Puts Passengers Aside, Pivots to a Mostly-Deliveries Company | Hacker News Reader

Sidecar Puts Passengers Aside, Pivots to a Mostly-Deliveries Company

forbes.com

47 pointsprostoalex15 comments

Sidecar is an excellent illustration of the first mover disadvantage. When Sidecar started, they looked carefully at the existing laws and crafted their product to stay, to their best judgement, on the exact right side of the law. That's why, in early Sidecar, for example, drivers negotiated directly with passengers for the fare and why sidecar cars carried no visible exterior markings.

Lyft and Uber decided to play the much higher risk/higher reward game of antagonizing regulators in exchange for better product. In the early days of the rideshare war, the Lyft pink mustaches were everywhere and everyone was made aware that Lyft existed due to them.

It's an excellent example of how "playing clean" is not always in an entrepreneur's best interest and how luck and a willingness to take risk can alter fortunes on a profound scale.

According to Wikipedia, Uber was founded almost 3 years before Sidecar (March 2009 versus January 2012)... so Sidecar may have suffered a "timid-mover disadvantage", but not really a "first-mover disadvantage".

Uber was only black car back then. It is akin to a professional limo service. Sidecar was the first service that use regular cars. Lyft came afterwards.

Uber Black was 2010 - 2012. Than after Lyft properly launched their service Uber followed with the now more popular UberX.

UberX launched in early 2012, before Lyft. But Lyft, Sidecar and Uber were all likely developing their 'low cost uber' versions at around the same time. After how much success Uber had already had with just Black cars, the idea for a lower cost alternative was obvious enough that lots of companies jumped in.

Sure? IIRC Uber was hesitant to launch a 'ride sharing' product until Lyft did in SF. Any links to guide me?

“Customer acquisition and driver acquisition in this category are very expensive, and it does make a big difference when you offer promotions — $500 for a driver, or $20 credit — versus our more typical $5 offerings of credit.”

So that's where Uber's capital is going. They're buying market share with actual money.

I recently put together a collection showing the evolution over time of the top ridesharing/taxi hailing startups (using content from the Internet Archive) like Lyft, Shuddle, Uber, Sidecar, and BlaBlaCar [1].

One thing that surprised me the most when putting it together - Zipcar was founded way back in June 2000, well before Uber/Sidecar/Lyft, and is still around alive and well today [2]. I often feel like it does not get enough credit for helping to improve the transportation space, especially compared to attention given to Uber/this new class of transportation-focused startups.

[1] You can check out the collection here: http://www.startuptimelines.org/collections/uber_lyft_taxi_s...

[2] http://www.startuptimelines.org/startup-timelines/zipcar/

Maybe I missed this (it's hard to peruse the milestones/headlines from the timeline layout), but there's no mention on the timeline of Zipcar being bought out by Avis in 2013. While Zipcar is still alive in name today, I don't think everyone would call it an unmitigated success:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/1/5553910/driven-how-zipcars-...

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/01/02/aviss-smart...

> As with many high-flying IPOs, however, Zipcar never fulfilled its promise, and its stock never again saw those heady first-day levels. By the end of 2012, its market capitalization had fallen to $330 million, while Avis Budget’s market cap was $2.1 billion — making an acquisition both easy and obvious. In the past eight months alone, Zipcar stock fell by 40% while Avis stock rose by 60%

I tried to use sidecar once but ran into ui bugs that didn't let me complete a purchase. Not sure if my isolated experience is representative, but I read "customer acquisition blah blah blah" - making the app work better could have helped.

Typical example of Next Feature Fallacy (including their pivot): http://andrewchen.co/the-next-feature-fallacy-the-fallacy-th...

Separately, continuing after funding to use a domain hack side.cr is a non-starter. Worse yet SEO miss if you google "sidecar" they don't even come up. [1]

[1] Except on the right panel as "company" but not in the actual results unless you click that link.

I'm curious what patents Sidecar holds, if they truly were the innovators, and if they can use that as some sort of advantage against Uber and Lyft.

I suspect Uber will eventually move into deliveries too. It's a natural extension.

http://newsroom.uber.com/bringing-the-neighborhood-shop-to-y...

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