The ride sharing space is changing the way people zoom around town. Taxis are no longer your only option with companies like Lyft, SideCar and Car2Go now offering their services.
But when you’re in need of a ride, it can be a time-consuming and irritating process shuffling through all the different apps on your phone to find the closest or more affordable option — and that’s exactly why the team at Red Ride thinks it has a solution.
Red Ride essentially does for the ride sharing industry what Kayak is doing for the travel industry. The app aggregates data from all the ride sharing options nearest to you and ranks them by estimated time of arrival and price. Then, you select your service, and Red Ride takes you to that app and auto-fills your location data.
“As anybody who owns a red car can tell you, red means fast,” said Chet Kittleson. “Red Ride is the fastest way to find out how to get from point A to point B.”
The idea was good enough to win first place a few days ago at Startup Weekend Seattle, and given how competitive the on-demand transportation industry is, Red Ride seems like a smart solution for consumers.
“The customer validation we did was extremely validating, and the response from the judges was overwhelmingly positive,” Kittleson said. “Ride sharing is shifting the paradigm around how we get where we need to go, and this app has the potential to make the ride sharing experience for all end users more positive.”
In terms of a monetization plan, the team is meeting with the ride sharing companies around Seattle to hopefully set up an “affiliate model.” Red Ride wants to be like Kayak: A service that both increases business for the providers and improves the overall experience for the customer.
“Think of this as a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats model,” Kittleson said. “We want to help the ride sharing industry and experience in general, and if we succeed at that we’ll find ways to monetize.”
For now, the team plans to continue working together on an Android and Google Glass app for Red Ride. The Glass app is pretty cool: The hardware asks “Do you need a ride?” and by simply saying yes, it books the closest ride to you.
Kittleson, Ben Gilbert, Demi Wetzel, Gabe Pelegrin, Dan Cromer, Zac Cohn, and Mohammad Adib worked together on Red Ride. You can check out their demo from last weekend here:
Previously on GeekWire: Test riding Sidecar and Lyft, the Coke and Pepsi of ride sharing … Ride sharing service Lyft zooms forward with $60M from Andreessen Horowitz
