I want to sincerly beg for the forgiveness of the entire radar community.
It seems I should be more careful who I give my attention to.
I posted 3 replies on this thread directed at @mauri. I would have loved to actually see her point in saying why this will not work.
These messages were between 6-8 hours ago.
She replied to none of these, but had the time to post another unconstructive bash on another thread 2 hours ago. link.
Now I don’t check peoples profiles, but the previous reply by @diakon made me take a look at @mauri’s profile and here is what I found.
Tada!!!
Similar idea to the above by our very lovely @mauri.
So madam, instead of giving an example with GoMyWay, why did you not narrate your experience with ILovePair?
If you failed, why not tell your experience so that the next person can be better?
If you are sure it would not work, why not say why?
Anyways, I know you are looking for a way to delete your account. Is this why? so we cannot call your all knowing bluff for the BS that it is?
It says you are an intern, I actually hoped you had your own startup that is doing $1m in revenue.
I had seen several posts where the attention seeking troll in her came out but I have always ignored it because I like to keep conversations clean.
But to openly bash an idea with so much gusto when you tried a similar thing reeks of hypocrisy. I am really angry at it.
And a bloody intern???
I hate to judge people buy their position or achievement but she does not even have bragging rights???
On another thread, she was saying how people announce their funding but don’t give their operating numbers. Please @mauri give us the numbers of ilovepair.
Let us see the 3,000 daily active users that make you an expert on what startup will work.
Even Mark and Jason and Iyin and Erza do not claim to be the authority on the Nigerian startup scene to say what startup will work and what would not.
These people give help when they can. Free constructive advice.
Then some intern will be here saying come and say this.
and this
Not one constructive criticism. Please @lordbanks can you re-instate the ban she was on, or permanently remove the account.
So far, she does not seem to be adding any value to the forum.
Forgive me Radarians for dragging this thread off topic. I hope I don’t have to post any more rants.
Again,I could choose to ignore you but I won’t.
First and foremost, I once worked for Pair and I think I did very well : I will go back and work with Pair when the timing is right(Am proud I once did).
Secondly, if it’s that easy to be an intern with KPMG: can you please give it a try and see how far you go?
“As even Mark,Iyin etc Dont speak” ,and that means I shouldn’t : it shows how shallow and self-defeating you are.If Mark,Iyin and Jason are your measurement for your opinion to be aired or your symbol of the Zenith of the industry,then you are grossly ignorant.
The Nigerian startup scene has just began crawling and the guys who will dictate the future, are probably not the Kongas,Jumia,Paga and Iroko you see today.Look back in five years time, most of these coys will not even be remembered.
How many of our so-termed super startups shun $10m in net revenue yearly?I dont know of any.
Lastly,I Dont manage a startup, and I Dont intend doing that anytime soon.I wonder when launching a business, became everyone’s piece of cake .
On this platform, am wrongly termed a pessimist : even though I have praised a few startups in the past on here.(Iroko and Supermart).The problem I now know,is the fact a lot of people on-here love when fact is turned on its head and Jellycoated.
I remembered criticizing a Jekalo pitch 4,5 month ago ,and everyone got mad : even Mr. Banks suspended my account (didn’t have the balls to delete my account content though).Four months on,from that event ; whatever happened to Jekalo? It’s closed Shop.
Ask who was wrong now.
NB:From my first comment on this thread ,I stated clearly : “From my past experience”. Since I have worked in this space before, I wonder whom amongst you is more qualified to speak on this topic,than myself.
He/she doesn’t work at GoMyWay neither does he/she have friends in any right place but God is your strength “Mauri” … keep going with your “radar-counseling” service
Salut Damie,I hope I didn’t step on your cleat.
I do not have any personal vendetta towards you,or your startup. I only mentioned your startup, to buttress a point.
I also never stated I worked for Gomyway.I only stated a piece of verified info. Thrown around at my last workplace.
Could it be true,could it be false? Doesn’t bother me.
As of this moment, I have nothing to gain or lose from the above.
I think we met in a glance at a Starta event,sometime ago.I remember telling you,I loved what you were doing with Gomyway.You may not remember,but I do.
That opinion hasn’t changed.
Lastly, I take offence to your referring to me as “he/she”.It’s distasteful,and demeaning. Hopefully, you will apologize.
A former colleague used the iLovePair service…for a while
She was paired with someone plying Ajah to Ikeja. The challenge was that during the fuel scarcity the quality of the service she received was no longer consistent. Unfortunately, there was little that can be done as you will agree, the guy is the owner of the car, not iLovePair. She quit the service.
What PassportBus can do better (especially if they own the buses) is to:
Control the experiences of users by making sure service delivery is consistent each day. When they introduce partner buses, they should also adhere to the quality.
Have “pick up” times at designated locations. You might be surprised how many people want to have air conditioned trips to work (with free WiFi) if it is affordable.
In my previous comment, I had advised how to approach marketing.
Anyways, I can say any startup will fail and have very high accuracy because startups have extremely high failure rate.
Your example with jekalo does not hold any water.
But repeated posts asking you to give constructive criticism are left unanswered. So how does your wealth of experience help anyone?
So what if the startup scene in Nigeria is crawling? I look to those I can learn from now and if in 5 years you are doing better than all of them I will also check for what I can learn from you.
Please though. If you’ve never been through it, don’t act like you know shit.
It’s like a sec Sch grad coming to tell me about how to make a first class in university
I don’t talk about what I don’t know. If you have been involved in something like this, give constructive criticism or ignore.
Once again, if you point at every startup and say they won’t last 5 years you’ll be right more than 95% of the time. It’s nothing special
Please, how many buses do you have? There are a few other companies (shuttlers and staffbus) trying to do the same thing and I don’t think they have more than 1 bus each. If you don’t have enough buses, I think you can partner with hotels to increase your fleet.
Have you identified the high traffic routes?
What is your signup strategy? I would say, don’t focus too much on the app for now, do a lot of legwork. Visit companies, even try and get some companies to pay for their staff to be on this service.
What does this mean? If you own the buses, I don’t really see it as connecting, just see it as picking up commuters.
I am really interested in this service because I think there is a huge market for it. I will also be willing to share certain ideas with you guys if you are interested.
I had thought about this idea in the past. Heck one sunny afternoon, I even gave a mock TedEx speech regarding the Business terrain in Nigeria. I rang up my partner in crime and we geeked out for about 2 hours listing pros and cons then gave up after about the 6th cons. Wicked stuff.
some of our thoughts (which going by the comments are not even unique include)
Partnership with companies to pick up staff
Designated pick up and drop-off points only e.g Pick up at Stadium at 6:00am. Departure at 6: 20am. Drop-off points at say Bonny, Eko Hotel, Lekki Phase 1 gate. Tantalizer etc
Strict departure time in the morning and evening. Consistency is key
Subscription plan
Partnership with Nescafe for monetization and branding. Subscription come with free coffee and breakfast.
Air conditioned buses with slightly higher than average rate so your customers are strictly upwardly mobile and career professionals.
Well spoken drivers. They must be smartly dressed, great diction etc
Conducive environment to foster business relationships during trips
Brand-less buses to fly beneath government (tout) radar or government partnership so you can utilize BRT lanes and not be harassed by touts, police officials etc.
I could even imagine it spinning a sister logistic company for delivery of inter-state bulky cargo.
The amount of people who would quit driving to work and sign up would be astronomical. The sheer number of networking that would go on within that space, mind boggling. so many ways to monetize services within this business.
It will obviously not be a walk in the park to pull this off but it will be absolutely worth it. I am even still excited thinking about it.
Question here, aren’t the vehicles managed by Passport? The above quoted are a tad contradictory.
I am assuming you are owning the vehicles you will be using for this service
@WolfofBourdillon, I salute your courage and determination to hack one of the least innovated spaces in Nigeria (Uber doesn’t count). This space has remained the same way for this long because there are many pitfalls you have to cross blindfolded with your legs bounded together.
I must tell you about the monster of transit business and the ways I think you can get around them.
1.) Drivers - You have to be on them like hawks, put systems in place to make it harder for them to use their brain. They should just follow the plan and not get creative. They are full of excesses and always looking to make a quick buck off you.
2.) Traffic - Time waster of a thing. Running a scheduled service in Lagos’ soul eating traffic can mess up a lot of the pre-planned trips and customers will be irate the days you don’t repay the favour of waiting for them.
3.) Fuel - Hmmn! I nearly had heart attack… The quality of fuel varies from station to station, even under the same brand name. Planning average gallon per mile, will be a yoyo affair because of traffic or your drivers trying to syphon fuel out of the tank.
4.) Vehicles - Please I beg you in the name of God, do not buy Tokunbo vehicles. Maintenance will wear you out and this in turn will increase your down times. The domino effect is unimaginable. It is better you buy one brand new vehicle in place of 10 used vehicles.
5.) Govt/Tax/Police/Agbero Boys - You need to know some people in govt/police… Boys are not smiling and there is not flying under the radar with them o… They are under and over the radar too.
Please don’t go and be tracking GA or Mixpanel stats, You should focus on the operational stats like
Miles per gallon
Distance covered
Distance per trip
Trip Duration
Users per trip
Number of stops per trip
Stop duration
Even Tire Pressure - For better fuel consumption
The rest you will figure out… I have tried.
If you are using partners (other transport companies), they will have to deal with these issues too, including your own layers of requests. It won’t be easier, except you have the money Uber used to entice a lot of partners and achieve critical mass quickly enough not to be weighed down by these issues.
BTW, We have tried plenty things, failed at a lot of them, hit sweet spots with a few and we still wasting the money. Nothing is exclusively online, you have to go out and get your hands dirty. Online is only 3% of the work, the rest is out there…
Prepare for nightmares dealing with touts, police, LASTMA, NURTWA. In fact, you have to have a dedicated senior team member to deal with these issues preferbaly a Yoruba speaking former Army, Air f Force, Police or Navy Guy
I had thought about this idea in the past. Heck one sunny afternoon, I even gave a mock TedEx speech regarding the Business terrain in Nigeria. I rang up my partner in crime and we geeked out for about 2 hours listing pros and cons then gave up after about the 6th cons. Wicked stuff.