Hey thanks for reaching out.
To answer your question its a trade secret 
Just have it at the back of your mind a “lot of hard work”
has gone into this and verified by early conversant users like you.
And we still have more to do. We’d love any contribution to other cities if you have some.
Good stuff! All the best in your demo✌🏿️
I just signed up on your site and my first prep was off. When I asked how you get the routes and fares, there was a reason, I wanted to have some insight to how accurate the info you provide will be.
So, I ask again, how do you get the info?
Hey how’s it going man?.. Sorry to hear about that.
You mind sharing a link of the search query you performed?
Hi quick suggestion,
Allow me to choose a password i can remember.
“Passwords must have at least one digit (‘0’-‘9’). Passwords must have at least one uppercase (‘A’-‘Z’).”
This is a great service. I have some ideas on your business model and you are right to not want to share em.
This idea was why I registered directions.com.ng a while ago
People love the UI? Are you kidding me? it looks like it was made in powerpoint.
To answer your question, yes I do. And judging from my earlier comments (above), it’s obvious that I tested their application and can also vouch that UX is not shabby either.
Of course taste in UI could be subjective (so your opinion is of course valid), and maybe because I’m such a big fan of what they’re doing (even though only heard about them on Radar), and I wrote about them today (see below)…I can’t see the resemblance to ‘powerpoint’.
I am not Nigerian* but this really applies to all African startups. I really enjoyed the read (bookmarked).
The trend i am noticing is most African founders write code, launch a product (one that would ideally serve a year 2030 Utopian African market), do some textbook online marketing (fb ads,etc), sit back and expect users and revenue to trove in—without ever having to talk to the immediate and real potential users; the extremely under-served and technologically handicapped users (I am guilty of this too).
The reason is simple: The “schlep” involved is staggering! And most founders only love the sexy parts of running startups; sitting behind the pc and playing with graphs on their Mixpanel dashboard.
There is a dearth of hardcore grinders(founders) in the African tech scene who can deal with the painful work in on-boarding these users.
The potential billion dollar startups are hiding in the local markets(as you put it) with Papa Ijebu and Mama Ade.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! And you’re right about the ‘utopian’ market. We’ve still not learnt that’s it better to ‘find products for our customers’ rather than ‘find customers for our products’. Personally, I just think we need to start changing the narrative, that its only left to us to identify and solve ‘our’ real needs (like RP is doing)…No one else can do it for us.
Papa,
you are too, too kind to us!. Very insightful article that should be required reading for Nigerian start-ups. You hit it on the head with the reasons start-ups neglect the majority of Nigerians. They’re the exact reasons I’ve heard quoted over and over again by different people as if that market does not exist. As you noted, unbeknownst to them the ‘market woman in Isale Eko’ is probably a millionaire and can afford to pay for any product a startup has to offer.
They’re missing out on huge market opportunities and ways to innovate solutions to reach that market.
We’re still trying to get to those hard to reach areas ourselves. Any tips that you can share with us still learning?
Btw, can’t wait to for PrognoStore to launch.
Lol, I’m a learner as well o. However for tips, it definitely deserves a separate blog post. This will be easy as it will literally write itself. Will share once I’m done.
Yeah PrognoStore is coming…hopefully (fingers crossed) by end of November, we should be done with testing and ready to go. Thx
Nice start up, please come to abuja also give me an opportunity to register with a password i can remember
You know I attended a meeting today to present an idea for a project with a team…presented what I thought was a great idea to take to customers (value props and all); my project lead was not impressed because I did not start with a Lead-user driven approach…just stressing how important product design and business models have to be driven by the lead users identified. One user paying to use your product is the motivation for building it, not your ‘eureka moment’. This is exactly the mindset we need to proffer local solutions to local problems with a global perspective off-course.
Let me take a moment to appreciate the TechCabal team…great job guys! I am out of Nigeria but remain very very interested in what is going on in the tech space in Nigeria. We have an emerging market with growth opportunities that triple that in North America and elsewhere… (those economies have reached a growth plateau jare 
…)
Love the RoadPreppers idea…take to market and keep tweaking and pivoting as seen fit for the target market.
Ore, so he’s your namesake 
Been ages…
This is completely true! The only caveat I think of is when do we draw the line at ‘fun’ projects and ‘real’ products? Most ‘real’ products started as ‘fun’ projects. A maker will always scratch the creative itch and work backwards sometimes to fill the commercial angle. So it can be a grey line sometimes.
On the other hand, if one is committing resources and time to building an AI based chat line for Lagos pets, then we can say ‘mister stop wasting your time, no pets in Lagos’. Our animals are for eating!
Am always at a loss of what the thread is about each time it shows up on the home feed.
Not feeling the title bro, not feeling it!
In-between my take;
I think, this solution should be deployed as a mobile first application. Affords you more opportunity in engaging your users’ already embattled attention, with push notifications etc.
Heard you mention something about pain stakingly collecting fare info for the application?
I was hoping the fare pricing was algorithmic; I mean having collected actual fare data for major transits, reproduce pricing break down per KM travelled off that data. Hence forming the baseline for all pricing, to be adjusted by verified user inputs only.
You may also want to create a reward system to drive contribution; like gifting active contributors with X00MB + of data per weekly contribution.
And also looking at your prospective user market; young, active schoolers/jobbers (atoning for the active travelling), non-car owners, Yes? They are more likely to see data topup as a valauble reward. Worth chasing down every week.
Glad you decided to read on despite not feeling the title. It’s in reference to the disparages to Google we’ve received while developing this solution. Despite (or in spite) of them we’ve come up with a solution that some people say is more accurate and useful 
Thanks for the mobile suggestion. We had initially thought of a mobile first app and went with a mobile friendly web app that’s cross platform. Whether you have a mobile device (blackberry, android, iOS, symbian, windows) or you’re on a PC (windows, mac, linux) RoadPreppers is one click away. And you don’t have to start off by using up 20 MB of your data to get going.
We would love to tell you how the pricing actually works. But we’ll keep that one for ourselves. Nice try though, lol.
User engagement is definitely the crux of every product, we are no exception to that rule. Speaking of users, topups and rewards, we’ll be teaming up with JARA for our demo. There will be refreshments and airtime giveaways so feel free to RSVP if you haven’t done so.
You’re right, our main prospective users are young, active schoolers/jobbers and non-car owners. But we all have a friend or family member with a car that we call to pick us up from a jam. That’s why we also have driving directions that you can share within the app: http://roadpreppers.com/car/0/Surulere-Lagos/iDEA-Hub-Herbert-Macaulay-Road-Lagos-Mainland-Lagos
I’d be surprised if you were referring to Google maps.
Ok, buddy. Nevermind that i got 70% more on fare for a distance i know very well.
Have you also considered the price change given the time of day, rush hours etc.?
1.No, just referring to the average size of apps that I’ve downloaded. The Google Maps app from the Google Play Store shows that the size is well over 20MB.
2.That is great news for us. We’re trying to build a community at RoadPreppers. We’d appreciate it if you provide a link for the route you found. We can then all work together to discover cheaper routes and save everyone more money.
In addition, we would be interested if you have any insight into how EasyTaxi does their pricing
As regards your question on price changes, RoadPreppers provides a range of prices that covers the best conditions ( i.e sunny day ,no fuel scarcity…etc) to worst ( rush hour, its raining, you’re light skinned oyinbo) .