This is gold. The "when someone ships with your tool it emails the recipient with the link" is exactly the kind of built-in distribution I should be thinking about. The real estate tool example is a great parallel. Thanks for taking the time to write this out!
Yep I'm aware of PiggyBee, they actually shut down in 2022. Grabr is still around but international only, and focused on shopping. Part of why I think theres room here, especially for domestic/regional routes that the bigger players ignored. BTW I never said the idea was new.
this is exactly the kind of specific example I was looking for. Going to listen to that episode. The "founders were the first drivers" pattern keeps coming up in this thread, that might be the way after all.
this is really helpful, especially the "build a list of clientele first" part. I've been so focused on the product that I havent done enough of this groundwork. The craigslist/facebook angle for finding travelers is smart, it crossed my mind but wasnt sure
fair question. BlaBlaCar, Uber, Airbnb all got the same pushback: why would you get in a strangers car, sleep in a strangers house. Trust infrastructure solves it over time: ID verification, package limits, photo documentation, escrow paymnts.
And people already do this informally all the time. Sending stuff "with someone who's traveling" is super common, it just happens with zero oversight right now. This adds structure and accountability to something that already exists
I think you are being too glib. The trust model is really different for small packages. Housing small amounts of drugs in objects is way easier and more likely than wrecking someone's airbnb.
And the consequences are higher for the driver. You can insure an airbnb or trip. Are you going to pay for someone's legal fees when they get popped for being a drug mule?
The bigger problem is that being a casual package courier is not worth the hassle.
Let’s say someone doesn’t want to pay FedEx $70 to ship a box next-day from San Francisco to Portland, so OP arranges for you to do it and charges $35, takes $10 off the top and pays you $25. Now you are supposed to drive to random person’s house to pick up the package, carry it across state lines, and drop it off at someone else’s house. You have to deal with potential flakes on both sides of this transaction and risk of carrying who knows what the whole time. For $25.
Would you agree to do this job? And if not, would you trust your package with someone who would?
> Would you agree to do this job? And if not, would you trust your package with someone who would?
You're absolutely right BUT I do want to point out a situation where the answer is "Yes" because the model is entirely different.
Last mile delivery is expensive because it does't enjoy the economies of scale.
I'm increasingly seeing increasing number of random personal vehicles drop off my retail packages that were shipped via UPS/FedEx to a central hub. I don't understand why these retailers even do this - these items are like $1-$10 and part of a much larger order that arrive in a staggered fashion. I would imagine people pay more than the item in just gas so it's likely a customer satisfaction thing.
I imagine either the retailer or UPS/FedEx indemnifies these people if and when things go wrong so these people have the backing of a multibillion dollar logistics company. Perhaps the OP could look into this portion of delivery? The OP is really light on location and painpoints to ave a real concrete conversation.
> I'm increasingly seeing increasing number of random personal vehicles drop off my retail packages that were shipped via UPS/FedEx to a central hub
I have also seen this, but I’m pretty sure these people are essentially employed as delivery personnel, and their cars are acting as small delivery trucks. I’m not sure how the cost for this work out. Maybe FedEx/whoever is closing the gap when they can’t get everything onto real delivery trucks and this is more cost effective than buying more trucks and hiring more drivers?
I think last mile is an interesting problem but OP seems to be intending to build full transit logistics infrastructure built on casual labor, which seems unlikely to pan out.
> I think last mile is an interesting problem but OP seems to be intending to build full transit logistics infrastructure built on casual labor, which seems unlikely to pan out.
I think we are unloading a lot of expectations on the OP. Maybe this was just an interesting thought experiment to them - "how would I solve the cold start?"
> Maybe FedEx/whoever is closing the gap when they can’t get everything onto real delivery trucks and this is more cost effective than buying more trucks and hiring more drivers?
Ah fascinating! This could explain why I see this behavior across multiple retailers. My initial hypothesis of "the retailer wants to see me happy" is now supplemented by "UPS/FedEx wants to see their retailer customer (not I) happy".
Free markets are fascinating and Thank You for offering this new perspective.
> Maybe this was just an interesting thought experiment to them
Possible, though OP says they are “About to launch the MVP”.
> ”UPS/FedEx wants to see their retailer customer (not I) happy"
Just to be clear, that was my guess. I’ve done no research on this specific thing so maybe some other factor is in play with these packages delivered from private vehicles.
I note that both Airbnb and Uber marketed as "use part of something you're not otherwise using", and almost immediately became professionalized. Full time drivers. People buying apartments to let out.
Maybe they wouldn't have worked without that professionalization? Which is of course not possible if you're going the "passing traveller" model.
This is the key thing. None of this “trust a stranger” stuff actually works out. Uber isn’t actually a rideshare. It’s a professional driver. Airbnb isn’t a room in someone’s house. It’s an apartment rental. GrubHub isn’t someone who picks up your noodles when they pick up theirs. It’s their job.
The courier model could totally work the same way. You want someone to drive your package from San Francisco to New York? Someone will happily do that. The trick is they will want to get paid. No one’s doing this stuff basically for free as a favor or to help OP’s company show a profit.
Maybe worked but at very small scale. The early Lyft with fist bumps and much more casual driver interactions worked at some level but was pretty small--and I actively avoided because of the vibe. You may borrow a tool from a neighbor but it's not a routine or neighborhood-wide thing for the most part.
This is completely different. While for Uber and AirBnb as the person delivering the service I have to worry about a private citizen either doing harm to my property (more statistically likely) or my person (much less likely), if I am pulled over by a cop carrying illegal goods I have to deal with the law enforcement.
Insurance can take of property damage.
My personal threat model is:
1. Law enforcement with qualified immunity and a “monopoly on [legalized] violence”
.
Gratitude doesn't scale: plot the stock price of Airbnb vs. user growth over time to verify.
You might be assuming an iterated game, but it's likely your initial market will be mostly an One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemma. Proper modelling will allow you to mathematically calculate your blind spots and test what it would cost to address them.
> Sending stuff "with someone who's traveling" is super common, it just happens with zero oversight right now
I think you're letting the excitement of starting a new company cloud your judgement here. I worry you're not valuing the "sphere of trust" of that someone properly.
If you and I were friends and I wanted you to carry a brand new unopened iPhone to my family in India because you were visiting, I don't think you would even open it and inspect it. I certainly wouldn't risk our friendship over a phone and even if I could put you in such a position, you would likely anticipate it and refuse.
That cannot be said between two absolute strangers who are engaged in this single transaction, never to meet again.
> Trust infrastructure solves it over time: ID verification, package limits, photo documentation, escrow paymnts
Not really.
Airbnb looses hundreds of millions of dollars a year, worldwide in theft, burglary, damage, murder and fraud. Airbnb does a fantastic job of scrubbing that information and making people sign NDAs as part of settlements.
The initial (2008 era) Airbnb market was full of people who appreciated they were getting an extremely affordable product and ensured the system would continue to function well.
I was an early Airbnb user and back in 2009 I used to carry in some supplies when I checked in, make and have breakfast with the host (it used to be actual owners living in their homes back then), vacuum the room and make the bed I used to be in before I checked out.
Unlike today, when some Airbnbs can exceed the cost of a hotel in that area after including all expenses, the price difference between a hotel and an Airbnb was absolutely insane (a week at an Airbnb would cost what a night at a hotel would in that area. Plus, the Airbnb came with free - often covered - parking, laundry, kitchen and full speed wifi).
These hosts would move heaven and earth for me. I knew I wouldn't need to worry about having a place with my previous hosts as long as I gave them adequate notice of my visit.
Since 2024, I don't use Airbnb anymore - those hosts are gone because their localities have banned Airbnb. Most of them have sold their homes and moved because income from Airbnb allowed them to live in those homes in the first place.
Hotels now are actually cheaper, there's atleast a few people onsite that I can talk to if I need something (my last 2 Airbnbs were literally fully remote and managed by a professional company that really didn't want to communicate, even by chat, at all as if every message cost them a loss of $100 from the booking) and in some cases the Airbnb cleaning fee exceeded the cost of the room itself!
Trust has turned from a Feature to an Expense at Airbnb and its new costs reflect that shift. Trust Infrastructure is now Airbnb's largest tax, a fundamental shift from being their greatest asset - the resulting horrible unit economics reflect the stock price performance.
yeah the "cheat" framing makes sense. I've been thinking about option 2, being the supply side myself at the start. Like personally coordinating the first few deliveries to prove it works before asking random travelers to sign up
option 1 is trickier when bootstrapped though. How do you incentivize signups without burning money you dont have? Curious if you've seen that work without VC funding behind it
Without burning money you'll need to be creative. Either do it yourself or go sourcing the supply side. Can you go find a group of people you can use to transport things and basically sign up on the platform on their behalf and then hand stuff off to them? Maybe you know some travel group that exist and you could pay them to take packages. You're basically acting in an agency model in the beginning instead of being a true P2P marketplace. It's a common strategy though it does often lead to just becoming an agency because it's more successful than your organic marketplace. This would be like if you called an Uber and Uber calls up a private driving service to pick you up.
The only real example I can think of being bootstrapped is Airbnb, and even that wasn't bootstrapped for long.
Unless you have a good go to market strategy, you might want to try something easier.
At the risk of being overly critical, the cost of shipping packages is pretty low unless you're trying to do same day delivery, in which case Uber already lets you get your package delivered.
interesting data. I use Claude Code daily and noticed 4.7 feels different but couldnt put numbers to it like this.
does your one-shot rate account for how much context you give it? I keep a detailed CLAUDE.md with project conventions and wondering if that closes the gap at all or if 4.7 just struggles regardless.
the fewer tools per turn thing worries me. Are you seeing it hallucinate project structure more? In my sessions it seems to want to figure things out in its head instead of actually reading the files
More expensive and lower first-try accuracy is rough. You planning to stick with 4.7 or going back?
Anthropic provides details regarding between Opus 4.7 and 4.6, including Opus 4.7 doesn't call tools as frequently as 4.6 due to being more capable. Depending on the task at hand, that could a good thing or not so good [1].
For example, regarding instruction following:
Claude Opus 4.7 interprets prompts more literally and explicitly than Claude Opus 4.6, particularly at lower effort levels. It will not silently generalize an instruction from one item to another, and it will not infer requests you didn't make.
That explains a lot actually. So the fewer tool calls its by design. Makes sense but for coding specifically I'd rather it read my files than guess whats in them.
The one-shot rate doesn't factor in context size directly, it just tracks whether an edit succeeded without retries. That said, a detailed CLAUDE.md probably helps both models equally since the context is the same either way. Would be interesting to isolate that though.
I have started to rollback to 4.6 for some important task as I was working with it from longtime but I am still using 4.7 for some fresh task.
On the fewer tools per turn, yeah I think that lines up with what the other reply mentioned about 4.7 being more "in its head." I have not specifically tracked hallucinated project structure but the higher retry rate suggests it is getting things wrong more often when it skips the read step
I do freelance consulting alongside building my own product.
My first clients came through a friend who connected me with people that needed someone to maintain a mobile app and its backoffice. Thats it. No cold outreach, no fancy strategy, just someone who knew what I could do and made the intro. I think most engineers underestimate how much work comes from just telling people around you what you do.
For getting more visibility I started writing about what I'm building on LinkedIn, sharing technical decisions, things I got wrong. People reach out from that. Not a flood but enough
One thing I'd warn about: consulting can eat your whole schedule if you let it. I had to put hard boundaries around my consulting hours because my own product was getting zero attention. Now I treat consulting as the thing that pays the bills while I build the thing I actually care about. If you dont set that boundary early you wake up in 2 years running a consultancy you never wanted.
the premise assumes nobody reads the code but thats not true. I review every AI generated diff and the model gets things wrong constantly, subtle stuff like changing a function signature that breaks another module or creating circular dependencies. If that was assembler I'd have zero chance of catching it
also you still need to maintain it. When something breaks in production you need to understand what the code does.
the real bottleneck with AI coding isnt the language its context. The model needs to understand your conventions, patterns, business logic. That gets exponentially worse with lower level languages not better.
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