Vegas Transport Contract

A story about how Shaan and his friend discovered and executed on a city transportation opportunity in Las Vegas.

"We started brainstorming if you could go to a city that needs a specific type of transport, different than what they already have with their buses, and become their vendor. That's exactly what they did - they went to Las Vegas.

The city had what they called a 'transportation desert' - a place where their routes don't really go but a lot of people need transportation in this area. People were complaining about it. The city agreed to pre-buy about a quarter million dollars worth of rides from them.

Instead of trying to get a quarter million people to download your app like Uber, you just needed one city official to say 'I'll buy $250,000 worth of rides and that'll last us a few months and let's see how that goes.'

The insight came from studying other successful models. We discovered a $30 billion company that partners with cities to run their transportation systems. They bid for the right to run transportation in cities and secured these valuable contracts. Then we looked at city bike share programs, which used the same model - they went to New York, built a $100 million revenue business, and eventually sold to Lyft for hundreds of millions."