Carpool App
At places like Stanford, and other areas that are spread out and have limited public transportation, it can be quite hard to get around without a car. Running errands like grocery shopping or even going on trips to places like San Francisco can be very time consuming and expensive. Let’s say person A is going to Costco and owns a car. What if person A was willing to take additional people (ex. Person B, C who also want to grab things from Costco) along? In theory, person B, C will pay person A (and the app) a small fee for hitching a ride and for gas fees. This alternative may be much better than Ubering places (due to costs) or taking public transport (ex. Inconvenient if you have a lot of things with you or time-consuming) for the rider. Furthermore, the driver will be compensated a bit for a trip that they were planning on making in the first place! Also a win for energy and environmentalism purposes!
Market size
SOM / Stanford Students / Number: 17,000 / Size: $4M
SAM / Students at all US Campuses / Number: 19,000,000 / Size: $5M
TOM / Urban Residents / Number: 4 Billion people / Size: $1T
Notes on pricing:
- In order to be attractive we need to be an order of magnitude cheaper/more convenient that existing alternatives (since it’s a saturated market)
- Uber ride to Target is ~$30 for round trip (for User)
- Gas will cost the driver around $2
- $6 per gallon
- 25mpg for you average car
- 8 miles to Target and back
Interviews
Respondent 1: Meera Rao
- About themselves
- 2nd year graduate student in the CEE department
- Female, single
- What their behavior regarding travel on-off campus
- Goes off campus around 3 times a week
- Does so with their own car
- Travels to places like Pacifica, SF, and Santa Cruz
- The main purpose is for recreation
- It costs them around $20 per round trip
- Are they wanting more?
- Would prefer if there’s a cheaper more convenient option
- Would like if public transportation was more accessible
- Their opinions about the app idea
- They love the idea of having a carpool app where you can pay for being hitchhiker.
- They would be excited to be a driver and rider in that situation
- Uber is a lot more expensive, so this app could save them money
- They would probably charge $5-10 to SF for a ride
- Their hopes/concerns for the app
- They would want to have some system that could ensure the safety of both the driver and the rider
Yuuki Tanaka
- About themselves
- 24 years of age, male, engaged
- 1st year graduate student in CEE
- What their behavior regarding travel on-off campus
- Goes out of campus once a week to the East Bay
- Does so to meet family/friends/fiancé
- It takes roughly 45minutes to 1hour
- A round trip roughly costs $30
- Are they wanting more?
- Already pretty satisfied with the current situation
- Would love it if the trip is closer
- Their opinions about the app idea
- They think it would be awesome.
- He’s excited to make the trip more cost effective
- The trip using uber would cost him $110. So paying $10-15 would be very reasonable
- Their hopes/concerns for the app
- They want to make sure that the system for picking up and dropping off isn’t a nightmare to manage
Heat Map for Activities
There’s always a lot going on around campus – clubs, career fairs, classes, socials, parties, study sessions, trips, mixers, and much more. To keep track of all this, you’re subscribed to numerous mailing lists, overwhelmed with slack channels, tracking word of mouth, inundated with flyers, and frantically texting your group chats. That is, out of the dozens of things going on every day, you’re left on your own to figure out what really matters to you and how to most productively spend your time.
Market size
SOM / Stanford Students / Number: 17,000 / Size: $715K
SAM / Degree-Granting Post Secondary Institutions / Number: 19,000,000 / Size: $480M
TOM / Urban Residents / Number: 4 Billion people / Size: $624M
Notes on pricing:
- Companies will pay 20c per ad space
- Since this is not as saturated a market as ride sharing, we can probably price close to what our competitors are pricing
- Some references
- Handshake premium costs $10,000 annually
- On average the recruiter spends $4,000 on 1 recruitment
- On average a large company will undergo 100 recruitment processes
Interviews
Respondent 1: Meera Rao
- About themselves
- 2nd year graduate student in the CEE department
- Female, single
- What their behavior regarding finding events
- Usually find things out via word of mouth or emails
- Usually go to EVGR or Campus-ran events through this way
- Also interested to go to events such as extra curricular, arts, festivals, etc.
- They are usually impulsive in going to events
- Are they wanting more?
- Pretty content with the events portion of her life
- Their opinions about the app idea
- A map that shows interesting activities based on a heat map sounds pretty cool
- They say it would improve their weekend
- Want to filter it based on parties, music, sports
- Would also want to use it to maybe try to get the word out about an event they are hosting or holding
- Their hopes/concerns for the app
- Would need to have enough things going on in the map to be informative
- Might be hard to plan events if there are too many options
Respondent 2: Yuuki Tanaka
- About themselves
- 24 years of age, male, engaged
- 1st year graduate student in CEE
- What their behavior regarding finding events
- They usually discover events through email
- attends usually 2 events a week
- The type of events are sports, career fair, VPGE event. But mainly free food
- They are the planner type. Rare that they impulsively go to an event on the same day
- Are they wanting more?
- Not really. Pretty content
- Their opinions about the app idea
- The idea would be interesting
- Especially if it shows density of people, and maybe even capacity
- Filter based on locations, characteristics, host, activity
- Would definitely use it to find Rains parties
- Their hopes/concerns for the app
- Try to make the information up to date on the map. So they don’t go to locations that are already empty
