Commuter

I really want to give up. I have the scraps of an idea but I can’t seem to pull anything together.

I want to get people commuting differently. Whether it’s bussing, cycling or carpooling I’m not fussy as long as I get something together (preferably soon!). The big burning question is, who am I targeting? and then, how do I reach these people?

I had an idea to put up posters with QR codes in areas where traffic is almost standstill, since those are my people. Easy questions pops up, like “hey why are you driving?” or “Have you considered cycling?” or “Why not cycle?”.

Okay it’s been a couple of days, things have improved ever so slightly. The problem still remains the same as it did with Cheapseats; one-person one-car. The solution is different, more complicated, as in there’s a lot of elements to consider and bring together. Commuter is primarily a consultancy service. It aims to advise people on different commuting options and help them get out of their car for their regular commute.

I feel like for this to work, I need to make this happen manually, do the advising myself. Firstly, I need to prove people want this service. These two aspects kind of come hand-in-hand, I need to reach people who want this service and I need to be able to give it to them in order for it to be deemed viable.

I’m terrified, I feel out of my depth and imposter syndrome is all too real right now.

This started as Cheapseats, a hitch-hiking ride-share app. It’s become a lot more since that was imagined.

Now we have Commuter. A vision to connect people to forming better commuting habits.

It’s week 3 of the 22/23 startup and I’ve struggled to stay on track. I would say a big factor of that is that there’s no real track to stay on; shout out to my start-up founders, entrepreneurs and small business people, you know how we do. The next step is never a step, more like a wee shuffle or a gigantic leap. It seems as though you’re heading into the thickest fog and you pray the next move will clear more of the road ahead. Sometimes it does, sometimes it puts you on a crossroads and sometimes you walk straight into a brick wall.

I have walked into a few brick walls since starting this journey a mere few weeks ago, I sense plenty of brick walls to come. But it’s not a reason to stop exploring, just an incentive to bounce back and re-assess. There has been countless hours re-assessing so far, perhaps for the best. In fact, definitely for the best, carpooling alone won’t take-off in New Zealand, not in the scale I had originally imagined.

I had wanted to pitch this as an eco-friendly, carbon-reducing, traffic-sequestering, safely-sustainable, cost-effective, cost-reducing app. Wow, I was trying to hit an entire flock of birds with one measly pebble. The first brick wall I encountered was even before the progamme started, when they said I wasn’t accepted for the scholarship because my idea was “not original enough”. You know what, in hindsight they were right.

Anyways, a bit of grovelling and I made it in. I got to work day two, head down, determined. Problem identified, customers identified, solution, got it, unique value proposition, yup sure, let’s go full steam ahead. Day three BAM, license endorsements. Research ensued and ideas were rolling but nothing seemed to stick. So I approached this from a new angle, the social angle.

People like money, but this couldn’t be about making money. But it could be about saving money. Yes, save money, save the environment, save time. Cheapseats was now a social platform. I had thought of personable profiles with peoples likes and dislikes, was this Tinder for transport? I went down the route of neighbourly news, local school heroes and the sports club from down the road, people posting rides, Facebook for transport? Then came the inevitable, how does it make money?

Monthly subscriptions paid by passengers. What is the driver incentive? Since we all know the good in ones heart isn’t enough to sacrifice the best 30minutes of silence that driver experiences for the day. A quick transfer system, not dissimilar from Uber but designed only to cover gas costs. Seemed clunky but that’s what Cheapseats was, 9 days into me working on it.

Speed mentoring really shook me. My biggest fear came true, I didn’t know what to ask. There was never any real extended silence between the mentor and myself. I did get some positive feedback and encouragement, although one moment that struck me was when the bell rang my last mentor stood up almost immediately, whilst the rest of the room sat immersed in conversation. Not surprising, since I had no real business, but it still stung.

I really needed to figure out what approach I was going to take with this. That’s when I discovered the whiteboard. Whoever invented the whiteboard, my thanks to you! Idea vomit had never been better. In red, green, purple and black whiteboard pen I mapped out the bones and the needs for each approach. I soon realised a stand-alone app wasn’t going to cut the mustard and solve the issue at hand. My issue was no longer one person – one car. This requires a behavioural change in society and more importantly the aid to make this change possible.

How can we connect people to the current and future transport infrastructure? How can we connect less well-off people to the likes of e-scooters and e-bikes?

A systemic effort with the goal to connect our people, places and things.

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