2. METHODS OF TRANSPORTATION
School Veterans
Friend
Shuttle Taxi
Green Wellesley
Zip Car
Line Carriage
Personal Local Taxi Airport
Vehicle Service Shuttle
3. ABOUT MATCHCAB
Currently transportation
is expensive and
inconvenient
“I do not like being on
someone else’s
schedule”
“I am not brought to
my desired destination”
“It takes too long and
there are no better
alternatives”
4. VALUE PROPOSITION
Providing affordable and
effective transportation to
college students who
attend school in the
suburbs and need
transportation into the city.
5. WHY NO-GO?
Too many costs (licenses, drivers, insurance, salary, leasing
cars, maintenance, software development, etc.)
Net Loss: costs were higher than revenues
Is our market not the right fit?
6. HOW TO RESHAPE MATCHCAB?
Expand into new
markets
Phone Application
Cut Costs
These are all viable
options but cutting
costs will be the
most effective
method
7. NEW APPROACH
Not having a “cab” service, rather a software service which connects
customers with taxi service
Cut Costs
No cars
No drivers
No insurance
No licenses
No paying for gas
8. IDEA OF BUSINESS
MatchCab would team up with local taxi companies to help
arrange rides which would provide the customer with a
student rate, potentially even cheaper based on ride capacity
Purely internet based company (software development)
Lack of direct competitors
Revenues
Taxi contracts with MatchCab, yearly renewal fee required
14% service charge back to MatchCab on each taxi ride organized
Advertisements on website
9. OLD BUSINESS MODEL
Revenues
Charge per use x # of users
Costs
# of vehicle x price per vehicle
Price per gallon of gas x # of gallons used
Software cost x # of engineers required to develop x salary
# of repairs x price of fixing
(Price per marketing medium x # of advertisements)/
marketing medium
Salary of drivers x # of drivers
# of cars x price of insurance
# of drivers x price of insurance
10. NEW BUSINESS MODEL
Revenues
# of ad on website x cost of advertisement
Amount of each taxi contract x # of contracts
# of taxi rides x cost of taxi x 7% (commission)
Cost of taxi = rate x distance
Rate = # of people in the car x discount rate
Costs
Software cost x # of engineers required to develop x salary
# of repairs x price of fixing
(Price per marketing medium x # of advertisements)/
marketing medium
11. MARKET AND CUSTOMER RESEARCH
Interview various taxi companies in the Boston Area to see if
they would be willing to do business with MatchCab software
Use prior customer interviews to guide further research
Conduct more interviews based on new business plan
12. GO OR NO GO?
Initial software costs
Taxi company willingness to work with us
Reliability of taxi company
Number of customers willing to use the service
Software protection – patent?
Much more revenue coming in then costs going out!
Editor's Notes
Introduction slide to Match-Cab introducing our team.
JamesAt a suburban college campus, students often take these means of transportation for access to local services or to get into the city It could be a school shuttle that goes to nightlife district Taxi service that does local and distant drop off’s and pickups They could even ask a friend for a ride It may be easiest if they drive them self, but it may not be the greatest idea due to drunk driving or leaving their car at the airport. This can be applicable to any market, taxis, personal vehicles, zip car, airport shuttle, school shuttles. Etc
James From customer interviews we received the following feedback: - Current transportation is costly and inconvenient Schedules are tough and sometimes the service only runs every 3 hours If they take a shuttle or public transportation they do not wind up at their end point. It takes to long with a shuttle because they tend to make multiple stops along the way. College students need something better and more efficient!!
James College Students have limited access to transportation. We are developing a proprietary software and fleet of vehicles that can essentially take them wherever, whenever. We are focusing on bringing college students into the city that are located at suburban campuses. Common services include – airport service, clubs, college festivals, concerts, etc.
JamesWe learned that the transportation is a costly business: insurance is high, dependable drivers are tough to find, leasing vehicles requires monthly cash outflows. High maintenance industry with repairs and service constantly being made – vehicles depreciate! Market: Target demographic of students – from one stand-point it’s not the right blend, not a big enough city, only one airport, volume of students isn’t appealing, targeting an overall high income tier level with students that can spend whatever. We feel that the concept may work better in a more robust market.
AlexMatchCab is a really great idea, but we needed to re-evaluate how we were going to manage the operations of the company especially with such high costs. Some of the alternative options we looked at were expanding in to new markets, developing a phone application that was able to locate nearby students and also eliminating a lot of the high costs. Everythingabout MatchCab’s core will be consistent, it will be the execution of how we organize rides that we are going to alter. This will allow MatchCab to have more flexibility and innovation within the company.
AlexThe new approach that MatchCab will be taking is to completely eliminate the concept of owning our on vehicles associated with MatchCab. Instead, MatchCab will solely be an online software system that college students will use to pair them up with other college students for rides. Essentially this is a genius solution because it eliminates almost all of the costs and in particular the most expensive ones. These costs are inclusive of cars, driver salary, insurance, licenses
AlexMatchCab going to only be a software based website that allows students to find rides with one another at a discounted price. The company will serve the role as the middleman, very similar to the job of an event planner in the sense that they just organize the people and the vendors but don’t do any part of the execution. The software will have contracts with various local taxi companies near you depending on your location, and dispatch one of these cabs when needed based on their availability. Currently there are no other companies on the market like this designed for this specific segment, and also that offers a discounted rate based on ride capacity, this will be explained further in the business model. MatchCab will benefit from 3 different methods of revenue including the initial contracts established with taxi companies that will include a yearly renewal fee, a service charge on each taxi ride that MatchCab organizes, and also the advertisements on the MatchCab website that companies will pay for.
Taken from previous presentation. Since we will not have any cars, many of our expenses will no longer be applicable.This slide is demonstrating the reduction of overhead.
Advertisements on website where reservations are made will provide revenue for MatchCab.Contracts with taxi companies is very important! This is the basis of revenueThere will be a 7% commission rate for every taxi ride MatchCab arrangesThe only major costs are the software development and maintenance. Another cost is the marketing MatchCab will have – TV, internet, newspaper, fliers, etc.
LuccaWe need to interview taxi companies to understand if it would be of interest to form a partnership with MatchCab. We will ask how they expect the partnership with us to affect their revenues and profits. We need to collect more customer interviews to better understand how to shape our business to meet the customer’s needs. These interviews have to be taken in to account when developing the new business plan because it may help identify what key features are necessary for the success of our service.
Major issues that we considered with this service being a Go or No Go:-Software Costs (This being the major costs that will be required to create and maintain the coding for the website service. This cost may be much to great to get into business with)-Taxi Company Cooperation (We need Taxi companies to work with us or else we will have no other cabs in the area for our system to operate. This is a large wildcard and if the Cab services do not cooperate, then we could have no service to provide our customers with)-Simply just a lack of market size between cars and students getting rides places with their friends. Possibly just no need for the service.-Patent is an issue (Possibly we may not even be able to get a patent on the software and if we can the costs in maintaining that and keeping that service in house may be too large to be profitable)- By reducing overhead and forming partnerships with major cab companys, we feel this idea is a go.