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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting startup filling a need, but I don't think it is really competing with Uber and Lyft, because they are only doing prescheduled rides.

The killer feature for Uber/Lyft is being able to get a ride at any time on demand in a matter of minutes. It doesn't seem like this will be able to get there.

I have wondered if a pure market making app would work... let drivers and riders place bids... a driver can lower their bid to get hired faster and a rider can increase their bid to get picked up faster. The app would just take a fixed cut.

Someone who doesn't mind waiting at a friends house for a while longer could pay less, but the person in a rush could get a ride fast for a bit more. Similarly, some drivers might be ok only doing a few expensive rides.

I know Uber does something like this with surge pricing, but it is not transparent at all, and you can't change your bid.

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> I have wondered if a pure market making app would work... let drivers and riders place bids... a driver can lower their bid to get hired faster and a rider can increase their bid to get picked up faster. The app would just take a fixed cut.

There’s a service in Ukraine called Uklon[0] that does pretty much exactly that. If you bid very low, it’d both take longer to find a ride, and the car/driver would usually not be great. Think a 25+ year old daewoo with no ac that smells like smoke on the lowest end vs. newish Camrys or other regular fleet cars on the mid-higher side.

[0] https://uklon.com.ua

There's an app called indrive [0] which does exactly this. You submit a bid, drivers can accept or propose a different price.

Works well in my experience, though I think largely only popular in Latin America at the moment.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InDrive

This is a good idea. But it's important to note that price is not the only relevant parameter here (as opposed to e.g. buying company shares, where two shares are exactly the same)

Other parameters:

1. Waiting time — how long is the driver and the passagner willing to wait?

2. Driver rating — the there a minimum rating a driver must have (and if passengers are rated, too, then vice versa)?

So there's the combination of, at least, these three parameters, which gets complicated. For example: as a passenger, would you rather ride with a 4.5 star rated driver with a 5 minute waiting time for $30; or a 4.0 star rated driver with a 2 minute waiting time for $26?

Could just offer it to the user. They might have said only drivers of 4.5 or greater. So the first one would be shown, but have the cheaper $26 one to the left and the $35 4.9 star one to the right. Let the user decide which they want.

And for an informative, trustworthy driver rating, you’ll need staff to adjudicate disputes

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