NEW YORK: A few days after Donald Trump won the presidential election, the founders of Skedaddle, a bus start-up, began seeing some unusual activity.
Their tiny company, which makes an app that lets individuals collectively commission private bus rides, was suddenly hit by a surge in bookings. Some of the bookings originated from places where Skedaddle has done little business before, including Wichita, Kansas; Madison, Wisconsin; and Macon, Georgia. All of the reservations were for travellers to arrive the same day, January 21, at the same destination: Washington.
There was another twist. Many of those booking the bus trips were women.
The Skedaddle founders realised that the prospective riders were all going to Washington to be part of the Women’s March on Washington. That is an event being held Saturday, the day after Trump’s inauguration, where people plan to gather to send a message about upholding their civil rights.
“We’re bringing people to D.C. from as far away as Kansas,” said Adam Nestler, one of the founders of Skedaddle, which is based in Boston and New York City. The company said that on Friday and Saturday, it will transport more than 11,000 people to the Women’s March, or about 5 per cent of the 200,000 people expected to attend. That is the largest ever two-day period of business for the 19-person company.
The spike in bookings makes Skedaddle one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the presidential inauguration. Across Washington, hotels and restaurants are set to be packed over the weekend, and other companies are also trumpeting what they expect to be a rise in their business. Airbnb, the online room rental service, said Friday that it has more than 15,100 guests booked in Washington for inauguration weekend. And Uber said it has been working to ensure that its ride-hailing services work smoothly in the city during inauguration week.
Other bus start-ups are also tapping into the inauguration demand. Skedaddle’s main rival is Rally, which was started in 2010 to transport people to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a political gathering hosted by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Rally, which provided bus transportation to specific events but now lets people make their own routes, said it is bringing 50,000 people to the Women’s March, as well as buses of Trump supporters to the inauguration.
“This is a once-in-a-generation event in terms of numbers, and no single organisation can move them all,” said Numaan Akram, a founder and the chief executive of Rally.
Unrecognised tech start-ups have been lifted by presidential inaugurations before. In 2009, for President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, Airbnb was largely unknown and the practice of paying to sleep in a stranger’s home was relatively uncommon. But most Washington hotels were sold out and word of Airbnb spread quickly among people desperate for a place to stay. Airbnb now operates in more than 34,000 cities worldwide and is valued at $30 billion.
Skedaddle may see some similar inauguration benefits. The company was founded in 2015 by Nestler, his brother Craig, Brad Werntz and Louis Harwood, who had met through a combination of school and previous work at start-ups. None of the founders are older than 29, and this is the first company any of them have started.
The four founded Skedaddle to allow people to create bus routes to wherever they please, with a mission of letting users “ride to amazing destinations with inspiring people.” Once a route has at least 10 people, Skedaddle works with a local transportation company to provide the appropriate van or bus. The company works with higher-end, luxury transportation companies.
Skedaddle makes money by securing a discounted rate from the transportation providers for bringing in a higher volume of customers. The average price of a ride on Skedaddle is $45 to $50. As a route fills with more people, the company’s margins grow. Skedaddle has raised more than $3 million from investors.
Riders can book, track and rate their transportation providers on Skedaddle, just as they can with Uber or Lyft. But in contrast with Uber and Lyft, all of the vehicles and drivers that Skedaddle contracts with are licensed and insured for commercial operations.
While Skedaddle aims to someday replace established bus services like Greyhound and Peter Pan, much of its early business has focused on getting people out of cities for trips like weekend getaways. It has partnerships with 17 ski resorts and with music festivals like Bonnaroo, and it has been moving an average of 50,000 riders per month.
“Today Skedaddle appeals to self-selecting groups, like music lovers and skiers,” said Paige Craig, an investor in Skedaddle who was also an early investor in Lyft. “That inherently social aspect of the company is a big advantage.”
The Women’s March on Washington is just the sort of grass-roots, viral event that Skedaddle was built for. The march began with a Facebook post by Teresa Shook, a retired lawyer in Hawaii who, the day after the election, urged women to make their presence known in Washington. With the march and other inauguration activities happening, transportation emerged as a key issue for the event’s organisers.
“When we were trying to hire charter buses, there were big questions about insurance and upfront payments,” said Lauren North, an organiser of the march who is based in Louisville, Kentucky. “We were having a hard time moving all of these people to D.C.”
North had not heard of Skedaddle until someone mentioned the app during an organising meeting. She said about 800 people from Kentucky are going to the march and nearly half of those will use Skedaddle.
“Skedaddle has been a huge help,” North said. “It means something to us that they share our values and are proud to support the cause.”
Skedaddle is politically agnostic and would have transported Trump supporters to the inauguration, but none of the company’s employees voted for Trump and Nestler said his company is proud to support the marchers.
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As more people booked seats to the march, Skedaddle employees scrambled to keep up, working longer hours and on weekends. Everyone took on additional roles, with many pulled in to help with customer service. Women’s March organisers and bus riders have been punctuating their emails to Skedaddle with expressions of relief and heart emojis.
So huge was the bookings surge for Skedaddle — the company had interest from thousands more riders than are booked — that in early January, it cut off the number of new routes to Washington. The company said it did not want to run the risk of signing up so many people that it could not serve them all well.
“The march has opened doors for us in new places,” said Lindsay Dougherty, Skedaddle’s marketing director.
