Toogethr Blog

Toogethr has been acquired by Calendar42

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 10:41:16 +0100

Read the press-release here: http://cal42.com/y6X17

Toogethr is closing down and here is why... [updated]

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 09:44:00 +0200

Whilst carsharing is on the rise, Toogethr can’t find a path to revenue

[Updated 5 February 2015]
Toogethr has been acquired by Calendar42. Read the press release here: http://press.calendar42.com/95285-carpool-startup-toogethr-overgenomen-door-calendar42

[Updated 22 December 2014]
We are happy to announce that Toogethr is in exclusive talks with a party committed to continuing the Toogethr free carpool and rideshare service. More news will follow soon.
—

On 31 December 2014, the Toogethr carpool and rideshare service will be closed down. We regret this decision. To help you understand why we are doing so, this blog post will provide you key insights. As not everyone is interested in the full story, let us start by thanking anyone who has put their energy, believe, time, money or interest in Toogethr. It surely was one of the best rides we ever had.

In the time between our first sparks and ideas early 2011 and now, we as founders have learned massively. The aim of this post is to share with you our highs, lows, and most importantly key learnings. We feel obliged to do so, allowing you to better understand what the contributing factors are and hopefully preventing you from making similar mistakes. We deliberately tried not to be complete, allowing us to focus on the most important insights.

TOOGETHR, THE SERVICE
Toogethr is a leading carpool and rideshare service primarily in the Netherlands. A single service that is addressing both the occasional ride to a city or an event, as well as daily commutes. We always focused on the experience of the end-user (e.g. car drivers and people looking how to get from A to B), allowing him/her to save money, getting conveniently from A to B, helping/meeting others.

Our internal mantra was: “AirBnB for the road”, referring specifically to the great user experience, the challenge of building a marketplaces, getting traction, disrupting the current mobility market status-quo and the community-driven approach.

LES ENTREPRENEURS
As founders we never ran startups nor businesses before. We were experienced in working at other companies (both small and large) for quite a few years as well as being freelancers. We don’t have MBA’s or attended business schools. We brought to the table an extensive skill-set including software development, marketing, and design. Experience combined with being committed full-time (no side business providing some monthly income) and eager to make a difference. We started small and eventually hired additional people with specific skills (such as iOS development, partner management and UX design) to complement our skills.

We quickly proved to be comfortable in new territories such as PR, community management and finance. We daily read a wide variety of blog posts (definitely not just the major tech news), books on entrepreneurship, financing and structuring investments. We engaged with many others to flatten the learning curve. For instance we have an advisory board of 6 seasoned professionals. We even had pre-mediating meetings once every 6 weeks to reflect on our cooperation as founders. We continuously asked our users for feedback. We were confident we had all the required knowledge or access to it at hand. And we certainly believed that lack of knowledge was not one of the contributing factors leading to this post.

Most importantly, we never had real fights or major issues with co-workers. We happily disagreed with each other from time to time, leading to exchange of thoughts and new directions for learning. But we could always put aside our ego’s and put our customer and the business first. We never used our control rights as a shareholder or director. Many startups are not that lucky, and even fail because of this.

WHAT WAS AWESOME?
Sounds pretty go so far! There are even more factors we recognize as being worth mentioning:

On the marketing side:
* Strong PR attention. Major media is always looking for news that touches upon innovation, consumer cost reduction, or social improvements in combination with a story to tell. We managed to ‘secure’ attractive placements such as DWDD (the #1 daily TV show), de Telegraaf and VPRO Tegenlicht. Don’t underestimate the importance of good old media such as TV and newspapers. Despite our services was immature, our technical infrastructure could handle the peaks with a charm.

* Partnerships with major festivals: Many event organizers are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and are willing to integrate with and promote a reliable rideshare service. We pleasantly worked together with large-scale events such as Mysteryland, Pinkpop, Solar, and Oerol. Their fan base is large and open to meet others. Do not underestimate the strength of the communities behind these events.

On the finance side:
* Low cost. We managed to keep our burn-rate low. Forget about expensive cloud services providers such as AWS or Google App Engine (used to be). Save on office rent (we paid €275 for a space to host 7 persons in downtown Amsterdam), work with an in-house team of skilled employees and freelancers (instead of development companies billing you monthly), and save on salaries and management fees (people with high salary expectations are not fit to work in startups anyhow). Important learning: do the bookkeeping yourself and have an accountant who is on the ball. This enforces you to know your burn-rate and cash flow at every second of the day - your most important financial metric.

* Investments and subsidies. Everyone seems to look for VCs, whereas you need to start with some money from friends or family. Once these initial sources dry up, go after the ‘free’ money. This will cost you substantially more time, but the conditions are great. We secured subsidies from AgentschapNL, Stichting DOEN, ESA-BIC, in addition to using the Dutch WBSO tax credit. Learning: forget about ‘subsidy consultants’ at this stage. They take a cut of around 10% and their added value is limited, unless you apply for complex subsidies such as the Dutch Innovatiebox.

On the technology side:
* Product based on web technologies. Most of us have been exposed to the ongoing debate when building apps: should we go the native way or use HTML5 with a wrapper. Knowing that we could never ever build the ‘right’ app from start and did not have all the necessary skills in house, nor the budget, we decided to start off with web technologies. When you learn as you go, you need to be able to change your service rapidly. Our decision to build everything using web technology helped us to do so. Of course, you don’t have the best user-interface, but that is not possible anyhow when your initial job is learning from your initial users.

* In-house team with all the necessary skills. Some startups are founded by developers, others are founded by business-oriented folks. Anyhow, we could not imagine the one without the other. The longer you postpone to complement your team with ’the other’ side, the more difficult in gets. In our case we chose to start with all skills in-house. Tip: don’t follow others here blindly. Maybe for your startup, you can start off with a simple Wordpress website and no in-house developers or designers. Choose the team that best helps you getting to your first major milestone.

On the management side:
* Understand your key metrics: We assume all startups get this one straight from the beginning. If you don’t measure your (online) performance, nor ask user feedback, in combination with not having some kind of KPI, how the hell can you measure progress? Don’t go overboard with complex dashboards. Our advice here: if you can’t live with 1 or 2 KPIs, revisit your strategy.

* Cooperation between founders. We never had any discussion about ‘who is the CEO’. What a waste of time! All the founders are ‘CEO’ from day one onwards. Until some day an investor walks in and starts asking. Despite that not all founders have equal share of equity, they should all have the same management fee, bear the same responsibility, show the same drive and never ever bash each other. Your co-founder is never ever perfect. Nor are you. Tip: Reflect continuously about your own performance in relation to your hubbies and vice versa. Don’t expect other people to change, but that does not mean you should not give them constructive feedback. Running a startup also means to learn about your own attitude, your way of working and how to improve yourself to become a ‘better’ person.

OUR PIVOTS
As soon as we launched, we noticed that we had more traffic then we forecasted. We even had more drivers offering rides (the supply side, where we focused our marketing efforts on) than potential passengers. That made us happy. What frustrated us, that even when offer and ride request matched, the actual success percentage was only a fraction of what we hoped for. There were many reasons why even perfect matches did not end up in a joint ride. The most painful one: the largest parts of our users were not happy with our fee based-model. Many preferred to offer rides for free, or settle a fee in car or get ‘paid’ with a cup of coffee. We did not even write a fee-based payment down as an assumption to be tested (confirm Lean Startup). We took this one for granted. Ouch!

We started to execute several tests. We tried variations in terms of fee percentage, allowing or not allowing offering free rides, or mandatory minimum fees. This resulted in no significant improvement, eventually leading to an important pivot: the 'no fee based business model’ that seemed to be the best, … except for us. The fact that we were not really adding much value once people had a match (in contrast to for instance Snappcar who arranges a car insurance during the rental period) was one thing we could not solve. So we decided to get rid off the fee, forcing ourselves to find a different business model. On the flip side, the number of joint rides grew.

Our pivot was more then just around the business model. As we could not find a business model in the consumer space, we subsequently targeted B2B. We thought that by offering ‘Carpool as a Service’ to companies, we could have a short cut to revenues, and at the same time target thousands of employees via their employer at zero cost. Many companies had a challenge when it comes to parking, accessibility and also promote an open culture. So, we built a working B2B product, drafted the terms, thought about privacy issues and started selling the product. Before we even announced the product, companies started to call us. Wow! Despite these early signs of interest, none of these companies eventually bought the product. The most important reason was a lack of priority and problem ownership on the customer side; in other words, companies did not want to acquire a service as a solution for a problem they did not want to own. Once again, we had many opportunities to give our product away as a free service, but we chose not to do so.

Once more we had to think hard about the next. We already had built a working prototype of a real-time rideshare product (comparable to UberPop and Lyft), but we were right to believe that the existing legal framework would cause a major issue. We took another direction: we started to look for cooperation with multi-modal route planners and mobility card providers, as we believed that travelers who were planning for a way to get to their destination easily would be agnostic with respect to the mode of operation. However, we discovered that both categories are still in their infancy and would not drive any business at all.

INVESTORS
While scratching our heads on what to do next, the French rideshare startup Blablacar received a whopping $100M investment. We, of course, tried to raise an investment as well (already working on this even before we launched our service), and at certain times we were spending 3 full days a week talking to and meeting investors or wannabe investors (you know, the ones that have a lot of time, always have more questions, but never closed a deal in the last 3 years). We have met with investors not just in the Netherlands, but also in Belgium, Germany and the UK. We also joined startup competitions to get into the spotlight, most notably LeWeb.

It has become clear to us, that Dutch investors have a completely different view on investments then the praised VCs from the US. One investor even said to me: in the Netherlands, Blablacar would not have received funding. In some cases it was us not interested pursuing a deal, as quite often the conditions were horrible. One investor even asked us if he could join as director, and pay him an hourly fee.

In the end, we are happy not to have a VC deal. We have no debts, nor VCs that need to explain to their informal investors or funds that the investment sucked.

Tip: don’t think that it is easy to get funding before you have proven your business model and make some revenue. Even early-stage Dutch VCs don’t do them. Focus on driving revenues and low cost. That will bring you much further than some money and the extra pressure on your startup.

WHY ARE WE GIVING UP NOW?
Giving up for us is mainly related to not seeing a market that drives revenues. If people are happy about using your product, they should be paying for it, otherwise you are not really solving a hard problem for them. Despite the numerous people we have served, we are under the impression that their need is not that big, especially from the driver’s side. As founders we have significantly invested in Toogethr, mainly time but also cash. We can no longer justify further investments. It’s better for the world and us if we refocus our energy and use our wisdom to pursue other goals.

WHAT MAKES IT SO DIFFICULT?
There are a number of reasons what we believe makes carpooling (especially as a daily routine) really hard. The most important ones being:
* Carpooling requires behavioral change from both the driver and the passenger. A carpool ride to a festival is a whole lot different from having a frequent ride together. The benefits (such as cost reduction) simply do not outweigh the fear of being dependent on someone else. Furthermore, it is not on people’s radar; we don’t rely for our commutes on other people. Rather, we prefer, as human beings, to be in control or to be dependent on a public transport company with a clear schedule.

* Alternative transportation is nearly as good or better in the Netherlands. In countries surrounding us, students love to hitchhike. Since the introduction of the ‘OV Studentenkaart’ in the Netherlands in 1991 hardly no one is hitchhiking anymore, Furthermore we have a reliable and affordable transport system. Car drivers are buying new or second-hand cars, but not phasing out their car entirely, despite expensive fuel.

* Building multi-sided marketplaces is hard, especially difficult in a new market. Even more difficult when you can’t simply match offers and demand, due to the time-factor. On AirBnB, once an apartment is listed, it is available for the coming years. A single offered ride might no longer be available within a couple of hours. This makes it exponentially difficult to build critical mass

* Toogethr is a sharing economy startup. From research it seems to the majority of people support the principles of a peer-to-peer economy, however usage is still in it’s infancy. It will take time before there is enough ‘sharing’ volume, especially as it also requires a change of behavior.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
Perhaps we give you the impression now that we did not do anything ‘wrong’. That would be very stupid. From hindsight we should have avoided some pitfalls, such as:
* Fail faster next time. We should have failed much faster and should have been more realistic instead of following our believes that small changes could make a difference. The fact that your user base doesn’t grow exponentially is a very alarming signal.

* Think twice before building a 2-sided marketplace from scratch. Studies show that most marketplaces fail because of lack of (re) use. Even successful players such as AirBnB worked really hard to get it going, mainly by ‘stealing’ homeowners offering their house on Craigslist.

* Changing behavior is really hard. Even people, who are desperate to solve a problem, just don’t change overnight. Thinks about Newton’s law: mass remains at rest unless acted upon by an external force.

* Be careful of the corporate customer. It takes ages to get them on-board, and there is always one more person you have to meet before the deal will be inked

* Take investors on board once you have proven your business. Before so, do not waste much time with them.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW?
We plan to flip the switch on the 31st of December, unless someone wants to continue the service in one or another form. So we hope that the Toogethr service will remain in service. We are open to ideas, suggestions and discussion (mail us at info@toogethr.com).

At your service,
Bart, Martin, Yuri

Testers gezocht (en Toogethr 2.0 sneak-preview)

Fri, 06 Dec 2013 10:53:32 +0100

Toogethr 2.0 komt dr'an. Het is nog wel even flink wat werk.. en daar kun je ons bij helpen. We zoeken nu mensen die willen helpen met testen.

Schrijf je in als tester >>

Hieronder krijg je alvast een idee hoe Toogethr 2.0 eruit gaat zien. Wat is je eerste indruk?

Why public transport is important - answer in 1 GIF

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 17:35:50 +0100

From Fastcompany

O #AngularJS Brother, Where Art Thou?

Sun, 03 Nov 2013 17:08:05 +0100

On the outlook for a seasoned JS developer in the Netherlands (Amsterdam++). Mail martin [at] toogethr dotcom.

- Reblog makes me nghappy

Toogethr V1.1 for iOS hits the AppStore

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 16:28:56 +0200

We just received the green light from our friends at Apple: Toogethr V1.1 for iOS is in the AppStore.

You will either receive the update on iOS via the AppStore update or you can download it here.

Most important is support for iOS7. Of course, there are other improvements:

The app is entirely free. There are no more services fees.
Registration with Facebook and email has been made simpler. For Facebook, no more login is required.
The menu icons has been improved

Hope you like it!

Toogethr is nu de gratis carpool app

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 14:03:00 +0200

Er is vandaag goed nieuws om te delen. Toogethr is nu de gratis carpool en meerijden app. We zijn gestopt met de commissie of servicekosten die je ons moest betalen als je een ritje had gevonden.

We doen dit omdat we sterk geloven in de kracht van de deeleconomie en eveneens in andere manieren om je betrokkenheid uit te drukken. Je kunt zelf bepalen hoe je onze dienst waardeert en wat je wilt bijdragen. Natuurlijk moeten we onze webservers laten draaien en software ontwikkelaars betalen. Dus als je ons wilt helpen met een donatie is dat geweldig! Maar het delen van je enthousiasme via sociale media of het ondersteunen van nieuwe gebruikers met hun vragen wordt net zo gewaardeerd.

Share if you care
Toogethr is een groot voorstander van en participant in de deeleconomie. Door beter gebruik te maken van wat we al hebben, wordt de wereld gelukkiger, gezonder en mensen steeds meer met elkaar verbonden. Daarin staan we zeker niet alleen. Andere grote spelers in de sharing economy zijn Airbnb, Etsy en eBay. In Nederland hebben we onlangs ShareNL mede opgericht om de deeleconomie verder te laten groeien, gezamenlijk met onder meer Peerby, Snappcar en Thuisafgehaald.

Er zijn andere vormen van liefde dan geld alleen
We geloven dat er naast betalen met geld er ook andere manieren zijn voor het ‘verhandelen’ van producten en leveren van diensten. Bijvoorbeeld door ruilhandel, weggeven, uitlenen of betalen in alternatieve valuta, zoals tijd, sociaal kapitaal of gewoon een knuffel.

Het blijft toegestaan voor bestuurders om een bijdrage in hun kosten (o.a. brandstof, verzekeringen en belastingen) te vragen, maar dit is optioneel. Het is aan de gemeenschap om te beslissen hoe ze elkaar compenseren: dit kan variëren van een liedje zingen tijdens het rijden, cheesecake meenemen of een financiële bijdrage. Of iets anders waarvan jij vindt dat het het delen waard is.

Carpoolen is zoveel meer dan van A naar B gaan met meer dan 1 persoon in de auto: het gaat om nieuwe ontmoetingen, plezier maken, elkaar helpen, de lasten van het reizen delen, het delen van mooie ervaringen en het leven van een duurzaam bestaan.

Wat kun je nu doen?
Vertel het nieuws op Twitter, door op de deze link te klikken: “Kom je net als mij bij Toogethr, de gratis carpool en meerijden community? Kijk op http://www.toogethr.com/”

Nu is het tijd om jou stem te laten horen
Zijn we gewoon gek geworden, of? We horen graag wat jij denkt!

Toogethr is now the free carpool app

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 14:02:07 +0200

There is some good news to share today. Toogethr is now the free carpool and rideshare app. We have removed the commission and service fee you had to pay us once you have found a ride.

We are doing this because we truly believe in the power of the sharing economy as well as alternative ways of expressing your love. You can value our service and decide what you can miss. Of course we need to keep our web servers going and pay our developers. So if you want to help us by making a financial donation, that’s great! But sharing your love through social media or helping new users with their questions is also highly appreciated.

Share if your care
Toogethr is a strong supporter of and contributor to the sharing economy. By better using what we already have, the world is becoming more connected, happier and healthier. Luckily, we are not alone in this movement. Other contributors to the sharing economy include big names such as AirBnB, Etsy, and eBay. For the Netherlands, we have recently co-founded ShareNL to drive further growth of the sharing movement. We do this together with a.o. Peerby, Snappcar, and Thuisafgehaald.

There are other forms of love than just money
We also believe that in addition to money, there are other ways to compensate each other for exchanging goods and providing services. For instance by bartering, gifting, lending, and paying in alternative currencies such as time, social capital, and even hugs.

We continue allowing drivers to ask a financial contribution in their cost (a.o. gasoline, insurance and taxes) but this is optional. It is up to the community to decide how to compensate one another. This could range from singing a song whilst driving, to bringing cheesecake to a financial contribution. Or anything else you feel is worth sharing.

Carpooling is so much more than getting from A to B with more than 1 person in a car: it is about new encounters, having fun, helping each other, sharing the burden of travel, sharing experiences and living a sustainable live.

What can you do now?
Share the news on Twitter, by clicking this link: “Are you joining me on Toogethr, the free carpool and rideshare app? Check http://www.toogethr.com/”

Now it’s time to hear your voice!
Have we just gone nuts or what? We love to hear what you think.

66% van de Amsterdamse autobezitters wil ritten delen

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:40:28 +0200

Een onderzoek uitgevoerd door o.a. O+S in samenwerking met ShareNL onder 1.330 Amsterdammers over de deeleconomie, laat zien dat maar liefst 66% van de autobezitters zijn ritten wil delen. Daarnaast wil 55% meerijden.

Van alle onderzochte categorieën voor de deeleconomie scoort carpoolen/meerijden het hoogste. Verder is opmerkelijk dat 96% van de respondenten nog geen ervaring heeft met delen en dat 99% ouder is dan 35 jaar.

Het onderzoek wordt gepresenteerd op 18 september 2013 tijdens de 2e Meetup van ShareNL in Pakhuis de Zwijger.

Toogethr hits LeWeb as part of the Startup Competition

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:24:11 +0200

Last week we headed towards London to attend the LeWeb conference and its startup competition. With over 400 entries we were very pleased to hear that we made it into the final 16!

This did mean that we had preparations to make, so we got to work. Our team actually build some features from scratch from the time that we got notice until we got ready for our flight. That, and a pitch that needed to be prepared including a matching slide deck meant we had a lot to do.

We also heard that everyone at LeWeb would be wearing a suit, and since we didn’t have one, we had them custom made so we didn’t have to jump on the sowing machine ourselves. The result?

Those suits actually were the smartest decision we made since they provided tremendous value to us. They were comfortable, and we didn’t go unnoticed. We had several people walk up to us and interview us just because of the looks.

Our presentation didn’t go without problems though, we called it the demo-devil, some might just call it a demo snafu. Either way, we learned one thing; Never do a live-demo. You can watch our pitch and the failed demo below:

We did get positive feedback on our pitch though, as always some even said it was the best one they saw. But everyone agreed on one thing, our slides definitely looked the best.

Want to have a look for yourself? Go ahead:

Toogethr pitch startup competition - LeWeb - London 2013 from Toogethr

Back on the floor our suits still grabbed tons of attention from journalists with cameras:

Amsterdam splash of colour from TechCityInsider on Vimeo.

We have been grabbed by a few more reporters and even a tv network, so we’re still on the lookout for more videos to emerge. Did you get to see the TechCrunch roundup?

For now, that’s it. But we’re definitely going places, and we’ll keep you in the loop.

To learn more about what we announced at LeWeb London, please dive into our press release.

Find all shared rides to Pinkpop and Oerol on a single map

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:19:51 +0200

Toogethr has a large database of rides, but often it can be difficult to get a ‘helicopter view’ of what is shared. Below you find a screenshot of all rides towards Pinkpop on a single day:

Do you rather play with an interactive map yourself? Just check this out: Oerol Festival interactive map and Pinkpop interactive map. As you can see, you can also adjust the date.

If you are heading towards Oerol Festival or Pinkop, do check out if you can help anyone with a lift, or maybe you can even join someone else’s ride. As always, you’re bound to go home after the festival. We know you prefer a safe and fun way to drive, so don’t forget to add you return ride to our database.

Toogethr now supports populair Twitter hashtags

Fri, 31 May 2013 11:03:18 +0200

With the release of Toogethr V1.9 today, populair Twitter hashtags used for tweets about a festival (for instance #pinkpop), are now automatically added to user-initiated tweets from Toogethr.

Anyone on Twitter searching or filtering on these hashtags, can now easily find all rides that are being shared to and from the festival.

Toogethr users don’t have to do anything to add hashtags to their tweet. As the hashtags are unique to a Toogethr group, the Toogethr app automatically adds them to the tweet. When a ride is offered (or requested) and subsequently shared with a Toogethr group and Twitter, then the tweet contains all the hashtags from the selected groups.

Furthermore, @liftNL - the Toogethr feed of all upcoming rides on Twitter - will also include these hashtags.

The Toogethr Facebook Page tab app
Support for Twitter hashtags is another important step to support social sharing. The Toogethr Facebook Page tab app that was released last week, is already installed by many festival organizers, venues and sports clubs. For example: Couleur Café, Oerol Festival, and Roda JC Kerkrade.

Other Toogethr V1.9 features and fixes
The following features and bug fixes are also released:

Smarter sharing in groups - When offering or requesting a new ride, the dialogue showing the groups to share the ride with, now shows the four most relevant groups. This ensures that your ride is brought under the attention of those who care most about your ride.
Username can no longer contain ’@’ - To increase the safety of our community, we no longer allow the ’@’ character as part of the username. This disables the possibility to have an email address as username.
System messages better readable - Information, warning, and error messages are shown twice as long to ensure better readability.
Lower suggested ride fee - The suggested ride fee has been lowered for shorter distances.
Unread messages notification - The number of unread messages are no longer shown as a popup message. The number shown in the badge indicates the number of unread messages. This badge is shown both as part of the app icon as well as inside the app on the bottom navigation.
Groups for multi-day events disappeared too early - Groups belonging to multi-day events disappeared already prior to the end of the event from the event list.
Issue when requesting a group - When requesting a new group, the date field could stop finalizing the request.
Improved chat and ride request dialog - The chat window can be used both for sending a message, as well as requesting a ride with a personal message.
Show other rides in a group that match group criteria - A group shows all the rides that are actively shared with the group. The group now also shows rides that match the group criteria (date, location), even if the ride was not shared by the user.

LeWeb: The Sharing Economy is the Future of Business

Wed, 29 May 2013 19:39:31 +0200

LeWeb: The Sharing Economy is the Future of Business:

leweb:

When a new disruptive idea emerges there is always a temptation to minimize its importance. The desire to keep its impact small, to treat it as a nice side project: full of good intentions, but not really scalable to a global market or across different industries.

This temptation is well known,…

How to add Toogethr to your Facebook Page

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:48:00 +0200

We launched a pretty cool feature this week. With a single click, you can add Toogethr directly to your Facebook Page. This brings carpooling directly into your community.

Your followers can immediately see all offered and requested rides to your destination and share new rides.

To show how it works, we made a short video.

To read more about this Facebook app or widgets you can use on your website or blog, go to our new publisher and developer section.

Toogethr groepen nu op jouw website en Facebook Page

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:15:53 +0200

Vandaag heeft Toogethr bekend gemaakt de samenwerking aan te gaan met diverse grote (zomer)festivals, zoals Extrema, Mysteryland en Pinkpop. Om deze samenwerking te ondersteunen heeft elk festival zijn eigen groep gekregen in Toogethr. Organisatoren kunnen direct alle beschikbaar ritten tonen op hun eigen website of Facebook Pagina, zonder hun online bezoekers door te sturen naar de Toogethr app.

Toogethr heeft widgets ontwikkeld die eenvoudig getoond kunnen worden op een website, door een stukje code te plaatsen. Dit is vergelijkbaar met hoe een YouTube video of een Facebook Like button wordt getoond.

Per direct is dit ook beschikbaar voor anderen die activiteiten binnen een groep willen tonen op hun eigen website of Facebook Pagina. Toogethr ziet dit als een belangrijke stap om de diensten en content van de app te delen met anderen. Hierdoor wordt ook de deel-economie verder gestimuleerd.

Hoe met de Toogethr app geïntegreerd kan worden, wordt uitgebreid beschreven op de publisher en ontwikkelaar sectie op de Toogethr website. Zowel het plaatsen van de diverse soorten widgets alsmede het installeren van een Facebook page tab app worden uitgelegd.

Toogethr selected as finalist for LeWeb London 2013 Startup Competition

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:22:00 +0200

Pretty proud that Toogethr is selected out of 375 European Startups to be among the 16 finalists at LeWeb London. Leaders of the Sharing Economy, such as the founders of Etsy, AirBnB, Zipcar, Yelp and Burning Man, are coming to London on 5+6 June to further shape the transition to a new ‘economy’ based on collaboration and participation.

Here you find the list of all 16 finalists.

Stay tuned!

My first ride with a stranger

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:41:37 +0200

leonpals:

Last week I found someone on Toogethr that has the same destination as I do. I connected with him and asked if I could join him next time. That wasn’t a problem, so this morning I hopped in the car of a ‘stranger’.

That might sound awkward but I actually enjoyed it. We had a chat about several topics and I had a comfortable seat. The sun was shining and the roads were clear since it is vacation time.

The driver, Bouke, doesn’t do it to share costs. For him its all about conversation and the fact that he drives a big car anyway. Every once in a while it feels good to fill an extra seat.

I am surprised about how relaxed I arrived at work today. The Fyra train is a little bit quicker. But usually I experience a lot of stress when taking the Fyra. Probably due to not having to rely on the NS (dutch railway company). Also, having a relaxed conversation with one stranger and without a dozen of them around you saying nothing, equals relaxation.

In the end I saved ten euro by sharing Bouke’s ride. But that will not be my motivation for my next shared ride. It will be the ability to have a relaxed conversation and to get to work stress free and on time.

We just got notice that trains were hindered on my route this morning, due to a fire report in the tunnel.

Toogethr V1.7 is d'r.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:59:55 +0200

Vandaag is Toogethr V1.7 live gegaan. Natuurlijk hebben we ook naar de inhuldiging gekeken en een feestje gevierd.. én Toogethr verder verbeterd. Om deze nieuwe versie te gebruiken hoeft je niet eens je iPhone of Android app te updaten, dus je kan direct aan de slag.

Wat is er nieuw?

Herhalende ritten verbeterd
Je kunt direct vanaf de homepage een rit óf eenmalig óf herhalend aanbieden of vragen. Een eenmalige rit is een rit op één specifieke datum. Een herhalende rit is een rit die wekelijks terugkomt op de aangegeven dag of dagen. Als je bijvoorbeeld dagelijks (met uitzondering van donderdag) om 9 uur naar je werk gaat en om half 6 naar huis, dan kun je met 2 herhalende ritten dit aangeven.
Een herhalende rit kun je nu ook in één of meerdere groepen delen. Dit is met name handig om een carpoolmaatje te kunnen vinden.
Bekijk nieuwe activiteiten in je groepen. Je kunt direct op het overzicht van de groepen die je volgt zien als er nieuwe activiteiten zijn. Een activiteit is bijv. dat er een nieuwe volger is van de groep of dat er een rit is gedeeld met de groep.

Welke bugs zijn opgelost?
Er zijn een aantal bugs opgelost. De meeste zijn door onze gebruikers aangemeld via Support. Keep them coming!

Rit in het verleden. Het was mogelijk een herhalende rit in het verleden aan te bieden.
Datum op Android. Op Android devices waren er problemen om een datum te kunnen invoeren tijdens registratie.
Rit delen in een groep. Bij het delen van een rit in een groep werden evenementen getoond die al voorbij waren.
Evenementen niet getoond. Evenementen verdwenen al voor de einddatum van de evenementenlijst.
Lengte van een route. Bij het aanbieden van een rit werd soms de lengte van de rit niet goed berekend. Daarbij werd ook een foute suggestie gedaan voor de prijs van de rit.
Ritten behorende bij een regionale groep. Bij regionale ritten werden ritten getoond die buiten deze regio een vertrekpunt of bestemming hadden.
Ingetrokken herhalende ritten. Herhalende ritten die waren ingetrokken werden in sommige gevallen toch verlengd.
Niet geverifieerd Toogethr account. In geval dat een rit werd aangeboden of gevraagd met een niet geverifieerd Toogethr account werd de suggestie gewekt dat de profiel informatie niet volledig zou zijn.

Groep notificatie
We zijn momenteel aan het testen met groep notificaties. Dit is een notificatie die je ontvangt per email bij een nieuwe activiteit in een groep die je volgt. Om er zeker van te zijn dat we niet iedereen onverwachts met notificaties gaan bestoken, zijn we dit goed aan het testen en fine-tunen. Als het goed is merk je op dit moment daar nog helemaal niets van. Maar binnenkort wel! Stel je volgt de groep ‘Pinkpop’. Je kunt dan dagelijks een bericht per email krijgen met alle nieuwe ritten die zijn gedeeld in deze groep.

Autorijden is 'uit'. Zelfs Amerikanen rijden 23% minder

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:21:41 +0200

Vorige week liet het Nibud al weten dat 9% van de Nederlanders in 2012 zijn auto in de ban heeft gedaan. De belangrijkste rede is de economische malaise. Autorijden is na wonen voor de meeste Nederlanders de grootste kostenpost. De kosten van een kleine middenklasser zijn al snel €500 per maand. De laatste jaren zijn naast de brandstofkosten ook de kosten voor onderhoud en verzekeringen gestegen.

Om nu te denken dat als de economie weer aantrekt, dat ook het autobezit weer gaat stijgen, komt waarschijnlijk bedrogen uit. Data van het U.S. Department of Transportation laat zien dat over de laatste 9 jaar er maar liefst 23% minder autokilometers zijn gemaakt door mensen in de leeftijdscategorie 16 tot 34 jaar oud. In dezelfde periode steeg de populariteit van Openbaar Vervoer met 40% (!) en fietsen met 24%.

Uiteraard speelt economische recessie daarin een rol; echter, de US economie gaat de laatste jaren niet zo slecht als in Europa. Volgens de Frontier Group speelt er meer:

Jonge mensen wonen steeds vaker in steden en drukbevolkte gebieden. Dit schept de mogelijkheden voor intensiever gebruik van Openbaar Vervoer en fiets.
Sociale netwerken. Gratis communiceren met je vrienden is vaak een goed alternatief voor een bezoekje.
Website en apps. Goede OV planners maken het gebruik aantrekkelijker.
Status van autobezit daalt. Jaarlijks een nieuwe smartphone wordt aantrekkelijker gevonden dan het bezit van een auto.
Rijbewijs wordt uitgesteld. Op steeds later leeftijd wordt begonnen met rijles.

Deze trend is niet alleen in de U.S. waarneembaar, maar ook in andere landen, zoals Nederland, Frankrijk en de U.K. In landen waar nu juist grote economische groei is en waar de middenklasse traditioneel geen mogelijkheid had een auto te kopen, vind een andere trend plaats: daar neemt het aantal auto’s en autokilometers jaarlijks stevig toe. Hopelijk zullen elektrische voertuigen in die landen snel hun entree maken om schadelijke emissies voor te zijn.

Dus de oproep van Minister-president Rutte om meer auto’s te gaan kopen is een mooie poging om de economie weer in beweging te krijgen, maar zal waarschijnlijk weinig gehoor gaan krijgen.

Tegenlicht Live: TransitieNL. (by VPROBacklight)

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:25:08 +0200

Tegenlicht Live: TransitieNL. (by VPROBacklight)