Hi, I'm Dustin, and I've been working on abstreet.org for about ~2.5 years to fight car dependency in cities. Aiming to explore and advocate for short-term transportation changes like creating low-traffic neighborhoods and fleshing out bike and bus networks, and moonshot ideas like congestion charging zones in city centers, superblocks, and zoning changes. Targeting the general public, rather than planners who've already got tools they trust, for education, gathering feedback, and prompting citizen advocacy.
We've been growing an open source & academic community fairly well, but I want to hire more full-time engineers, and money's becoming a limiting factor. Looking for a partner on the business and PM side, so I can focus on the technical. The huge disclaimer is that I'm unwilling to compromise on the project being open source, so I have no idea how to squeeze a business model in here. I've also done a terrible job so far of actually getting public transit / cycling advocacy groups on board, so the need for a PM is pretty severe to make sure we're building the right thing.
Hi Dustin, Dave here. I just spent the last 4 years building out a parking management software firm which was recently acquired by our largest PE backed competitor. In doing that, I raised money, handled all forecasting & accounting, ran all sales operations (municipal is mostly done via an RFP process) and managed the high level product roadmap from our strategic objectives backwards. Most importantly, I have experience in successfully building long term relationships & contracting with over 250 Cities across the US, which I believe will be key to success in monetizing your product long term. If you'd like to chat further, please shoot me an email at dhyj7771@gmail.com. I have some ideas for open-source first monetization I think might be useful to you, even if we don't find longer term synergy from a conversation.
I saw your work on Hacker News last year and I forwarded it to a colleague of mine working in the academic side of Transportation Engineering. They found your work interesting and complemented on your visualizations.
If I could suggest something, it might be useful to reach out to professors at your local university whose research interests coincides with your software's application (you can shop around as well).
They can probably help you with the following:
1. Provide cutting-edge technology and ideas related to transportation engineering
2. Offer a method/connection to the local DOT or other agencies who may be interested in this as a decision support system (DSS).
3. Maybe even find a partner or... (and I think this might be a better option) help you establish a steering committee or a group of advisors who can then make recommendations to supplement your skillsets.
You might even be able to temporarily support your open source model through grant funding and application to different "cutting-edge" applied projects and, if you can, develop those technology in a generalizable way (a framework) to be used as a shiny feature for your application. Grow it up to be a one-stop-shop with the latest and greatest.
I'd be happy to discuss a bit more to help you navigate these waters.
Cheers,
Don
P.S. regarding finding a partner for the business side, what might be useful is to reach out to the local universities in your area and see if their business college/program has a "founders meet-and-greet" program. At our current institution we have programs in place to connect founders with a business counterpart which has resulted in establishing some growing companies. In addition, you can probably take this opportunity to network with a few professors and (as an advisor) be willing to put their name to the product for technical knowledge/support.
Wow, thanks for the detailed ideas! I've resisted joining academia myself, but that shouldn't prevent finding partners there. Recently I started working with 3 transportation/civil engineering professors, and their expertise is already helping to fill some gaps with the project. I'll try more aggressively looking for more academics to loop in. UW in Seattle almost certainly has this sort of meet-and-greet; I'll poke around and see if they have anything happening online these days.
Glad you've already working with some people in academia! I'm familiar with UW's Civil Engineering department and they have some great faculty members there who are very competent in what they do. That's awesome to hear!
As someone who is in academia currently, I can understand the hesitation. I'd like to clarify that I'm not suggesting you join academia, but simply use it as a vehicle to help with the initial networking of business partners and maybe use that as a resource to grow and get your "business-side" help that you're looking for. Basically a jumping off point. If you're already coordinating with a faculty member there, I'm sure they're more than happy to work with you.
Many universities also have technology transfer offices (moving the technology developed in-house/university level to industry) that might be able to support your aspirations. While their support is assuming that your technology is an IP from the University, they're very nice people and I think it might be useful to setup a meeting with them and chat with them regarding what advice they can offer. Also, they're incentivized to support students and the local community. To put it frankly, they're not there to screw you and aren't incentivized to. Universities recognize there are a ton of technical founders out there who are missing the business counterparts. While the university system (in my opinion) is slow to accommodate these needs, there are still initiatives and programs out there on the university's side that I think you can tap into.
One thing I've previously gotten support from is the I-Corps (Innovation Corps) program funded by NSF ([1] for National level and [2] for UW Level) which is targeted at technical founders who need a "bootcamp" on the business side. This includes building a business model, financial model, and also giving you access to potential investors. It won't replace someone who is experienced in business, but it'll give you the fundamental skills and initial knowledge to understand more of what you're looking for (at least for me). It also does come with $$$ but it's not a lot (and the money they do provide is mostly spent during the two months bootcamp trying to get customer surveys). By the way, while these programs are rooted in academia, they're open to everyone. You don't need to be affiliated with an institution to get these grants.
The meet and greet are perfect! I think Seattle is probably the perfect place for this type of work! From talking with colleagues here (this was before COVID), I heard the City of Seattle is very welcoming of new ideas and are happy to prototype new transportation technology. Not sure if things have changed, but I really like your application. It's fantastic.
Outside of academia, there are also programs that are available to get you started off the ground. VentureWell (office is in Massachusetts but I believe they have a nation-wide scope) has an E-team program [3] that's basically similar to NSF's I-Corps program but with different funding sources.
I really appreciate what you've done so far. It was one of the few things on Hacker News that I actually stopped scrolling and looked in-depth on. I wish I could throw my hat in the ring. I hope it continues to grow and I'd be happy to keep an eye on it!
We've been growing an open source & academic community fairly well, but I want to hire more full-time engineers, and money's becoming a limiting factor. Looking for a partner on the business and PM side, so I can focus on the technical. The huge disclaimer is that I'm unwilling to compromise on the project being open source, so I have no idea how to squeeze a business model in here. I've also done a terrible job so far of actually getting public transit / cycling advocacy groups on board, so the need for a PM is pretty severe to make sure we're building the right thing.
Contact on github or HN.