
Carts without horses - sctb
http://www.aaronkharris.com/carts-without-horses
======
donw
Having lived in Japan for quite some time, it is sort of amazing how often
companies come here and blow not insignificant amounts of time and money
simply because they assumed their business model could cross the border
without being detained and thoroughly questioned.

For example, a personal-transportation company pitched up in Japan offering
better alternative to the traditional taxi, because they are "safe", "clean",
and "convenient".

While this offering makes _complete_ sense in most of the US -- where very
different adjectives would be required to describe the average taxi experience
-- it doesn't really fly in Tokyo.

Taxi drivers in Japan wear white gloves, which should give some idea just how
clean the taxis are. The doors open automatically so that you don't have to
touch the door handles. The same goes for safety and convenience, but more
importantly, the taxi companies here do a solid job of serving the local
population.

There is no adversarial relationship to exploit, and a slightly better app
experience isn't going to turn the market on its head.

It honestly doesn't take much to be successful in Japan -- Fastly looks to be
a great example of Doing It Right -- but you do need to start with the idea
that it's a foreign market, and that the business model is going to be
different than Back Home.

~~~
mathattack
I think a niche approach could work in Japan. The two issues I've seen with
taxis over there are price and supply/demand imbalances during off hours.

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malanj
Payments is an especially interesting example to take in emerging markets. The
delta between developed and emerging is often especially huge in payments and
banking.

I was part of the founding team of a mobile payments startup SnapScan
([http://www.snapscan.co.za/](http://www.snapscan.co.za/)) in South Africa. We
had to flip the "US" models around completely. Informal merchants often had no
bank accounts and only feature phones, but many consumers had credit cards and
smartphones.

We ended up giving QR stickers to merchants, notifying of payment success via
SMS and depositing payments in an "instant" bank account that they could
withdraw cash from ATMs without a card (just their feature phone).

Looking at how people pay in the US, I would think that our approach wouldn't
have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen South Africa (or a similar
country) first hand.

~~~
theoh
Isn't good design always specific to the environment in which it functions,
though? Or is that something contested?

"Looking at how people pay on Venus, I would think that our approach wouldn't
have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen Earth (or a similar planet)
first hand." (sorry ;)

~~~
pandler
I think it's a spectrum.

"Looking at how people pay in Massachusetts, I would think that our approach
wouldn't have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen California first
hand." (practically identical)

"Looking at how people pay in the US, I would think that our approach wouldn't
have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen Germany first hand." (probably
mostly the same, but I haven't been to Germany recently)

"Looking at how people pay in the US, I would think that our approach wouldn't
have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen New Zealand first hand." (Looks
mostly the same on the surface, but NZ relies heavily on a system called
EFTPOS)

"Looking at how people pay in South Africa, I would think that our approach
wouldn't have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen Kenya first hand."
(probably very similar, but from what I gather there are some differences. I
haven't been to South Africa)

"Looking at how people pay in the US, I would think that our approach wouldn't
have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen Kenya first hand." (very
different. M-Pesa is king in Kenya)

"Looking at how people pay on Venus, I would think that our approach wouldn't
have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen Earth first hand." (theoretical
maximum difference)

~~~
majewsky
Fun fact: Germany is very reliant on cash, because Germans have been
traumatized by hyperinflation and depression etc., and their cash money is a
symbol of stability.

I'm German and I don't even have a credit card, which is only occasionally a
problem when 1. trying to book a hotel or 2. when buying stuff in US online
shops. Number 2 is solved by Paypal, however.

~~~
ido
You do have a debit (EC) card though, right? At least in Berlin you can pay
with a debit card everywhere, on- and offline.

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eloff
One also saw this in the developing world where many countries, lacking the
existing telecommunications infrastructure based on landlines, skipped a step
and jumped straight to mobile infrastructure. For a while some developing
countries had mobile infrastructure and coverage that surpassed developed
nations (one could argue that some still do, with no equivalent to M-PESA in
developed countries.)

~~~
dottedmag
Well, in Norway Vipps ([https://www.vipps.no/](https://www.vipps.no/)) is
rapidly replacing cash for second-hand purchases, which were a stronghold of
cash.

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seizethecheese
The main take-away from this piece is that applying the wisdom of developed
world tech to developing world tech doesn't work. This seems to be a special
case of the mistake that always seems to happen when dealing with the
developing world. That is, applying our models to their problems, instead of
understanding the problems from the bottom up (which just so happens to be the
solution Aaron proposes.)

Thanks Aaron for writing this, it is a boon to society when people share their
hard earned wisdom.

~~~
akharris
I hadn't even thought about it from the perspective of how the developed world
relates to the developing across other problem spaces. That's a great way to
think about it.

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edge17
Should be noted that M-Pesa wasn't a brilliant idea, it was the formalization
of an already existing behavior in the market. That behavior was to pay for
small things (like a drink at a bar) with cellphone minutes because cellphone
minutes had an established value and were easily transferable between people.
People were doing this already before M-Pesa.

~~~
mkagenius
> That behavior was to pay for small things (like a drink at a bar) with
> cellphone minutes

What would the bar manager do with 1 million minutes of talk time? [serious]

~~~
ianferrel
Sell them to other people.

You're not surprised that a bar manager manages to find something to do with
more alcohol than he could possibly drink, right?

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jpm_sd
"Developing markets are a kind of mirror of the future" \- this is why
companies like Zipline
([http://flyzipline.com/product/](http://flyzipline.com/product/)) are
starting up in Rwanda, instead of trying to deliver tacos in the Mission.

~~~
hengheng
That, or a lack of FAA regulations.

~~~
TrevorJ
Well, and infrastructure. Very few places in the US are difficult or
impossible to deliver to via roads.

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Johnie
As with anything, it's important to understand the consumer. You can't build a
payment company for sub-Sahara Africa from your SF highrise.

I've been following the work of researcher Ignacio Mas on financial management
in developing countries. He has a really interesting research and model on how
people in developing countries (some of the research applies to
unbanked/underbanked in US) view and handle money.

See here: www.ignaciomas.com

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jmspring
There is a naivete here that seems odd, especially if one is investing.

Cellular and wireless communications make more sense in the developing world
than running copper/land lines (as well as in places like the former eastern
block).

Part of the big allure of WhatsApp was it worked with SMS and was popular in
regions where smartphones were the exception

Paying attention to markets, their restrictions and challenges, seems like
something one should do before diving into making assumptions about investing.

