Manuel and David von Shäre may still be known to some of you from the BR format “Startup Bavaria", where the two honed their taxi app with the help of coach Andreas von Richter. It wasn't quite enough for victory, and their startup's direction also changed. In an interview, the two revealed how the pivot came about and how the change of course took place.
For those who haven’t heard of you yet: What is SHÄRE and what was your approach in the beginning?
We founded SHÄRE GmbH in Munich in June 2014 and launched our first product, the free smartphone app SHÄRE-a-Taxi, in early 2015. With the app, you can order a taxi, pay cashlessly, and, most importantly, share it with other passengers. SHÄRE-a-Taxi is based on intelligent sharing, matching, and route optimization algorithms, making taxi travel more affordable and environmentally friendly. A nice side effect is the friendly fellow passengers with whom you can share a taxi.
With SHÄRE-a-Taxi, our goal was to revolutionize the taxi industry while also supporting it. However, for about a year now, we have stopped actively promoting the app in the B2C market and have shifted our focus entirely to the B2B market.
“Decided against the vicious circle of external capital”
When did you realize that you had to deviate from your original path and how long did this process take?
Although we designed our marketing activities very intelligently and effectively, this was the biggest cost driver. While we managed to successfully reach the target audience in Munich with our relatively small marketing budget, marketing spending would have had to be much higher to generate the necessary traction. Furthermore, at that time, neither the taxi industry nor the market – including investors – were sufficiently convinced that they should support digitalization, including sharing. Things are different today.
At this point, however, we consciously decided against the vicious cycle of external capital. We didn't want to artificially inflate our company in an environment where the market wasn't yet ready and the competition would ultimately have greater resources.
This was especially true given that we had received an increasing number of inquiries from the B2B sector, where we identified a very high demand for customized digital taxi and chauffeur solutions. At this point, we recognized the greater potential in a smarter focus on the B2B segment and began the strategic restructuring toward a healthy, organically growing company.
“The first year was not a mistake, but a learning process!”
Where is your focus now?
We bring our combined expertise in the development of technical solutions and the market launch of innovative mobility products to the industry. Not only with one product, SHÄRE-a-Taxi. Thus, the new brand identity SHÄRE mobility innovation SHÄRE mobility innovation offers digital mobility solutions for companies – the basis for this is a Europe-wide mobility infrastructure and, above all, our specially developed real-time matching, routing, and sharing algorithms. We support our customers as a strong partner in the development of individual and innovative mobility concepts, software solutions, and the integration of their existing systems into our Europe-wide mobility infrastructure, currently comprising taxis and limousines.
We apply a strict lean startup approach to all our projects and are constantly driven to find novel and innovative solutions for our clients. Our clients now include major mobility providers, automotive manufacturers and suppliers, as well as various startups in the mobility and travel platform/app sectors.
In addition, we also develop solutions for corporate mobility management for many companies from more distant industries.
Do you sometimes think to yourself, “I wish I had done it that way!” or are you happy with how everything turned out?
A resounding no! If we had done what we're doing now with our focus right from the start, we wouldn't be where we are today. It's important to follow your own path. A startup doesn't follow a direct path from start to finish to a predetermined goal. Rather, it's a process of right, left, forward, and backward that moves you forward. But that's incredibly important and gives the company and you the profile you need to be successful. Therefore, we would never classify the first year as a mistake, but rather as an incredibly important learning process.
What's going on with the app? Is it dead? Is it shelved? Or do you plan to revisit B2C at some point?
So SHÄRE-a-Taxi is certainly not dead. Perhaps the app is taking a little nap. Seriously: We have deliberately stopped advertising the app in the B2C segment for a good year now. However, it is still available in the app and Play stores, and we regularly maintain it. Firstly, because we often use the app as a mobility partner for various events and trade fairs. This is precisely where we and the organizers see enormous added value for guests and participants. You often see long queues forming at the taxi stand on the evening of a trade fair, people getting in one by one, but in the end they all end up going to the airport or train station. Of course, this can be effectively bundled with SHÄRE-a-Taxi, offering visitors another cost-effective mobility alternative.
The next use of the app as an official mobility partner will be the 48Forward Conference on November 24 in Munich And whether the app will reawaken and attack the B2C segment depends entirely on potentially strong partners – we're not closing ourselves off here and will simply see what happens in the coming months.
Flexible thanks to a large network
What is your current team structure? Do you plan to expand your team?
We currently have a core team of six people in Munich. Our skills are equally divided between business and IT. We are currently also looking for motivated working students and interns in software development. While we are not currently actively filling any vacancies in the business area, we are happy to be persuaded if you can provide a strong argument to justify a position.
In addition to our core team, we are also building a technical team in Romania. Through our CTO Mátyás, we have access to an enormous network of excellent developers in Romania. This allows us to respond quickly and flexibly to a wide variety of projects. We can build interdisciplinary project teams here in a targeted manner and in the shortest possible time. Despite our lean size in Munich, this also allows us to take on much larger projects than comparable companies could handle.
Faux pas are allowed
What were the big lessons for you from the transformation process that led to the pivot?
You should definitely take a step aside every now and then to avoid becoming blind to the situation. It also helps to bring on board sparring partners such as an active advisory board. This was extremely helpful for us. You should question yourself every now and then whether the path you have chosen is the right one. This is more of a check than a doubt, which is enormously important. However, you should then also stand by your decisions, because there will always be headwinds. In the end, of course, you also have to try things out. Two years ago, we were new to the mobility industry - the path was important and that's why we are where we are today with SHÄRE. Learning new things every day and putting our foot in it every now and then has been the biggest learning experience for us.
What are SHÄRE’s next steps and what does the future look like?
A lot is happening in the mobility industry right now. Things were different two years ago. We're simply looking forward to everything that's coming and are excited about the future. Of course, we want to continue to grow steadily using our cash flow and establish ourselves as a strong partner for digital and innovative mobility in the industry. However, since we also have a huge number of ideas internally in the broader area of mobility, we will certainly push new products to MVP from time to time using rapid prototyping and then bring them to market.
