GoCatch

What makes you think this will be a success?

There’s huge potential in the taxi industry. It’s a highly regulated, monopolistic sector, so it’s a hard game, but at the same time they are still using CB radios, which is technology from the 1920s.

Also, catching taxis isn’t as easy as it should be. A lot of taxi drivers spend half of a 12-hour shift driving around looking for a fare. There’s a mis-match of supply and demand. It should be easy and painless to get a cab.

It’s easy selling the app because it’s free, but also because taxi drivers can see the value in it every day.

If they don’t get lucky, they can drive around, not get passengers and actually get paid less than the minimum wage. We did market research with 250 drivers and they’ve informed the way we’ve developed it. They’ve given us a lot of guidance.

How was the development process?

We launched the app in the App Store on June 23 and it took nearly six months to get it there. There were a lot of late nights spent discussing the functionality and lots of testing. We went through so many versions.

I’d have to say that as a lay-person when it comes to software, I’d highly recommend getting a technical co-founder on board.

If it’s free to use for passengers and taxi drivers, how are you going to make money?

It will definitely be a strong revenue business but at the moment we are looking at the different ways we can make money from it.

There are subscriptions, group buying discounts or location-based advertising. We’ll have to wait and see how it pans out.

We need to wait for the consumer uptake of the app. It’s pointless monetising it until we do that. We don’t have to monetise it straight away, we’ve got a reasonable window of time.

At the moment, 400 taxi drivers in Sydney and 300 in Melbourne are using it.

Will you be launching future apps?

We are focused 100% on GoCatch – we aren’t app developers. Go Catch is our business. We plan to add functionality but we will focus on the one app.

I think there’s potential for millions of people around the world to use this. We’ll be driving uptake with PR, seeding the app with drivers, partnerships and guerrilla marketing. If I have to stand in Martin Place and shout about the app to get people interested, I will.