This is a First Look: It's the first time any news outlet or blog has covered this startup. You can read more First Looks here. (We do this a lot.)
Uber, Lyft, SafeHer (formerly Chariot for Women), Fasten: The list of ride-hailing apps at your disposal throughout Greater Boston goes on. So when the bar closes its doors on Saturday night and you’re left standing on the curb, how do you choose which startup gets to take you home?
For many consumers, the most logical factor in picking any service provider is price. But when it’s 3:00 a.m. and all you can think about is crawling into bed, perusing multiple apps, assessing each one’s fare and factoring in varying surge rates doesn’t typically enter your tequila-coated mind. Oftentimes, you commit to one app and click "request" regardless of the surge rate.
Enter UrbanHail, a new startup coming out of Harvard Business School bent on doing all of the price comparison work for you. Hillary Maxwell and Rocky Lipsky, UrbanHail’s co-founders who are both finishing their first years at HBS, said their mission is to be the only provider that can give users side-by-side, real-time pricing - including surge rates - for different ride-sharing apps at any given moment.
“We don’t have to retrain the user because it’s what a ride-sharer is already comfortable with.”
How does UrbanHail work? Like any ride-sharing app, really. According to the duo, users simply enter where they are and where they’re going, just as they normally would. From there, UrbanHail generates a list of their transportation options with information like the estimated fare and arrival time for each one, along with whether a startup is currently in surge and by how much.
Maxwell explained, “We don’t have to retrain the user because it’s what a ride-sharer is already comfortable with.”
Once users evaluate their options, they just have to click on the best deal and UrbanHail brings them straight to the selected app’s interface. Customers don’t have re-enter any information. Thanks to APIs, their location and destination are autofilled for them. All they have to do is hit “request”.
Making consumers’ lives easier is a common theme with UrbanHail. For instance, the co-founders said users can customize their choices so they will only see comparisons for whichever services they like. And let’s not forget about how they could be saving money through the app.
Because UrbanHail is committed to helping consumers make smarter transportation purchases, Maxwell and Lipsky said they’re being deliberate about the startup’s revenue model. Mainly, they don’t want users to foot the bill.
“We don’t want to erase the benefit we’re giving them by charging them,” Lipsky said.
Instead, the startup is exploring a couple of alternate routes for revenue. The co-founders mentioned they’re entertaining a click-through model, similar to Kayak’s approach, as well as partnerships. But both of those options will be tested as they scale UrbanHail in Boston.
UrbanHail will be focused on marketing the app and gaining traction throughout the city, as the MBA candidates have some off time this summer. The venture, which started off as a FIELD 3 project, will also be looking to expand its functionalities and will eventually pursue funding. And once the waters have been tested in the Boston market, the co-founders said they'll be launching the app in strategic series of cities.
“It’s been really fun for us. Throughout development, we’ve been using it ourselves as testers, so we’ve benefitted from UrbanHail for months now,” Maxwell laughed.
