If you're considering building an Uber-for-x, why not incorporate as a co-operative - a business model where there is either 1 worker 1 vote or 1 consumer 1 vote (as opposed to 30% of shares being a result as 30% of capital investment)? The reason for this is I think there's a lot of 'bullshit jobs' but this way at least people have ownership over what they are getting involved in and can elect a board etc. Could be a great experiment! There's also unique instruments for fundraising in this sector and opportunities for government funding. There's still a board of directors (elected) and a usual employee hierarchy stemming down from there. Founders can take all that they need to reasonably live on (and retire) in the form of some salary compensation package, with a legacy that creates a social enterprise and goodwill & a recession proof business model (when times are hard - co-opertives are more resilient because of this shared ownership & goodwill. When times are good, profits can be distributed - in addition to everyone's usual pay etc).
In the recent past there had been a burgeoning of startups that wanted to be the uber-for-x, specially in India. HyperTrack was created to address this segment of the market. However, many of these Uber-for-X hyperlocal vendors died a quick death after burning pile loads of investor money.With other startup's providing more end-to-end solutions in terms of route-scheduling and freight packaging(locus.sh) and also the downfall in the number of startups trying to be Uber-for-X, it surely will be interesting to see if HyperTrack's offerings are still relevant.<p>Btw in 2016, at my previous startup we had used HyperTrack services for tracking of sales personnel on the field. We had issues with accurate location reporting and also there were quite some bugs. We then decided to stop using their API's. I hope that by now these issues are resolved.
Shameless plug: I'm one of the founders of TalkJS, which is essentially the HyperTrack of messaging.<p>If your brand new Uber-for-X needs great user-to-user chat (like Uber itself recently added), consider adding TalkJS within the same day. <a href="https://talkjs.com" rel="nofollow">https://talkjs.com</a>
This is a great example of using this API.<p>Seems like a no-brainer for HyperTrack to make a template app so that this becomes even simpler. Their example setup seems very agnostic to the system.
This comment is slightly OT, but this post prods at something I've been thinking about lately. Pessimistically, most programming is just writing a CRUD app with a layer of business logic over the top. Why haven't we been able to abstract or at least vastly accelerate that? Does anybody have any related reading/longform articles on this idea?
A logistic version would be way more beneficial. Basically an pick up a container and deliver it option.<p>A lot of effort is spend on just contacting either individual drivers or many small companies just to see who can pick up 1 container. This often done via multiple phone calls.<p>This "Uber-for-X" assumes you need it right now. Usually in logistics you don't; it's just the hassle or figuring out who can do it ahead of time.
Just two months ago was I looking for something like this! <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14600873" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14600873</a>
Would it be possible to move away from HyperTrack at some point, without losing all your customers to HyperTrack?<p>Iow, do they "control the gates"?
Tried looking at their FAQs link off that page but it doesn't open to any page, static or not static.<p>I'm guessing it's a course or tutorial for a tool or a service but if the FAQs don't show up from the outset, not sure I could take it to my bosses at this time.
Just a hint: <a href="https://www.hypertrack.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.hypertrack.com</a> on iOS Firefox (current version) is just a white page for me.
This is super cool. I've been looking at HyperTrack for the last couple of weeks. I'm curious what other use-cases or features others might imagine with this platform?