The Uber of Poland | Matthias Endler
A few years ago I visited a friend in Gdańsk, Poland. As we explored the city, one thing I noticed was that cabs were relatively expensive and there was no Uber. Instead, most (young) people used a community-organized service called Night Riders.
I couldn't find anything about that service on the web, so I decided to write about it to preserve its history. Delightfully Low-Tech
What fascinated me about Night Riders was the way the service operated — completely via WhatsApp: you post a message in a group chat and one of the free riders would reply with a 👍 emoji. With that, your ride was scheduled. You'd pay through PayPal or cash.
In these days of venture-backed startups that need millions in capital before they turn a profit, this approach is decidedly antagonistic. Basically, Night Riders built on top of existing infrastructure instead of maintaining their own ride-hailing platform, sign-up process, or even website.
The service would grow solely by word of mouth. Using existing infrastructure meant that it was extremely cheap to run and there were almost zero upfront costs without a single line of code to write.
