Market size and attitude

In this write up I will present two ideas our group narrowed down to. 

Idea 1: Pooling Trips and Hitching Rides

Summary: 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! [Can be extended to hobbies or general trips/activities too]

TAM/SAM/SOM:

Notes on pricing:

• In order to be attractive, we need to be an order of magnitude cheaper/more convenient than existing alternatives (since it’s a saturated market)
• Uber ride to Target is ~$30 for a round trip
• Gas will cost the driver around $2
  • $6 per gallon
  • 25mpg for you average car
  • 8 miles to Target and back

Interview Takeways:

Person 1: A senior that owns a car

• Goes off campus around 3 times a week mostly for getting food and shopping
• “I would prefer to go with people I know because I am not as comfortable meeting strangers and feel like it can be awkward”
• “I am also not confident in my driving skills so don’t want to drive others I am not close with”
• “I can see other people using the service but I am not sure how much I personally would use it.”
• Foresee some safety issues as other ride-share apps have lots of reviews on each driver but with this service would there be something similar?
  • propose allowing users to make profiles (link to social media)
• How to deal with schedule changes?

Person 2: Sophmore without a car

• “This could be a really good way to meet new people”
• “I can definitely see myself using this as it is so hard to get off campus for errands”
  • “Depending on distance I would be willing to pay around $5 for a target run, but probably not as much if I only needed to get one thing”
• “I think it is great for trips to SF as it would be much faster than public transportation and Ubers are insane for further places. I can see myself using it as oneway transportation”
• Usually uses amazon or online shopping to get things they need

Idea 2: Tailored, dynamic, and centralized heat-map for opportunities, activities, and events on campus

Summary: 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.

Instead of going back and forth to find what’s worth your time and curiosity, imagine if all this information was centralized on a heatmap. Think Snapchat heatmap

– but tailored for your interests and availability. You can see what’s going on at any given time (or what is scheduled to happen in the future) on campus. The red shows a physical congregation of people with similar interests or a predefined activity (class, party, etc.). Incidentally, non-Stanford members – like companies on campus – can securely access student engagement/activity data for a fee (much like companies pay Stanford to be present at a career fair) and target specific opportunities based on students’ previously demonstrated interest in similarly-aligned activities on campus. Based on student participation at certain events, they receive karma points for being an active member of the community and can redeem them for certain opportunities, events, etc. Apart from general interests, another adjacent feature is connecting with students that share certain classes that you’re taking this quarter.

Note: it might seem like there’s a lot going on here, we can prioritize.

TAM/SAM/SOM & Market Size:

Notes on pricing:

• 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

Interview Takeways:

Person 1:

• Discover events from emails and friends who share events they are interested in
• Goes out to mostly parties and performances (weekly)
• “I don’t really plan or look for events specifically but if I do come across them I will put it down in my calendar”
• “Yes I would like a centralized platform, it’s nice to have things in the same place”
• I think it would be nice if it also shows events in the future two weeks to help with planning and allow me to subscribe to certain events and give me notifications about it when it’s happening soon”

Person 2:

• “I see myself using this to fill up the awkward in-between classes free time I have”
  • Especially with the map feature, it makes it easier to see what events are near me
• “I hate reading through my emails so I definitely see myself using this”
  • Want to go out to events more but usually doesn’t know what events are happening
• Not sure about if it is good to make the app both professional (with recruiting) and social
  • might be overwhelming for the users?
  • need to flush out how to present the events