Would it be possible to create a lean competitor to Uber/Lyft that would pay out full rider fare to the driver? Let's call it RideDirect. It can require passengers to setup ACH payment to avoid credit card fees. Such system could be operated by a small group of software engineers (say 10 devs). The cost would only be cloud costs and salary for 10 devs. These costs can be covered by displaying non-intrusive location-based ads to the passenger. It would be easy to recruit drivers by playing up the unfairness of Uber/Lyft, "Lyft pays you $20 of $80 fare. Don't let fat cats rob you blind. Drive for RideDirect instead".
It is, but Uber & Lyft got a billions of cheap dollars they spent on growth. Your growth is going to be way slower than theirs.
There's also chicken & egg problem: no-one is going to use your app if it only has 5 drivers, and other drivers won't join your app if nobody uses it. Again, you'll need a lot of money to gain momentum in just a single city. It will be hard to get those funds from VCs, since your business model is less lucrative.
whenever I fly into a new European country/city, I wonder if I'll have to set up yet another account with whichever localized version of "RideDirect" is currently operating there before I can leave the airport
since the riders are the ones paying for the service, it may be more impactful to make an app designed for them, which then plugs into the independant smaller networks of drivers seamlessly. then I can fly into Hamburg and just tell whichever service is operating in that city that I'm around and need a ride.
> it may be more impactful to make an app designed for them, which then plugs into the independant smaller networks of drivers seamlessly
My understanding is that Uber already does that, though I don't know how big is the scale. There are cities where Uber operates only through a bunch of intermediaries (essentially taxi mini-companies). A driver cannot signup with Uber directly, they have to go to one of these companies.
