The other day a former classmate described a project of mine in 2010 as “the idea for Uber before Uber was even a thing”. Nearly 15 years later, I thought it would be interesting to pen some reflections on how we came by the idea and why we didn’t pursue it.
Mowbb
Mowbb (I regret we didn’t choose a better name) would make ride-sharing simple, safe, and more enjoyable than the alternatives. Except maybe cycling. The app concept is shown below – including many by now familiar elements.
For precise timing, this concept was developed in March 2010. Uber was founded in 2009 but didn’t release until May 2010. Where did the idea for Mowbb come from?
Genesis
At the time, I was thinking about traffic congestion and whether there were smarter ways to manage it. I was also reflecting on how the value (in use) of private vehicles is determined by how other people use their vehicles–there’s a sweet spot between too little infrastructure and too much traffic. Each private vehicle also generates undesirable externalities.
Probably none of this is particularly original, but I conceived the notion of trip windows as a resource that could be allocated to the drivers that most needed them at a particular time, hopefully encouraging others to replace a car trip with another mode, or time-shift to reduce peak demand, etc.
There was a case to be made that there was opportunity to create value here–behold the mighty infographic!
Trip windows
A trip window would give you the right to travel a particular route from A to B in a vehicle at a certain time. Infrastructure provides a certain fixed supply of trip windows, which typically exceeds demand, except for peak hours. Where demand exceeded supply, trip windows could be allocated or purchased or traded or otherwise granted to those who valued or needed them most.
Of course, this required that other people not consume these routes! So we need a way to keep drivers off the road…
An app to manage personal transport
This is where the idea of a location-aware device or app came in–to ensure compliance to allocated trip windows–but it was saddled with one major impracticality: how on earth would you get people to use it?
I realised there needed to be some incentive, or pull, but what would it be?
Ride sharing
Ride sharing promised a solution to allow multiple people to consume the same trip window as one, effectively taking other drivers off the road and/or increasing the supply of trip windows (which are scarcer for driving because cars take up more space).
Here, the best practice model I referred to in 2010 was Liftshare UK: https://liftshare.com/uk.
But I still felt that a mobile app could provide a better, on-demand experience. Servicing a larger customer base, it would encompass more occasions and need a more compelling proposition than Liftshare, which was somewhat niche and required some forward planning.
Luckily, I was working with the awesome Tash, who suggested user research on university students to understand their transport needs, and we continued to shape the idea together.
User research
Tash ran interviews with university students that surfaced some really interesting themes. Safety, convenience, and personal preferences were big ones.
Many of these look familiar today to users of Uber and other ride hailing services. As I recall, though, we focussed more on passengers rather than drivers.
Willingness to pay, and sell
We realised, though, that both sides would be important to the proposition. We tried to understand how much passengers would be willing to pay and how much drivers would be willing to accept.
While we recognised at this point that what we were proposing also looked like a crowd-sourced taxi service for on-demand transport, we were still somewhat anchored to the daily commute and public transport as an alternative. I think the prices we came up with for rides were a premium over public transport, but not a large one. They would offset costs for people who were driving anyway, but not create an incentive to drive full time.
This possibly demarcates the boundary between ride sharing and ride hailing. Similarly, while I recall Uber’s brand at launch was aspirational, Mowbb was about getting more for less.
Drivers and passengers might bilaterally negotiate a price. Mowbb would facilitate payments and charge a 30c transaction fee.
Quick recap
Here are the slides on strategy and the offering summarising where we’re at.
Mowbb’s business plan
We envisaged that Mowbb would operate a service for universities and other major institutions in the first instance. With the model working for one or a small number of trial sites, we would onboard other institutions who could then offer the service as a benefit to attract students, staff, etc. The break-even looked fairly achievable, but those setup costs look lean now, even in 2010 dollars. The third stage was truly opening up as an on-demand ride hailing service to the general public.
We took this approach partly because we were concerned with the regulations around taxi services, and the safety of drivers and passengers. It would be difficult to ensure (especially in the early stages) that this solution remained compliant and that the safety of drivers and passengers could be assured if it were open to the general public. We thought that the involvement of a major institution like a university provided some degree of vetting, risk management, insurance facility, and social contract between parties. We also thought that taxi drivers would have legitimate competition concerns.
Lyft, launched two years later in 2012, also had its origins in university ride sharing dating back to 2007, but I don’t think we were aware of it at the time.
Whither public transport?
We were also conscious of the impact on public transport as the positioned alternative. However, we saw an opportunity to provide data to improve public transport and we hoped we were displacing driving trips rather than public transport trips. This was maybe a little naive considering Jevons paradox and growth imperatives. There’s evidence ride hailing apps both induce demand and displace other modes. However, it’s a relief to see active modes and public transport–a service that tends to constantly improve as more people use it–survive today. What will autonomous vehicles bring, if widely deployed?
End of the road
Ultimately, we didn’t pursue Mowbb due to perceived regulatory and safety challenges, the risk, and the fact that we had other priorities at the time. It’s interesting, however, to reflect on Mowbb’s similarities to modern ride hailing services, and that we envisaged many issues that came to pass, and how we might have solved them differently.
The final reveal is that the stylised “U” inverted hairpin bend sign graphic was purely coincidental too!