Trump, what is he good for? One local startup might tell you the soon-to-be president indirectly boosted its business.
According to the New York Times, Boston-based bus-sharing startup Skedaddle saw a spike in bookings following Trump’s Presidential Election victory. The reservations had a few characteristics in common: They had an arrival date of Jan. 21 with Washington, D.C., as the destination, and many of the travelers were women.
It didn’t take long to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Skedaddle was attracting the attention of people participating in Women’s March on Washington, an event where an expected 200,000 individuals will assemble the day after Trump’s inauguration to send the new president a strong message about equality.
“We’re bringing people to D.C. from as far away as Kansas,” Adam Nestler, co-founder of Skedaddle, told the Times. He added that on Friday and Saturday, more than 11,000 people will be taking their buses to the Women’s March, making it the company's largest ever two-day period of business.
Skedaddle was founded to help people without cars bus-pool to mutual destinations outside the scope of typical public transit. In September, it raised a $2.1 million funding round led by Arena Ventures, whose general partner Paige Craig was an early investor in Lyft, and included participation from Jason Finger, co-founder of Seamless (now GrubHub).
The funding followed the venture's national launch last year. In the fall, Nestler told us that since going national, it has quadrupled its user base and it had plans to reach 400,000 riders by the start of 2017.
Skedaddle isn’t the only startup reaping benefits from the Women’s March on Washington. More prominent on-demand companies like Airbnb and Uber have been bracing themselves for an uptick in users this weekend.
