I was very fortunate to have my first entrepreneurial experience last year as I co-founded my first company: an on-demand location based service(Uber for X). Even though the company is still up and running, due to some personal issues, I could no longer be a part of the team and I departed last month.
Building, launching and running an on-demand LBS company and also closely studying all the other small and big players in the market for one year gave me a good grasp of what challenges these companies are facing from the very early days.
Most of these companies (like every other marketplace) have three major moving parts that limit their growth potential:
1- Technology: building, maintaining, and constantly iterating the product for variety of the devices.
2- Customers: acquiring new customers and improving their conversion rate and LTV.
3- Independent Contractors: acquiring, hiring, and maintaining their independent contractor pool.
One of challenges that we were facing since the early days was constantly looking for new independent contractors because due to the nature of the job most of these people are looking for a temporary or part time job and are not committed to their job as regular employees.
I believe all these companies would benefit a lot from a temporary staffing firm curated only for on-demand services. Imagine an API that give them access to list of tens of thousands of people in every city that they launch who have already have background check and updated information of their driving records and vehicle. Another opportunity is to offer insurance to this rising number of people who are joining these companies (e.g. Uber, Lyft, SideCar, Instacart, Postmates, Washio, Zipments, Deliv.co, Shoprunner, Doordash, Fluc, Drizley, Drinkin, Saucey and etc.)
If anyone is interested to work on this topic I would love to share my experience and thoughts because after all it is about the economy of sharing :)
Building, launching and running an on-demand LBS company and also closely studying all the other small and big players in the market for one year gave me a good grasp of what challenges these companies are facing from the very early days.
Most of these companies (like every other marketplace) have three major moving parts that limit their growth potential: 1- Technology: building, maintaining, and constantly iterating the product for variety of the devices. 2- Customers: acquiring new customers and improving their conversion rate and LTV. 3- Independent Contractors: acquiring, hiring, and maintaining their independent contractor pool.
One of challenges that we were facing since the early days was constantly looking for new independent contractors because due to the nature of the job most of these people are looking for a temporary or part time job and are not committed to their job as regular employees.
I believe all these companies would benefit a lot from a temporary staffing firm curated only for on-demand services. Imagine an API that give them access to list of tens of thousands of people in every city that they launch who have already have background check and updated information of their driving records and vehicle. Another opportunity is to offer insurance to this rising number of people who are joining these companies (e.g. Uber, Lyft, SideCar, Instacart, Postmates, Washio, Zipments, Deliv.co, Shoprunner, Doordash, Fluc, Drizley, Drinkin, Saucey and etc.)
If anyone is interested to work on this topic I would love to share my experience and thoughts because after all it is about the economy of sharing :)