Hitch

Hey guys! Co-founder of Hitch here. Was hoping to get some feedback on the app we just launched last week. We're operating daily in San Francisco, and have built a frictionless way to implement true route-sharing across multiple traveling parties. Passengers input their start/destination via the app, and we pair them to a car with other passengers when the routes overlap. The driver's route is ultimately dynamically generated based on where demand is actually appearing. Looking forward to hearing from ya'll! Edit: Just created a promo-code for this post. If you install the app, navigate to the promotions tab in-app, and use 'producthunt2014' your first ride is free!

Glad to hear it, Guy! Hitch is basically what you described actually: we have our own operation with our own drivers, and you are basically splitting the fare with folks. You get the same easy booking flow (though you do have to tell us where you're headed) you're accustomed to. That said, the fare we project to you at booking time (which is 50% the cost of an UberX) is the one you pay. So if you end up with an empty car, you still get that reduced fare!

@guygal - see you at the Quibb picnic, my man! I hope this gets traction so I can save money hopping around SF. My Lyft/Uber bill is adding up. What's your grand master growth strategy, @snirkodesh?

Awesome question, @rrhoover. As far as SF, given that this is our first deployment, we've started with a core group of evangelists that are excited by what we're doing (definitely hoping to find a few of those here :D). We spent a lot of time on the app itself, and built some pretty neat features that enable our vision (for example, you can see mutual friends you have in common with the folks you ride with--an easy icebreaker). We've got the standard word-of-mouth tools built in already with rider promotions and other tools to empower our existing users (a neat little in-app instagram share). The goal is to cover all of San Francisco and expand our hours of operation even further (we have slightly limited hours at present) in the coming weeks. Especially with a small, dense city like ours, we'll be doing a lot with on-the-groud/guerilla marketing to really educate people about us when their pain-point is most evident. We can focus on convenience relative to public transit (we’re faster, far more comfortable, and not significantly more expensive). Or alternatively, we can speak to pricing: we're the anti-thesis of surge pricing in that if more people use the system, we employ more sharing (sidenote: being totally objective, this requires some amount of liquidity supply-side, but our fleet can also handle 2-3x the demand by employing sharing). Once we’ve got SF covered, we’d love to get out into LA and beyond! It'll be a completely different beast with its own challenges, but I think we'll have an opportunity to pair routes more aggressively there, since overall commute time is longer. One of the input parameters for decision-making is overall trip time, and it'll be interesting to see what decisions the system makes across two vastly different deployments.

@guygal, great analysis. With respect to riders, we look at utilization (i.e. how many riders are in the car per unit time). With Uber, for example, that number is actually sub-1: the driver has some down time, or is traveling to his next passenger with an empty car. The goal with Hitch is to bring overall utilization up, not just utilization while there is a passenger on-board. By extension, we actually need fewer than 2 people in the car to generate the same margins for the driver. The goal is to have a Hitch operate as a revolving door of sorts, with pickups and dropoffs occurring constantly. Part of what we do is book futures (i.e. a drop-off is about to take place right around the corner, and that car turns out to be the best fit for you) and that also helps utilization. There certainly is some addition to overall travel time, but we’re not just making pairings willy-nilly. Our system will actually decline rides in the event that we don’t think we can give you a “reasonable” experience (obviously a subjective metric). I used to take SuperShuttle to the airport, and I’d spend ~2 hours on a 30 minute direct trip. That’ll never happen with Hitch, and we’d rather decline the pickup than provide that experience. It’s a fine line to walk, but it’s also one of the reasons we’re not available in a broader region right now (and are limited to the main corridor of SF). Ala immediate vs future, we’re an instant solution, so the second you submit your origin/destination, we’re looking to pair you with a car. We’re already seeing pairings take place with that immediate match. Final note: though not directly mentioned, I do want to point out that we don’t do total dynamic re-routes. Safety on the road is obviously of massive importance to us, so route changes only happen while the car is stationary.

The matching based on mutual friends and mutual interests is super interesting. Wonder if this starts doubling as a dating site :)

I had my first full Hitch ride; rate passangers is a nice bonus I wasn't expecting! This practice is new to the US but has been going on in Asia for YEARRSSSSSSS. My only issue: 24/7 OPEN!!!!