Almost every time I talk of disruption, the first thing that comes to mind is Uber. The old system of cabs everywhere in the world was very inefficient in mapping supply to demand and concentrated all the riches and control in the hands of a few, and those few were never the drivers who did all the hard work. It was a system that was ripe for disruption, and Uber and other such ride-hailing apps did so. Drivers and passengers found themselves much more efficiently, and drivers, on paper at least, had full control over when and how much they work. But for all that they have done to disrupt the bad system of old, Uber and their ilk are problematic too.
Engage in a conversation with any cab driver using Uber, and more often than not, you will get to hear a story that makes them out to be lab rats or Pavlov’s dogs. And the money they have been making from driving for Uber has been dwindling. Much like the hedonistic treadmill from the world of philosophy, the cabbies have had to drive more and more just to maintain their rate of earnings. We have got to a stage where this space seems to be ready for another disruption.
Cory Doctorow advocates something he calls ‘platform cooperativism’ for this, inspired by the reasonable success of an app called Ride in Austin. Ride is a community-driven company that is non-profit. Because they are non-profit, they are able to allow drivers to earn more per ride, compared to Uber or other such ride-hailing apps. In a recent article for Locus magazine, he gets a bit more devious and has these cooperative platforms piggybacking on Uber, Lyft and so on, by using them for matching the driver and passenger, and then cancelling it and carrying out the transaction in the co-operative platform. Doctorow’s idea will have little appeal to anyone who is not a radical communist, but it does give me an idea about what might be common to the next wave of disruptive startups, not just when it comes to cabs, but in many other sectors as well.
Pretty much every disruptive startup so far has concentrated on how they can make it convenient or efficient for the buyer. So across sectors, you now find large sections of disgruntled sellers. Or the producers of goods, even. So platforms that optimise on the seller side have a great chance of being big success stories. Their biggest challenge will, of course, be how they are going to have enough buyers on their platform, especially in the initial stages where the seller side efficiencies have not yet translated into any benefit that the seller can pass on to the buyer. Startups that solve this puzzle, are the startup world’s next unicorns.
The author heads product at a mid-sized startup in the real estate space
