Most of the innovative start-ups that I have looked into are all trying to solve either travel or housing. I think you can make the maximum impact by combining both these things. In fact I strongly feel that you cannot solve either of these two problems in isolation.
Travel
When we say travel we mean that "person X needs to move from point a to point b, in time t". So in fact I think we should call this as mobility instead of travel. If you look at the goal being present at point B at a particular point of time is what matters. Generally this is the only thing that is non-negotiable while all other things are different constraints.
If you look at the constraints two major things that come to my mind are
- Cost of travel
- Time taken for the travel
Cost of travel that a person is ready to shell out is directly dependent upon importance of the activity that he is performing at point B, the kind of comfort/experience that he has during the travel from point A to B.
Time taken for the travel may not be a critical thing as long as we optimise in such a way so that all the points at which a person needs to be over a day or a period of span is taken care of and the quality of experience during the travel is a pleasant one.
Housing
This should ideally be called accommodation. If point A and B are same and if the person stays in that point for long enough duration we can call it accommodation. For a working individual who works away from home accommodation can pretty much be considered as a place where he spends most of the time sleeping getting ready and occasionally spending time with family.
Most of the times the location of the accommodation is decided by factors like distance to work, distance to amenities and facilities, the kind of neighbours that are present and the price per unit land. Most of these factors are generally orthogonal to each other because of the constraints and the difference between supply and demand. Lack of mobility of this factors is one of the major reasons where is the price of land increases exponentially if some of the other factors or satisfied.
Mobility and Accommodation
Now that we have established mobility and accommodation of the better terms to use I will start using this going forward. The way to solve these two problems is by combining them together. Add mobility to accommodation and add accommodation to mobility.
quotes
- The wrong house binds all subsequent decisions
other links
- https://twitter.com/ratkins/status/1535904404146094080?t=hh-XeXPf0isRPdGtkijymg&s=19
- https://twitter.com/sneakin/status/1535688833525743617?t=HjHGtG2JCFYOqLu60pYtaA&s=19