

Vatler (YC S14) wants to be your on-demand valet - hamzaouazzanic
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/18/vatler/

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sargun
I briefly did some math around the capacity curve for said services. I'm not
entirely sure how they're able to make it work effectively, and scale revenue
superlinearly to cost. Also, the demand curves are less than awesome, given
you have to deal with two spikes a day, and then no business at all.
Additionally, fault-tolerance was problematic. I had modelled it with the idea
of providing valet services that are available in FiDi, at a cost-competitive
rate, and using a parking lot in Mission Bay or Hunter's Point during the day.
A failure in the arterials roads could be incredibly problematic (i.e. 1st,
2nd, 4th, 5th) to the model, because it would cause service time to
unexpectedly go up.

I think there are work arounds to this model, but I fear for Vatler. I'm sure
that the Vatler team has done math to make these things make sense for their
model. Best of luck to them.

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Kluny
You "fear for Vatler"? Dramatize much? This doesn't have to be scalable.
Valets have been around since before cars were invented. In the past, parking
garages were small businesses that had valets on staff. Before the cost of
labor and land made it impossible, this was very common. One way Vatler's
model could work is by licensing their software to garages or franchises that
want to go back to having valets on staff, and make it inexpensive enough to
be possible. The app would make it possible for a group of valets to service
lots of different garages, instead of a single one.

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serf
in what cold, clinical terms could the parent have expressed him or herself so
that you wouldn't accuse him or her of dramatizing the situation?

Their fear is the result of the analysis explained earlier in the post. A
negative outlook on the proposition after analysis seems anything but
'dramatic'.

~~~
Kluny
I don't propose any terms. The analysis reads like it was written by a
competitor for the same seed money who wants to cast doubt on their business
model.

