So long Sidecar and thanks | Hacker News Reader

So long Sidecar and thanks

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93 pointsjayzalowitz52 comments

Sidecar doesn't get enough credit for starting the rideshare movement. (Uber started the mobile-calling movement, but were black cars and TNC compliant until they started UberX.)

Sidecar was often were piloting products a half year before Uber and Lyft implemented them (ridesharing, Shared Rides, etc). I think Uber and Lyft won since (a) Uber was first and had an extra 2 years of brand recognition already, and (b) Lyft had superior marketing in their early days (bright pink mustaches, mandatory fist bumps). As Uber/Lyft raised more money, they caught up more - though Sidecar was still first in a lot of products (Sidecar Deliveries, having HIPAA compliant drivers, etc.)

If I were them, I would explore the niche of regulation-friendly drivers - e.g. HIPAA certified drivers. They've already started doing this, but I'm sure their consumer facing product has bogged down product development and such. The Medium post isn't clear on if they're laying off team and such, does anyone know?

Edit: I would also explore using their logistics infrastructure and making it available to any businesses that have their own delivery fleets, but don't know how to optimize them. There was a Techstars co doing this (https://routific.com/) but I imagine Sidecar is much further along.

How exactly is a driver HIPAA compliant?

Probably in regards to ambulances. After getting sedation they explicitly told me they won't let me be picked up by Uber/Lyft.

I think it has more to do with handicap accessibility rather than anything HIPAA related.

Not handicap accessible - Uber/Lyft are legally required to have those options so will have them as an option. Wouldn't be a big enough market for that otherwise, and would probably be illegal due to illegal price discrimination.

Can you expand on what a HIPAA-compliant driver is? (I know what HIPPA is, I don't understand what that has to do with driving people around.)

Most medical offices won't let you use regular taxis (or Uber, etc) after major procedures. They require a personal driver (family member, friend) that they can provide after-care instructions ("if his face starts bleeding, turn around immediately"). There are dedicated medical taxi services that serve this niche, typically drivers have some basic training, have easily accessible vehicles, etc.

Uh, what happens if you walk out the door and hail a cab? How do they stop you?

For liability reasons, they release you to the family member or friend who then escorts you.

You are still legally allowed to 'check yourself out' which would be considered 'against medical advice', and god knows what you'd have to sign, but the point is that's not typically the way it works. You are under their care until a responsible party comes in to retrieve you.

A lot of times, you can't. They literally will not discharge you until you can prove you have a viable form of transportation, in the form of a friend or family member who can look after you, or a medically-trained taxi. Until you've set one up and they have released you into their care, they will not let you leave.

I don't think they'll physically stop you from walking out the door, though (that's kidnapping, in fact). But as rconti said, they'll make it very clear to you that you're leaving "against medical advice".

(I suppose they might physically restrain you if they have reason to think that you aren't mentally competent at the moment...)

> that's kidnapping, in fact

Nitpick: false imprisonment, not kidnapping (kidnapping requires movement).

They note that you are behaving outside medical advice, and mention that your insurance might as a result refuse to pay for the procedure.

Whether this is actually the case is a different matter, but that veiled threat should be enough for most.

This is a common meme, that your insurance might not pay for a procedure if you do something against medical advice. I've had a number of doctors claim it. It's false, thankfully.

http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2012/20120203-billing.html

Huh, I've never heard of that. At every ER I've ever worked at we just called a cab from the nurses station. We also hand out bus tickets to low income patients.

Thank you! I have been that driver before, so that makes complete sense. I just didn't get it out of context.

HIPAA basically requires a bunch of safeguards to be in place if you fall under its regulations. So if a prescription delivery company (like ScriptDash, NimbleRX, etc) want to send a delivery person with a prescription, the driver needs to be HIPAA certified. Otherwise the company would be in massive trouble for violating HIPAA requirements.

It's not a common enough use case for Uber/Lyft's consumer facing services, so I don't think it's wise for them to get into it; they're better going after UberEATS/etc opportunities. The idea would be ridesharing for businesses who have more strict requirements, kind of like Box vs Dropbox.

FWIW, you still deal with the difficult people operations aspect of ridesharing in that case (drivers are hard to recruit and manage, and are city specific), so I'd probably go after outsourcing the logistics platform for businesses with existing delivery mechanisms. E.g. bring UPS's 'no left turns' technology to companies that can't develop it internally.

I'd like to mention that Onfleet provides delivery infrastructure today, spanning operational components (realtime dashboard, logistics backend, driver apps) through the end-customer experience (SMS notifications, ETA, driver tracking) and more (disclosure: I am Co-founder & CTO at Onfleet). https://onfleet.com

> nearly four years ago we invented what is now known as “ridesharing”

People, including myself, were ridesharing using Craiglist for 10+ years before Sidecar existed. It was even called ridesharing: https://web.archive.org/web/20011107033237/http://newyork.cr...

And 10 years before that, there were rideshare boards in college campuses, so students could coordinate rides to their hometowns or springbreak destinations.

Back when I was in school we shared ponies. Ponysharing would allow 2 or 3 or us to make it home for winter break on the same pony, and split the cost of feed.

He didn't say they invented ponysharing, so that one is yours.

Strange they didn't make this announcement on their official blog, going to their site one would think nothing happened.

Saddest part, no one cares. An hour plus since the news and hardly anybody is talking about it on Twitter including any reaction to their tweet. For how much they fought in this transportation movement, they're going out with a whimper.

Honestly would anybody really care that much if Uber shut down? The users and drivers would just move to Lyft or some other service. This isn't Facebook that has a bunch of your life's history.

Lyft is still only available in the US, so yes.

And in fewer cities/regions in the US, at that. Though, granted, the sudden and mysterious hypothetical death of Uber would probably motivate Lyft to ramp up in all those other markets, too.

Uber is approaching household name at this point. If Uber shut down today I would definitely hear about it outside of HN.

Uber is only a household name for younger people in cities. I just recently had to explain to my mother what uber was because she had never heard of it. For people over 50 living in suburbs they never hear about all this companies that many people on here think are huge companies that have worldwide recognition.

You cant say something is a household name until more than 50% of middle aged people can tell you what a company does just by mentioning their name

My 60-something Australian mother knew what Uber was before we even summoned one, here in Costa Rica where their arrival was very publicly contentious.

Maybe your folks don't watch as much broadcast television as you'd imagine. My parents (over 50) know what Uber is given

- The amount of name drops the service gets on late night TV (Conan, SNL)

- The news it generates (medallions, the france protests)

- The viral facebook posts that go around when someone spends $300+ on an uber ride to go home.

Despite the fact they live in a suburb.

In any case, if we used your stringent definition of "household name", I doubt companies like Samsung, Sony or Twitter would fit the bill despite having massive consumer reach (and marketing spends).

Uber shutting down would have significant macro-effects for fundraising at all levels (including VCs raising from LPs)

Not the exactly the words you want to hear on the freeway from your motorcyclist.

Thanks for all the fish. Seriously, I took the fish out of the sidecar and stuck them in my topcase when you weren't looking.

Not the first ride-sharing company killed by the Uber/Lyft wars, but was one of the few with $35M raised: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/side-cr

Thanks for the 2 day notice.

Why did they lose to Uber and Lyft?

Probably a lot of reasons but I think they clung to their scheme of letting drivers set their prices which I believe they both thought might be preferred as well as "more legal". But it was generally a worse experience.

Spot on. Uber and Lyft made legality gambles that paid off (they weren't shut down), and were then able to reap the reward (apps were easy to use).

I hope hindsight doesn't forget that it was indeed a gamble. Homejoy made a similar bet in the housecleaning industry, but couldn't find a way to pay the illegal workers that make up a good portion of the industry (there were other issues Homejoy mentioned, but this one stood out to me - I could be wrong though).

> Uber and Lyft made legality gambles that paid off (they weren't shut down)

Has the IRS ruled yet on whether Uber and Lyft are going to owe hundreds of millions in back taxes and penalties due to misclassifying drivers as independent contractors? No? Still plenty of time to be shut down.

Sure, but it's hard to argue they'd be better off acting more like Sidecar.

That'll never happen. For starters, 1099 classification is very defensible. 2nd, if some drivers should be W2s, any type of deal would likely only be in the future. 3rd, in the very, very worse case, there's no way it would be 100s of millions.

1099 classification is not very defensible - see FedEx $228M settlement in just CA. Obama said that he thinks a third class of workers is just a watered down version of W-2 protections. Since we're likely going to see a Democratic president, they're going to be more W-2 friendly than 1099 friendly (though hopefully also technology friendly).

Point being...under existing regulations, Uber/Lyft drivers are probably W-2s. But Uber/Lyft are lobbying hard for an alternative, and will probably succeed in changing minds about it faster than the government can move to crack down.

I don't think FedEx very similar. For example, FedEx employees required to show up for work, wear uniforms, etc. I think "casual" drivers are definitely not W2s. And more serious drivers still probably are not. They have far too much lee-way in what to do including not show up at all.

Looks like it will be up to the court to decide http://uberlawsuit.com

I'd imagine in some markets Uber would actually benefit from W-2 workforce - this would allow them to mandate hours and location to avoid the dreaded (by consumers) surge pricing.

I used Sidecar a lot when it was fixed pricing. When it went to the variable marketplace, it became more of a pain. Eventually I stopled using it.

Yep this was the main reason why I stopped using them.

I was using their app while I was out on a saturday night and noticed some drivers setting insanely high prices like $999-- and some prices appeared to change at the last minute, so my intoxicated finger might have requested a ridiculously expensive ride.

I couldn't tell if that was a bug or if some drivers were actually trying to screw people over; either way, that was the last time I ever used it. I emailed them about it because I figured they should fix the bug or at least implement some kind validation so that rides would have a reasonable maximum price, but obviously nothing happened.

Maybe just bad luck but I had two consecutive very poor experiences with Sidecar drivers the first and only two times I tried to use.

My totally uninformed assumption is that all the good drivers went to lyft or uber, which have consistently had higher volume here in DC

From reading the post, I'm still not clear if they're simply pivoting over the next year, or actually shutting down.

I wonder why they didn't op for merger or acquisition . . . and what they're planning next. I remember meeting them early on in 2013, they seemed waaay ahead of Uber and Lyft.

Founder had previous exit, could be why they didn't capitalize as much (though that's pure speculation). They're probably just restructuring and using existing technology for another company.

Why would a founder with a previous exit not want to capitalize as much, especially when the two major players are so heavily capitalized?

I worked at this company, in the offices, for about 2 years. It was quite an adventure. A lot of up and downs.

This is no surprise. People in this company were great but a lot of the decisions seemed reckless and unnecessary. So much talent squandered. A lot of potential wasted.

That being said, the people were a great group. That's life.

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