Disruptive Businesses: Taxistutes

by Johnny Debacle

The low cost carrier airlines have realized the power of selling to a needy captive customer. They price shots of crappy vodka at $10 each and the typical jackals and scoundrels who populate those flights buy them, as do people who want to drink their way to comfort amidst the tomfoolery. Customers have needs, the more trapped they are, the less price sensitive they become. Businesses can make a killing if they can find a way to get the customer exactly what they want in these situations.

Picture this situation: NYC business man, stuck in an NYC cab in the middle of NYC. There is no way he will make it to that meeting downtown with Skadden Arps, where his boss is waiting for him, judging him, and mentally trimming his bonus by the second. His Thomas Pink shirt feels like a $200 noose and his $ sign cuff-links look more like hand-cuffs.  Stressed, lonely, rich and surrounded by ethnic people listening to bad music – what this man needs is a good hooker. But he’s stuck in traffic, in a cab! What can he do? Where can he go? If only someone could provide him the service he needs then he could just nut right there in the back seat and feel like a man again. Enter the Taxistute.

Taxistutes would drive around soliciting “rides” for targets who would be screened to have high conversion rates to whoring services (men with money, men without money, men with pulses, Charlie Sheen), then, mid-transit they would proposition the customer. The customer would benefit from high levels of anonymity, convenience and deniability (“where were you honey?” “Oh just taking a taxi home from work”).  This would give pricing power to the taxistute. A typical low margin taxi ride of $25+tip and toll from La Guardia to midtown would turn into a high margin $225 + tip and toll with roughly the same cost structure and time (provided that there is both a driver and a fluffer). This will serve to bump valuation multiples for the entire transportation industry and any industry which can put their customer base in captivity. Future markets include airline and train travel, horese carriage rides, and waiting areas at the DMV and the dentist.

Relaxed and ready to get it done



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Comments

  1. PIMPSupHOSdown
    July 19th, 2006 | 6:44 pm

    funny shit

  2. Mr Juggles
    July 20th, 2006 | 4:19 am

    Apparently cheap informal shadow market imitations of this product already exist. Not that I, uhh, know anything about it…

  3. aBlow4JoeSmoe
    August 14th, 2006 | 4:15 am

    Brilliant, productivity would skyrocket. Think of all the lost efficiencies that sex-deprived men cuase by the fighting amongst thier heads. This gets my nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize. Congress shall also promote taxistutes as complying within the laws of abstinance.

    But one important question is would the wages be sticky?

  4. August 14th, 2006 | 1:21 pm

    The wages wouldn’t be sticky, but everything else would be.

  5. Lando
    April 12th, 2007 | 11:30 am

    Call me Captain Obvious but since it’s s biz expense it should tax deductable.

  6. To The Hilt
    August 22nd, 2007 | 9:24 am

    Captain Obvious?

    Time travel is messsing with my mind, man.