June 10, 2009 at 01:51The second startup pancake. Error handling
After an experimental fraud with an ailavsinem , which ended last summer, I turned off the Internet for a while, with interest exploring from the inside how a regular commercial bank works. Traveling in the banking sector would be very exciting if the global financial crisis didn’t come in handy. But even without it, it is worth noting that working in a bank, even designing, is a rather routine task.
At the end of last fall, once again exploring the site of the Posteron the subject of inventing what would be completed, developed and improved there (and there is a lot of this there), I suddenly stumbled upon such a point that there are areas in which “manual” consumer search of a suitable option with active use still dominates phone. On the subjectivity of the same Poster, this was clearly visible with restaurants and the reservation of tables in them.
The standard Internet project response to a user’s request for navigation in a certain field is obviously known: collecting all items in one heap and: lists, sortings, ratings, discussions, news, etc. For example, banki.ru . By the way, if anyone knows an equally well-developed site in the insurance industry, especially auto, tell me, I will be extremely grateful.
I wanted to do a trickier thing: not a comparative search service, but a comparative ordering service. And here the taxi sphere just caught my eye, in which, at least sometimes, the question of the optimal choice is generally inferior to the need for the optimal choice now from the available one. A man needs to leave now, he calls one taxi fleet, they say, “In an hour.” - “No, it's a long time,” calls another, “The car will be in a half.” - He also refuses, calls back to the first, and there they can already send the car only after two hours. The situation, of course, is model, but quite real, judging by the reviews of some friends.
As a result, despite the hasty and artisan approach, a working prototype was implemented:
sprositaxi.ru
You send an order, you receive offers from different taxi fleets (in which they indicate not only the tariff and delivery time, but also the make-model of the machine), choose what you like best - and then, as usual, you go.
You can, by the way, try it.
It turned out to be amusing to realize this not only through the Internet, but also through ordinary sms. Initially, I thought that this would be the most difficult aspect, but in reality it turned out that the SMS services sphere is very well developed infrastructure, and tasks in this direction are outsourced without any problems for a reasonable price.
In the legal and accounting part, the most unpleasantly surprising thing was that it is very difficult to be a legal entity without an actual office. And if with the tax this is somehow solved by a guarantee letter - an intention to rent an office in the future, then for an elementary opening of a current account in a bank, you have to arrange a mini-performance with a kind of work in an office.
In a very limited budget, a situation where a person with the necessary competence is ready to work in the project for a share is, of course, very pleasing. But here I completely did not take into account a seemingly simple moment: a share in an LLC is the same type of asset as money. And if money is paid for the work actually done, and done well and on time, then you need to do the same with the share, especially if this specialist does not plan to participate in this project as a main activity for himself.
It's cool that we have competitors - taximer.ru
The guys started in early May, a month ahead of us, and it’s funny that they went to the same goal as us, directly from the opposite side - first implementing the information and communication layers, postponing the service for later. We are obviously inferior to them in terms of advertising budget and development resources, therefore I will allow myself a little bit of vicious and shameless criticism.
Unpleasantly surprising, with a seemingly declared call for full information coverage, the lack of relevant information on the tariffs of some companies. Of course, the coolness of the “checked” and “not checked” icons is clear - it’s some navigational convenience for users and the ability to get extra money from taxi parks for it, but to constantly monitor and keep up to date all the information on the basis of which the claimed main thing works - tariff comparison - it is necessary regardless of who pays how much. I hope it will be worked out with them over time and normally held.
One of the obvious problems of social service Internet projects, resulting from the very nature of the Internet, is the irresponsibility of the opinions of each individual user. The typical approach to removing this problem is also quite obvious - community development through building reputation-hierarchical structures. But in purely consumer and fiercely competitive spheres, this approach becomes especially long and difficult and it is not at all a fact that it is true. And in this regard, the approach “not how to make good appear” but “how to limit the appearance of bad” may be more effective and real. At least, it seems to me that it’s worthwhile to think in this direction, and for example, to give an opportunity to comment on the quality of a product or service only to those who know that he tried a given product or service (ordered it through the provided service).
But in general - it is very curious how they implement and build the order service directly.
We will see how things go with us and with them (with us - money will probably run out soon, we will close, so - take the opportunity to use the service while we are still alive), there will probably be similar projects (by the way, there are interesting projects of software associations of taxis such as globaltaxi.ru , but it’s less for customers, more for taxi companies themselves - that's why it's a different story) and, as a result, I think that in this particular area the statement of Anton Borisovich will not work, and there’s not just enough space for everyone, but someone left then one who manages to quickly and it is better than others to implement all (it is quite foreseeable list).
It is curious, by the way, that similar-type ideas penetrate other areas, for example, tourism: putevki.ru
At the end of last fall, once again exploring the site of the Posteron the subject of inventing what would be completed, developed and improved there (and there is a lot of this there), I suddenly stumbled upon such a point that there are areas in which “manual” consumer search of a suitable option with active use still dominates phone. On the subjectivity of the same Poster, this was clearly visible with restaurants and the reservation of tables in them.
The standard Internet project response to a user’s request for navigation in a certain field is obviously known: collecting all items in one heap and: lists, sortings, ratings, discussions, news, etc. For example, banki.ru . By the way, if anyone knows an equally well-developed site in the insurance industry, especially auto, tell me, I will be extremely grateful.
I wanted to do a trickier thing: not a comparative search service, but a comparative ordering service. And here the taxi sphere just caught my eye, in which, at least sometimes, the question of the optimal choice is generally inferior to the need for the optimal choice now from the available one. A man needs to leave now, he calls one taxi fleet, they say, “In an hour.” - “No, it's a long time,” calls another, “The car will be in a half.” - He also refuses, calls back to the first, and there they can already send the car only after two hours. The situation, of course, is model, but quite real, judging by the reviews of some friends.
As a result, despite the hasty and artisan approach, a working prototype was implemented:
sprositaxi.ru
You send an order, you receive offers from different taxi fleets (in which they indicate not only the tariff and delivery time, but also the make-model of the machine), choose what you like best - and then, as usual, you go.
You can, by the way, try it.
It turned out to be amusing to realize this not only through the Internet, but also through ordinary sms. Initially, I thought that this would be the most difficult aspect, but in reality it turned out that the SMS services sphere is very well developed infrastructure, and tasks in this direction are outsourced without any problems for a reasonable price.
In the legal and accounting part, the most unpleasantly surprising thing was that it is very difficult to be a legal entity without an actual office. And if with the tax this is somehow solved by a guarantee letter - an intention to rent an office in the future, then for an elementary opening of a current account in a bank, you have to arrange a mini-performance with a kind of work in an office.
In a very limited budget, a situation where a person with the necessary competence is ready to work in the project for a share is, of course, very pleasing. But here I completely did not take into account a seemingly simple moment: a share in an LLC is the same type of asset as money. And if money is paid for the work actually done, and done well and on time, then you need to do the same with the share, especially if this specialist does not plan to participate in this project as a main activity for himself.
It's cool that we have competitors - taximer.ru
The guys started in early May, a month ahead of us, and it’s funny that they went to the same goal as us, directly from the opposite side - first implementing the information and communication layers, postponing the service for later. We are obviously inferior to them in terms of advertising budget and development resources, therefore I will allow myself a little bit of vicious and shameless criticism.
Unpleasantly surprising, with a seemingly declared call for full information coverage, the lack of relevant information on the tariffs of some companies. Of course, the coolness of the “checked” and “not checked” icons is clear - it’s some navigational convenience for users and the ability to get extra money from taxi parks for it, but to constantly monitor and keep up to date all the information on the basis of which the claimed main thing works - tariff comparison - it is necessary regardless of who pays how much. I hope it will be worked out with them over time and normally held.
One of the obvious problems of social service Internet projects, resulting from the very nature of the Internet, is the irresponsibility of the opinions of each individual user. The typical approach to removing this problem is also quite obvious - community development through building reputation-hierarchical structures. But in purely consumer and fiercely competitive spheres, this approach becomes especially long and difficult and it is not at all a fact that it is true. And in this regard, the approach “not how to make good appear” but “how to limit the appearance of bad” may be more effective and real. At least, it seems to me that it’s worthwhile to think in this direction, and for example, to give an opportunity to comment on the quality of a product or service only to those who know that he tried a given product or service (ordered it through the provided service).
But in general - it is very curious how they implement and build the order service directly.
We will see how things go with us and with them (with us - money will probably run out soon, we will close, so - take the opportunity to use the service while we are still alive), there will probably be similar projects (by the way, there are interesting projects of software associations of taxis such as globaltaxi.ru , but it’s less for customers, more for taxi companies themselves - that's why it's a different story) and, as a result, I think that in this particular area the statement of Anton Borisovich will not work, and there’s not just enough space for everyone, but someone left then one who manages to quickly and it is better than others to implement all (it is quite foreseeable list).
It is curious, by the way, that similar-type ideas penetrate other areas, for example, tourism: putevki.ru