Depending on what part of Seattle you commute to, you should definitely try out Scoop and see what you think! There are thousands of commuters in the King County area using Scoop (https://www.takescoop.com) already to turn their trips to work into meaningful time and take advantage of HOV lanes.
What we've learned most at Scoop is that this is all about human experience. Commuters are regular people with regular, complicated lives - they have family obligations, schedules, meetings, work priorities, personal desires. Having accessible, thoughtful support is, to us, a critical part of that experience.
We believe that software can certainly scale your support efforts and solve a lot of the core problems / answer a lot of the questions. But commuting is an everyday, twice-a-day activity and having a place to go for questions and needs is natural.
This point is dead-on and the key distinction between ridesharing (or really, ride-hailing) and carpooling.
With Scoop, for example, all the people who Driver are just everyday folks. They're commuters like you, me, and the Riders they get matched up with. The economic incentives are like a bonus - where the real value is the improved time in the car and the time savings from the carpool lane (where applicable). And of course, other benefits around sustainability and parking that really impact and motivate some commuters.
One of the things we've found most exciting about matching carpoolers together is the organic way in which people from totally different backgrounds (genders, ethnicities, nationalities, professions) get paired up on a simple ride to work.
After all, carpooling, when done right, really starts with just basic geography - who is near you, and who is not.
We've seen incredible stories of the people we're connecting - from job advice to new tennis partners -- and even consolation over lost loved ones. One of the beautiful things of that type of community (that we think we have with Scoop) is it's an unexpected forcing function to look outside your normal bubble - which seems harder and harder to come by these days.
This is a really great discussion on carpooling and our team is stoked to see it. At Scoop (https://www.takescoop.com), we've been working to make carpooling convenient and enjoyable since early 2015. We love seeing more (and bigger!) companies prioritize tackling the problems commuters face getting to work every day.
We're really passionate about some of the topics that have come up in this thread. Our ScoopCare team (real people!) is available throughout the day to help make sure Scoop commuters are having the best possible commute experience. Support availability is critical.
When it comes to safety, Scoop has performed Motor Vehicle history reports on every Driver in the community since day 1 - no one ever drives in a Scoop carpool without a great driving record. We're the only carpool company to ever do that, which is something we're pretty proud to say.
And most importantly, Scoop is for everyone. You don't have to work at a big company or a white collar job -- that's why it's been so important to us to partner with local governments, transit organizations like BART here in the Bay Area, and business parks with 100s of employers -- in addition to major employers.
The more than 2 million trips taken to-date with Scoop have included commuters from all walks of life who are looking for a meaningful commute. The only thing you have to believe is that there is a better way to spend your time on the road.
I'll also be watching this thread for a bit so feel free to reply here!
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Full disclosure: I started Scoop with my brother, Rob --- and as an avid HN reader, I wanted to comment directly to the HN community. We're really excited to be solving a problem that impacts both SV and the world and would love for you to join us.
Scoop | Backend, Mobile, DevOps, Eng Management | San Francisco, CA | Onsite. Full-Time. $100-150+ Equity | https://www.takescoop.com/about
What do you get when you take dozens of Bay Area commuters, 3 cute office dogs, and the massive problem of solo driving? You get Scoop — the company that’s making it easy to carpool to work with your neighbors and co-workers. Founded in 2015 and based in downtown SF, our team mixes technology and elbow grease every day, with one statistic in our crosshairs: 80% of Americans drive alone to work. A big problem? Sure — but we know we can crack it through our mix of best-in-class engineering and product, great talent, partnerships, and the Scoop Community that's exploding. Join the team, share the dream, and impact the way thousands of folks get to work every day.
Scoop | Mobile & Backend Engineers, including lead roles | Full-time / Onsite | San Francisco
Scoop is the country's largest carpooling platform, powering hundreds of thousands of carpooler trips per month across the Bay Area and Seattle. If you're interested in working on something that will change the lives of 100M Americans every single day - Scoop might be the place for you.
We partner with major companies like Cisco, Tesla and Workday to get their awesome people to work. And we empower commuters to upgrade to carpooling via our top-rated native iOS and Android apps and our proprietary matching algorithm. Really fun stuff.
We're growing fast and have openings for an Android lead, and various levels of software engineers across the stack.
Scoop | Backend, Mobile & DevOps | San Francisco, CA | Onsite. Full-Time. $100-150 + Equity | https://www.takescoop.com
There's a problem that's been unsolved for 40 years. It's called carpooling - heard of it? We know you have. But now, there's a team of engineers, marketers, and business people actually making headway on this problem. With over 400,000 rides done to date, the Scoop team has made carpooling easy for the first time - and we need an awesome engineer to help in the fight against traffic. Maybe it's you? The Scoop team has a simple mission: to eliminate traffic and reimagine transportation, giving life back to commuters and communities. Two years after our San Francisco Bay Area launch, Scoop has become a vibrant community of coworkers and neighbors that have shared hundreds of thousands of commutes. Our mobile-first commuting technology powers the carpooling programs of many of the Bay Area’s largest employers, including Cisco, Tesla, Workday, and Salesforce.
Our stack? Node, AWS, native on iOS (all Swift) and Android. We might be a startup, but we care deeply about testing and great technical design. And our entire matching algorithm is home-brewed. We're hiring for Android, backend generalists, DevOps/Infra addicts and data lovers.
The Scoop team has a simple mission: to finally make carpooling a viable alternative to the solo commute by eliminating the hassle, sacrifice, and frustration that has plagued carpooling for years. As we reimagine every aspect of shared commuting using smart mobile-first technology, our development team is passionate about designing and developing public (mobile-first) APIs to support our app.
We’re looking for a smart and creative individual who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment and has extensive engineering experience. You’ll work with the infrastructure team to scope/design features and standardize best practices.
Working knowledge and experience with the following is a plus:
PS: We recently announced our funding here techcrunch.com/2016/05/24/scoop-raises-5-1-million-seed-round-for-carpooling-service-that-shuttles-tesla-twitter-and-cisco-employees/
I'm the CPO and Co-Founder of Scoop automated carpooling - www.takescoop.com. I wanted to jump in with a few thoughts.
It's exciting to see one of the ridesharing/ride-hailing companies focus their attention on where the pain is still high - the commute. 100M Americans still wake up everyday, grab their keys, and get in their car to drive to work. On average, that drive lasts at least 25 minutes.
The negative impact of driving alone is enormous - congestion in our communities, $250B out of our pockets every year, and a huge toll on the environment. Autonomous vehicles, hyperloops, or whatever the future has in store might change this - but not for a while.
So, carpooling is obviously something I've spent a lot of time thinking about - and I think Lyft is doing some smart things here. I like the Rider scheduling buckets. We do something similar with Scoop - every trip is scheduled with "time slots" that help align Rider and Drivers' schedules.
And of course, Lyft's availability around the Bay Area is nice. For Scoop, we really focus on partnering with employers and 511 (https://carpool.511.org/) to strategically open "routes" into different Bay Area cities. We do this carefully, to ensure that commuters can really rely on their local Scoop community for a carpool every single day.
There are also some important ways that carpooling is really different from ride-hailing, and it'll be interesting to see how Lyft, Uber, etc. address that. For example, who you go with really matters. 45 minutes in a car isn't the same as 10. How you get home really matters too. In the case of no carpool, a regular Lyft or Uber with surge-pricing will make for an unhappy commuter.
Our team of 13 works really hard every day to try to take cars off the road, and are excited by anyone who wants to try to do that too. To that end, we just opened up our newest route today to tackle congestion in a new community. Starting today, you can schedule commute trips with Scoop into Palo Alto. All trips to Palo Alto are just $1 - sponsored by the Palo Alto TMA and Stanford Research Park. And we're excited to have great partners like the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce and companies like Tesla, Palantir and HP.
The Scoop team has a simple mission: to finally make carpooling a viable alternative to the solo commute by eliminating the hassle, sacrifice, and frustration that has plagued carpooling for years. As we reimagine every aspect of shared commuting using smart mobile-first technology, our development team is passionate about designing and developing public (mobile-first) APIs to support our app.
We’re looking for a smart and creative individual who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment and has extensive engineering experience. You’ll work with the infrastructure team to scope/design features and standardize best practices.
Working knowledge and experience with the following is a plus:
▪ node.js with Hapi
▪ PostgreSQL
▪ Python
▪ Git and Github
▪ Automated testing
https://www.flex.scoopforwork.com/stats