Ryan Hoover

Skurt - Tap a button, have a rental car delivered.

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Ryan Hoover
BIG fan of Skurt. I first used it three months ago in LA shortly after their stealthy launch. Barack on their team picked me up at LAX, drove me to my car mins away, and handed me the keys within 10 minutes of arriving at the airport. A month later I rented a car in Avis (because Skurt isn't yet available in SF) and waited over an hour just to get my car. Apparently reserving a car weeks in advance doesn't help. 😤 I've spoken with @apcommunicate, @joshmangel, @harryhur5t, and team about their longer term plans to build an on-demand car rental service, everywhere. Like Uber when it first launched, it sounds "magical" but I have honest reservations on the business model. Question for the team: Are there enough people renting vehicles and can you offer this type of service at a competitive prices sustainably?
Kunal Bhatia
@rrhoover I'm with you on the on-demand experience for car rental vs. an Avis. Despite having Avis Preferred and other top tier status with the other companies, I don't think the service experience will compare. Avis may have bought Zipcar, but I don't see them trying to replicate Skurt anytime soon.
Harry Hurst
@kunalslab @rrhoover I agree Kunal. We've had a lot of customers come over to us from Hertz Gold/Avis Preferred who felt as if they just weren't getting 'Gold' or 'Preferred' service, the feedback from them has been overwhelmingly positive!
Aaron Peck
@kunalslab @rrhoover As a loyalty customer of Avis, what attracts you most about what we're doing that they do not?
Elia Morling
@rrhoover Looks great, maybe you should team with Flic?
Aaron Peck
@tribaling @rrhoover anything is possible ;)
Josh Mangel
Hey hunters! Get $100 off the first time you use Skurt: http://www.skurtapp.com/?ref=pro... @rrhoover – Great questions! The rental car market is a $26.4B market in the US alone and growing. By not owning inventory or having physical infrastructure, we can focus solely on keeping prices competitive and our customer experience flawless. Additionally, we utilize excess inventory from our partners, allowing us to stay consistently competitive and pass even further savings onto our customers. We aren't trying to squeeze any unfair under 25 and gas fees from our customers like the big guys, rather build a brand that people can trust to offer them the best experience with fair prices, every time.
Paul Lee
@joshmangel awesome concept, guys. are your partners existing rental car companies? have you convinced them to engage in revenue sharing with you in order to maximize their earnings from unused inventory? if so, just wondering how you've convinced them that this wouldn't cause cannibalization. best of luck and great launch!
Josh Mangel
@paul_hq @joshmangel - Another great question! We currently partner with independent rental car companies to help maximize overall fleet utilization. Our partners consider it another distribution platform for them which allows them to earn on units sitting without potentially affecting their brand.
Harry Hurst
@rrhoover thank you for posting us, we're having an amazing day with you guys, and thank you all for the upvotes! I'd be interested to know from the PH community what specific pain points they hate most about traditional car rental? Also, would you guys benefit (in some cases) from having the car delivered right to your hotel, airbnb or home?
Adrian Phillips
@harryhur5t Absolutely! I was in Austin a few months ago and was thinking about on demand car rentals as I was staying at a house nowhere near any major public transportation routes. I noticed these small Car2Go cars parked on some of the side streets as I walked around and thought that this seemed like a good idea. I decided to jump on their website on my phone, to see if I could jump into one of these cars right away. Turns out I couldn't. I would actually need to visit a Car2Go office and verify my Driver's license and perhaps sign something. Problem was it was the weekend and the office was closed. First off, hats off to you guys for making the on boarding as smooth as you did. Being able to scan in my license and bypass the bullshit really is fantastic. I noticed right now local pick up is understandably near LAX. I honestly think if you can get a car to me anywhere in cities like Austin or LA where public transport is still figuring things out, you'll have a lifetime customer in me. Simply having the car delivered really makes your service a much more enticing option to something like ZipCar. Finally good job on making the insurance pricing clear as day through the booking process. Often the most intimidating part of renting a car is trying to decide what coverage to get while the rental agent tries to up sell you. One question, if you elect to forgo coverage because you have car insurance that covers car rentals and get into an accident. Does Skurt charge any penalties while you are getting the car repaired? One other thought. Any plans on offering pickup trucks or small moving vans down the line? Would love to be able to grab a Tacoma to pick up some wood from the lumber yard for the day.
Harry Hurst
@rustydingo that sounds like an awful experience! We are, in fact delivering locally in LA by request and plan to roll it out to other major cities soon. SF is next. With regards to the insurance, there are no penalties, your insurance should cover everything - and if it doesn't we have some options for you at the lowest prices in the industry! We certainly plan to expand our categories as we grow, stay tuned!
Joe Mahavuthivanij
This looks pretty awesome! I hate the games that car rental places play... How quickly can something like this scale out, and how soon before services like Enterprise and Avis revolt?
Harry Hurst
@epicsaurus we can scale quickly due to the fact we don't own inventory. The last time we saw a revolt from archaic taxi monopolies it didn't work out too well for them! cc: Uber
Joe Mahavuthivanij
@harryhur5t awesome, so how soon before this gets to SFO and SAN?? I need a car this weekend in San Diego. Gogogo!
Aaron Peck
@epicsaurus We'll be in SFO within the coming few months ;)
Jack Shalom
LA only 😞 ETA on NYC? Are you doing airport locations exclusively?
Josh Mangel
@jeshalom - SF is next but NYC is definitely on our roadmap!
Harry Hurst
@jeshalom hey Jack, we aren't exclusive to airports. We in fact have select delivery zones within LA that we're testing out. By request, you can have your car delivered (and picked-up from) your hotel, airbnb or even your home!
Greg Barbosa
@joshmangel Where does the name come from? Does it relate at all to the hip-hop and raps songs that have blurt out 'SKURT'?
Josh Mangel
@gregbarbosa - xD they are certainly infringing on our Trademark.
Jamie Martin
@gregbarbosa 2 Chainz will go "Scrrrr" to imitate a car sometimes :)
Samir Shah
How does gas/fuel work? Do I have to return with a full tank of gas? Do I only get charged for the fuel I use? Is the price set at $7+/gallon like the big guys or is it the same as the pump price?
Aaron Peck
@sshah1983 We do the opposite of the big boys here. Use as much gas as you want, even return it empty if you'd like. After you return, we'll fill it up and charge you the exact market price of gas. E.g. currently around $3/gl in the LA area. No fees or mark-ups.
Samir Shah
@apcommunicate @sshah1983 Cool. That's pretty badass. Any fees for canceling last minute? When I was working as a management consultant, one of the perks of booking through Hertz/Avis is that you could simply not show up and you wouldn't get charged for being a no-show. That was convenient when client meetings would bounce around.
Aaron Peck
@sshah1983 Because our service is based around a delivery experience, we just ask renters to cancel at least a couple hours before their reservation. If they don't, no biggie, we'll credit their account back for next time. No fees.
Samir Shah
@apcommunicate @sshah1983 Super cool! Excited to try it out at some point. Hope your cost structure/unit economics makes this sustainable/scalable. My head is kind of exploding thinking of the logistics around this. Reminds me of what Zirx/Luxe is probably dealing with only I guess your demand is more evenly spread throughout the day.
Aaron Peck
@sshah1983 Our transaction size is also much higher than those services which enables us to go above and beyond for our customers while also growing a real business.
Björn
cool! It is definitely a much better experience than rentals before
Josh Mangel
@bjorntastic thank you Bjorn!
bryan s arnold
Great question Ryan. But skurt may encourage users to rent more now with convenience of this app.
Aaron Peck
@bryansarnold This is exactly why we focused on making the entire process so easy. People have never been able to rent in a few taps and complete the whole transaction on their phone before. In fact, your comment is probably the first time in history renting a car has been referred to as convenient ;)
Ouriel Ohayon
picking and dropping a car rental is such a pain. i love the idea
Ouriel Ohayon
@ourielohayon one more note fyi: content blockers break your sign up with facebook as you re using the new safari controller...
Josh Mangel
@ourielohayon we'll look into it now! Thanks for letting us know.
Aaron Peck
@ourielohayon Thanks and good catch!
Naveed Bagheri
Can't wait to have this in more locations! Whenever I know I'm renting a car it is expected to spend at least an thirty minutes to an hour waiting to get it sorted out.
Harry Hurst
@naveedbagheri never again! We'll be expanding to more cities soon :-D
Everette Taylor
Awesome team, awesome app. Only complaint is that they are currently only in LA. I think people getting spoiled in LA and then going back to the old school way of car rental will only create more demand in new cities. Congrats on the PH launch guys.
Harry Hurst
@everette thank you Everette!
Jack Shalom
Love this idea. Been finding myself in need of something like this lately
Aaron Peck
@jeshalom So did we, but we couldn't find it, so we built it for all of us.
Brent Chow
I met up with @harryhur5t a few months back and I have to say I'm very impressed by Skurt's model. Rental car lots/offices are the worst experiences especially after a long flight. I can't wait to see where they take it next. I assume that the two biggest rental car customers are corporate frequent fliers and consumers with recent car accidents or mechanical problems. How do you plan to capture those larger portions of the market when the top dogs (Hertz, Avis, etc) have partnerships with corporations and insurance companies?
Harry Hurst
@hellobrent great question Brent. As we expand and become more geographically ubiquitous, we plan to build solutions to help these companies save money and manage all of their reservations centrally. I think it will also become a 'give the people what they want' situation, where corporate employees and insurance customers simply won't accept anything less than the Skurt experience.
Phillip Yang
@joshmangel Wow, really cool product. Only for LA as of now? Still, if I'm ever out there, I'll definitely give it a shot. Thanks for the promo code!
Josh Mangel
@geeky_yang - Thanks for the shout! Where would you like to see us next :) ?
Dinesh P
Love the concept! I saw this kind of service in India where rental companies in India deliver cars to your location.
Aaron Peck
@i_dino Thanks! India's a great market. We'll make our way there.
Sam Juraschka
How does the insurance aspect of Skurt work - is it leveraging the independent car rental companies current plans? One of my biggest pain points with renting from a large company like Hertz is that I always feel like I am being tricked into paying for an insurance plan when I rent a car travelling, that I am probably covered for under my own insurance. Do you bring anymore transparency to the insurance aspect of renting a car?
Harry Hurst
@samyj13 most definitely! I'm really pleased you've brought this up. We too were sick of feeling like we were being ripped off. There's an inside joke in the rental car industry (so our attorney tells us), that the major rental car companies are some of the 'largest insurance companies that happen to rent cars'. This really stuck with us, it's just not how things should be, considering that most people are in fact covered under either their personal auto, or their credit cards. We plan to fix this through education of our customer, we don't 'sell' insurance, rather offer it at the lowest rate feasibly possible to our customers that truly need it.
Satshabad Khalsa
Interesting, and really slick FTUX, but it seems like they've "skurted" around mentioning the fact that the $100 off code provided is actually $10 off each day of a rental up to 10 days.
Aaron Peck
@satshabad I see it clearly listed in the gold star at the top of this post. Is it not showing up for you? That's no good. Either way, with the lowest daily rate in the industry combined with the $10/day up to $100 total promo here - you can rent a Corolla for $4 a day. That's a pretty great deal.
Ethan Thomas
When will you guys be available in SF?
Josh Mangel
@ethan021021 - we plan to launch in SF Jan 2016 :)
Ethan Thomas
@joshmangel @ethan021021 Woop! I'm excited! Finally... no more lines 😁
Aaron Peck
@ethan021021 or gas mark-up fees, or shuttles, or insurance scare tactics... :)
Harry Hurst
@jeshalom we're currently LA only, NYC is definitely on our road map for expansion next year!