Shypmate (YC W16) Pays Travelers To Bring Products To Ghana And Nigeria
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We'd love your thoughts on feedback on the idea and process. People can make orders through the website, WhatsApp number, or email. We only deliver items that have been purchased through Shypmate and never let travelers carry items that Shypmate does not buy directly. On the other end, shoppers can meet travelers at the airport or pay an extra fee for local delivery. Our goal is to make international shopping and shipping affordable and fast in countries where UPS, Fedex, and DHL charge too much.
How will you deal with courier blaming you for any contraband they knowingly or unknowingly import? E.g. knowingly, but inserted in the package provided by you or unknowingly if the vendor provides the contraband in the package?
We do hope to iterate and make the process more seamless but right now we package and seal the items in Shypmate packaging when we send it to the traveler. It is a very valid issue with preventing any contraband and making sure the traveler is safe. The couriers are also vetted before we allow them to carry packages for us. There is a certain amount of trust on both ends that is required for this to be a seamless process.
Isn't it usual for countries to charge import duties on any goods (regardless of value) brought for trade (including for delivery to a purchaser) rather than for personal use, but allowing some exemptions for personal use? Is the "over a certain value" here an indication that the business model has couriers misrepresent items being delivered as personal-use items if they are within the allowed personal use quotas, even if though they are trade items?
Do you provide all the necessary documentation for importing and clearing customs and/or do you train your couriers on how to perform these duties?
Do you provide couriers with legal representation in-country and will you cover all costs for their defense?
If anyone does use this service (as a courier) and if they do so without asking these obvious questions and then get burned - why protect them?
People are (imho) obliged to think for themselves. If they fail to do so why have sympathy?
Nigeria (the government) has been robbing its citizens for years and allowing poor electricity and poor roads. Should the citizens now worry about whether the Nigerian government should get its cut in the form of tariffs ? No! And again, whoever you are, you are just so stupid to assume that the Nigerian (practiced law) is anything close to what it is in the U.S. that you should just go and find a hole in the ground to dip your head into and pray that God gives you some sense. Nigeria is the type of country where you can pay a "police officer" to go and arrest someone (poorer than yourself) simply because you didn't like the person.
"Do you provide couriers with legal representation"...tell me why any Nigerian customs agent would waste the time to put a fellow Nigerian in prison because he was bringing baby shoes or bottles for someone else ?
Even if you do meet some of the vendors, how is that going to help? All it takes is one black hat in the delivery chain and you are toast.
"Do not accept parcels from strangers, make sure you pack your own bags and not to leave luggage unattended."
I do, but that's mostly because I travel a fair amount, and have some indirect professional exposure to international trade compliance/regulations.
That's also precisely why I would probably never participate in a scheme like this, especially when travelling to countries with flaky civil or human rights records (in this case, Nigeria in particular).
For your sake I hope you are very explicitly informing your couriers about the risks associated with carrying parcels for you and that you are seeking and getting informed consent.
Any other case and you are a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I don't care how much anybody wants or needs this service. If you mess this up you will completely fubar a person's life.
You do NOT start a service like this by winging it. You start it by talking to lawyers, lots of lawyers, and government officials. You dot your i's and cross your t's and then when you have a complete handle on the issues you start executing.
You'd have done better joining a law firm and not a startup accelerator.
I urge you to stop and halt all operations, before somebody gets into trouble, has legal issues or get sued.
Only when you are reasonably sure from a legal and regulatory perspective that there are to lingering or contentious issues should you proceed.
Sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. This is not one of them.
What will Shypmates be able to do when a Nigerian customs agent decides to make an example of one of their couriers? What about when a customer hides a small amount of contraband in a package and the courier gets jailed for importing drugs?
How is it even possible for your couriers to fully inspect the items if they come in your sealed package?
I bet that would work out to be less than $25/item and you wouldn't have to count on mules to do your legwork for you.
It might even work out well as a UPS/Fedex competitor, saving shipping costs by batching shipments together and allowing you to expand into other countries. Though I'd be very surprised if this isn't already a solved shipping/logistics problem. It's not like transporting items between countries hasn't been around for centuries already; although existing solutions don't have the novelty your company brings to the table: offloading legal compliance onto your mules.
The number of issues surrounding the idea (customs, legal issues, etc.) are obvious, and the discussions around them reminds me of the questions thrown at many of the other major sharing economy start-ups initially (Uber, AirBnB, et al.), but with a good team and some experimentation they will figure them out, as other major startups have done and continue to do.
People who have spent a good chunk of time in countries outside the US, already know people have been informally doing this en masse for a _long_ time. I have family in in West Africa who would be using this years ago if available, and I have lived in Asia, and other countries where every time I travel there are friends and friends of friends who ask me to buy and carry goods on their behalf, in both directions.
To me it seems Shypmate is just creating a formal system for these actions to take place, and if successful, will make it more efficient, useful, and available to more people while extracting some value for themselves (as any startup seeking profitability should).
Good luck to the team. I think there is a lot of potential here.
The rules Uber and AirBNB were flouting aren't generally criminal. Smuggling, OTOH...
> People who have spent a good chunk of time in countries outside the US, already know people have been informally doing this en masse for a _long_ time.
People do this into the US informally, too. And its true that many governments don't seem to worry too much about informal importation of items for acquaintances that are within the existing allowances for personal use, but which are actually imported for acquaintances (and, IIRC, many actually have specific allowances for this if the importer is a local citizen, rather than a foreign traveler), technically for trade in that the receiver often ends up reimbursing the importer with perhaps a small premium.
OTOH, its really unlikely that any government is going to turn a blind eye to a massive, commercial, advertised end-run around its customs duties, or treat anyone they catch involved in such an operation gently.
> To me it seems Shypmate is just creating a formal system for these actions to take place
Formalizing informal exchanges often has substantial adverse legal consequences. Observing that gold-digging exists and is visibly practiced doesn't making opening an overt brothel a good idea.
Governments don't really care about informal smuggling (e.g. somebody bringing a laptop with them, and leaving it behind) because it's not happening at scale and it's impossible to police. But governments are going to care deeply about a formalized smuggling organization that beats market prices by evading import duties and VAT.
If this gets any traction, expect all inbound luggage to be searched for anything wrapped in shipmates packaging; and for it to be seized and the individual carrying it to be fined. It won't go well.
And the founders should not expect to ever visit home again... they'll get arrested when they step off the plane.
Are you trying to sound like you can't think or am I just that good at solving REALLY REALLY basic problems ?
"And the founders should not expect to ever visit home again..." ...And if you've been to Nigeria, you'll know that the founders won't lose too much sleep because of this.
" they'll get arrested when they step off the plane."...if their operation is so big that the Nigerian authorities are aware of who they are, the founders won't be arrested, customs agents will just ask for bribes. It's as simple as that.
To anyone reading this, if you've never been to Nigeria, don't have family living in Nigeria or aren't from the 3rd world, please save yourself the embarrassment of proving why America's educational system graduates its student to college at least 2 or 3 years later than Nigeria's (http://www.nairaland.com/12959/how-does-nigerian-education-w...) by not commenting on this post.
:)
>When you reach your travel destination, the shopper will come pick up the product from the Airport and we will pay you (the traveler) as soon as the shopper receives and confirms that they have the product.
This seems like it introduces a lot of risk for the traveler. What happens if the shopper receives an item, but doesn't confirm it with Shypmate?
Further, as somebody that travels internationally fairly often, I'm not sure I'd be willing to do this. How are import/customs duties and declaration of goods handled? I can't find any information on the site. Further, given that this more or less looks like a scheme to skirt normal channels for importation of goods, what's going to stop the local customs authorities in Ghana or Nigeria from detaining travelers for participating in (what appears to be, though may not actually be) an illegal imports business?
That is a very valid question and one we are currently working on coming up with a good solution for. The fee for duties is something we'd include in the shopper's fee but there are many cases that we'd expect to have to take on that cost initially as we iterate and refine the process. There are many questions still to be answered but we are looking to work with local authorities in Ghana and Nigeria as well.
Now, even assuming I'd be as silly as to pay duties and taxes out of pocket, I sure as hell wouldn't hand over a parcel before being paid in full for my services and any and all taxes and duties.
It really seems like the only way your couriers (who you refer to as "travelers") could avoid import duties in general -- I mean, I assuming that people aren't all purchasing agricultural parts, fishing gear, and other exempt categories of items -- is if the imported goods are being misrepresented as personal use items.
Nigeria seems to have generally similar rule exempting personal effects [1] but requiring import duty (and import paperwork!) for all other imports [2].
Again, it sounds a lot like what is going on is technically smuggling by misrepresenting imports-for-trade as personal use items.
[0] see generally, http://www.gra.gov.gh/docs/info/customs_guide.pdf
[1] https://www.customs.gov.ng/Stakeholders/passengers_concessio...
[2] https://www.customs.gov.ng/Guidelines/Destination_Inspection...
Yeah, not so much anything in those categories.
" So far, people have been using Shypmate for shoes, weaves, iPhones, laptops, jewelry and other products."
You know that part where I said, somebody is going to see the inside of an African jail cell....
If you keep this up, I bet you are going to see the insides of some American jail cells too, as you are either party to illegal acts or encourage/facilitate such. IANAL, so YMMV, but you have been warned.
Yes, I've posted 17 comments. Each comment has been original, on topic, with a point and I've several times been thanked by the founders for raising important issues. What's the problem with being active and engaged? How on earth can that be considered over the top?
I have no dog in this fight, but I'm genuinely worried something bad will happen if they continue. I'm not even alone in this point of view. Several other posters have noted the same.
As to rhetoric, which part do you consider overheated, and more importantly, wrong?
"Please stop before somebody gets hurt."
"If you keep this up, I bet you are going to see the insides of some American jail cells too"
"you have been warned"
"your whole setup has enough holes to drive a truck full of C4 through"
Active and engaged is great, but I think you crossed the line (a bit) into hounding. You repeated yourself, became shrill, and seemed uncharitably to assume that no one had thought of any legal issues before your comments appeared. The founders were admirably polite and focused on the substantive aspects of what you posted, but that doesn't mean you can't do the same.
This ensures that you are certain that the receiver is who they claim to be and also that they received the item.
Though it obviously doesn't offer the protections of a more formal arrangement, there is a Facebook group now to support connecting people – https://www.facebook.com/groups/417504741672236/
Smuggling to me implies stuff that people haven't paid tax on. Not just stuff that's illegal to own.
Here's a radio programme using court records from the 18th Century to explore history. This episode is about smuggling.
> Smuggling was a trade in the 18th century - sprawling from the brutal criminal underworld, to shops, to chic drawing rooms - brandy, tobacco, pepper, lace, French silks. But one commodity above all was worth killing for and facing the noose - tea.
> In fact two thirds of the tea which was drunk in Britain was smuggled in along the Southern coastline of Britain. Every single inhabitant of coastal ports like Rye would have known what was going on, probably most were drawn into it - and many ended up in the Old Bailey in London.
But Shypmate, in the same industry as Shyp and Postmates (personal couriers), might receive some objection.
EDIT: I hope your OPSEC is top notch. Your platform is going to be such a jummy target to all miscreants. Imagine what fun they could have if they had unrestricted access to your backend.