Ask HN: I plan to leave my job to start a non-profit Uber clone | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I plan to leave my job to start a non-profit Uber clone

19 pointsanon4this126 comments

I have enough money now that I don't really work.

I plan to finish work at the end of the year and start a non-profit rideshare app in order to optimise the rideshare market to improve things for drivers and passengers.

I intend to buy sourcecode to preexisting ride share apps and then use public meetings of taxi/rideshare drivers in target cities to get drivers onboard, and then media releases to encourage uses to use the platform.

I would be interested to hear any input about the feasibility of this and also any comments on ethical/economic issues of this project?

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How are you going to fund this? If you have a for-profit company that can potentially make billions in profit, you can raise VC.

Where is there source code available for a ride sharing app? How much is it going to cost?

How many developers will you hire? How many customer service representatives will you hire?

How much is insurance to cover the drivers going to cost (standard auto insurance usually doesn't cover them when they act as a Taxi).

When Uber/Lyft start in new cities, they tend to give out 10+ free rides to early customers in order to get new people to use it and spread the word. How much will this cost?

When Uber/Lyft start in new cities, they need to incentives drivers to drive for their platform even though there aren't many customers yet. They will often pay them an guaranteed hourly rate at the beginning. How much will this cost?

As a customer, why would I take your service instead of Uber/Lyft? With Uber usually I can find a car within a few blocks of me. It won't be the case with your service. Even if you aren't taking a cut of the profit I don't see your service being at a competitive price.

> How are you going to fund this? I have about 2 million in the bank

> Where is there source code available for a ride sharing app? How much is it going to cost? http://www.taximobility.com/ - i was quoted $15k

> How many developers will you hire? Planning to do the work myself. Once the app I'm buying is tweaked and running smoothly there shouldn't be too much to do.

> How many customer service representatives will you hire? None - the app will just link riders to drivers, and they will take care of customer service. Bad drivers will get banned from the service.

> How much is insurance to cover the drivers going to cost I've seen quotes for about 2x normal car insurance rates. drivers will pay this on their own.

> why would I take your service instead of Uber/Lyft? Drivers will have multiple apps installed, mine will give the biggest payout due to having the smallest margin. Drivers may even encourage customers to download my app, in order to maximise their pay. riders do it because of a sense of social justice, and wanting to pay their drivers rather than paying a san fran corporation.

>How many developers will you hire? Planning to do the work myself. Once the app I'm buying is tweaked and running smoothly there shouldn't be too much to do.

The real world unfortunately doesn't work this smoothly, servers crash, weird bugs appear in the software, networking issues happen, traffic increases(hopefully) requiring you to scale out. I'd suggest you invest in finding a consultant who can help you on short notice if things go bad and keep them on a retainer.

> How many customer service representatives will you hire? None - the app will just link riders to drivers, and they will take care of customer service. Bad drivers will get banned from the service.

Who does the banning? How is it decided they are banned? What if there is a dispute between a driver and passenger who will handle that?

Once the app I'm buying is tweaked and running smoothly there shouldn't be too much to do. -> sorry, but that's a terrible, terrible misunderstanding of how these things really work.

If one person can successfully run a competitive taxi company using $15k of the shelf software, why did Uber raise $5.9 billion (!) and have over a thousand employees?

This might be possible if you have a big breakthrough, but you are cloning a company.

That doesn't signal that it cost $5.9B to runa taxi app company...

Just a signal that Uber has $5.9b to indulge in a fight with you...

A few 10's of million of which may be spent trying to buy you out..

Nothing wrong in cloning a company.. happens daily..

If you do decide you need customer service, drop me a line: nile@dynamicrelations.co.uk

billions in profit? there are not many firms that have that.

Some thoughts:

1. This is a fucking awesome idea. The sharing economy doesn't doesn't require corporations sitting on top of it taking a share. The sharing economy wants to be diffuse.

2. Black car service is a high margin market for a profit driven company. But those margins mean that it isn't suited to everyone's needs.

3. I don't think you need public meetings. That's just going to drag out implementation. In markets where Uber and Lyft are already operating, those meetings have already been held and all that's needed is regulatory analysis. The service just needs to be implemented within the existing legal framework.

4. I don't think buying code is necessarily the best first step. Comprehensive evaluation of applications may be technically hard and existing approaches may have impedence mismatch with your unique requirements. Buying existing code should just be one of several options not a solution looking for a problem.

Overall, market analysis should come first. Pick a market, look at the legal framework and tailor your decision to that. Avoid trying to change the law. If you want taxi drivers on board, make your service appealing to them when they look at the box and delight them when they open it. Don't try to explain the change, people don't like change. Town-hall meetings are fine for governments, you're not one.

Good luck.

If you are looking for the source code, check out Instacab it's server side Node.js dispatcher, and iOS rider and driver apps https://github.com/tisunov/InstacabClient. I've built it for our rideshare service in Russia, shut it down, and open sourced code

> non-profit

you keep using that word ... IKEA is also non-profit.

^this. A non-profit is just a tax structure.

This is complicated and not uniform between countries.

Generally speaking in the United States:

Non-profit is an misleadingly named corporate structure that really means non-stock. Delaware reasonably calls this structure a non-stock company.

Charity is a tax structure for the subset of non-stock corporations that are legally bound to use their resources for specific ostensibly purposes under 501(c3) of the tax code.

> Non-profit is an misleadingly named corporate structure that really means non-stock.

No, its not. Most states allow non-profit corporations, some allow non-profit non-corporations (associations, trusts, etc.) Some kinds of non-profits may have members in much the same way that an LLC does, however, a non-profit is not structured to return profits to those members (or anyone else, hence the name.)

There are a wide variety of rules for federal and state tax exemption and other treatment for various forms of non-profits, of which the the 501(c)(3) charity provisions making the entities own revenues tax exempt and contributions tax deductible to the contributor are the best known, but hardly the only significant ones.

Do you mind me asking what are you specifically looking to improve? I mean I get it you want to optimize the market in general, but what do you have in mind? Are you going to improve safety, efficiency or something else? Genuinely curious question.

None of these - just decrease the 20-30% margin charged by uber to as little as possible.

decrease the 20-30% margin -> You're effectively planning to use your own money (!) to go in a price war with Uber (!).

Please consider adopting VRM principles which give users and/or drivers the option to have access to the data generated by their use of the system, and some say in data retention and aggregation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_relationship_management

Do you have any interest in doing this not for another ride-sharing start-up, but for hiring private individuals as private-sector police?

The police need competition.

A non-profit, open-source police force would be highly interesting.

Why engage in competition you cannot win? Whilst a nonprofit Uber might face civil action from taxi firms, an "Uber for armed backup" seems like a very fast route to a jail cell. Considering the sorts of people most likely to be willing to use an app to rally support to settle disputes decisively in their favour, and the likely outcome of their use of such a service, that might not even be a bad thing.

One of the big issues (and reasons that Uber should charge a fee) are the significant insurance requirements.

Uber is charging a fee which is their costs plus whatever profit they think they can get away with.

Minimizing the profit part of the fee sounds admirable.

What is your plan for when automated cars arrive?

This business would be even that much more important. Why would I want my car just sitting at home when it could be working while I'm working?

Why would anyone use your clone over Uber itself?

seems like a similar argument like "fair trade" focussed businesses

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