How I Put Taxi Drivers in Cuba “Online” Without the Internet

Initial approach

• My original idea was to have an Internet server and a website hosted on the server — this would be a battle in itself, but could be done.
• The website would accept requests from people traveling to Cuba who wanted to arrange transportation by taxi in the island in advance.
• The website would immediately send each request to multiple drivers via email. Each driver would receive all the data of the request in their inboxes, which could be checked on the phone, along with the customer's email address.
• The drivers could start a conversation with the potential customers by forwarding the email to the customer's email address and continuing from there.

My business strategy

• I didn't have Internet myself (well, only very sporadically), so I could not work as a middle man and talk to customers. Sending the requests to the drivers directly would detach me from having to being available all the time.
• Even if I could be available all the time (using email), I wouldn't be able to cope with a lot of requests without hiring more people. So I opted to distribute the effort of arranging the trips among the drivers themselves.
• With this system, I could focus my efforts on things like marketing and finding more drivers, instead of drowning in operational stuff everyday.

Why it worked for the drivers

• They had access to a new channel that brought customers to them, without ruining any other ways they acquired customers (like waiting parked on the streets around hotels).
• They could arrange trips while being anywhere, because they had email on their phones and email was their interface for YoTeLlevo. This was new for them! They could even arrange the next trip while they were far from home doing another trip.
• They could set the prices themselves, negotiate the terms and go to specifics if needed without anyone in the middle thinking for them or inflating prices.

Improving on the initial approach

• I wouldn't send the customers' email addresses to the drivers anymore. Instead, each notification email from my server to the drivers carried in the subject a unique identifier for the conversation.
• Each driver would reply to that email without modifying the subject of the email, which guaranteed that the identifier would not be lost before arriving back at my server. That email then went directly to my server instead of going to the customer's inbox.
• When the email arrived at my server, I would check the identifier (automatically, of course), and* *stored the message in the corresponding conversation in my database. I would then re-route it to the customer's email address.
• The customer would then receive the email sent by the driver, which also included the identifier on the subject, and would do the same the driver did: reply to the email without modifying the subject. The server would do the same and re-route the email back to the corresponding driver.

And for the drivers

Launching