The sharing economy is an economic model defined as a peer-to-peer (P2P) based activity of acquiring, providing, or sharing access to goods and services that are often facilitated by a community-based on-line platform. Communities of people have shared the use of assets for thousands of years, but the advent of the Internet—and its use of big data—has made it easier for asset owners and those seeking to use those assets to find each other. This sort of dynamic can also be referred to as the sharing economy, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, or peer economy. In the past decade, peer-to-peer digital platforms have been on the rise in many industries worldwide.
In 2018 at the very earliest stage of the product development funnel, Solveo established a partnership with Luma (today called Vertt) with the aim to build a ride-hailing app from zero. Vertt is a peer-to-peer ride-hailing company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. It is prominent in the sharing economy as it connects passengers that need a ride and people who own a vehicle and want to earn in their spare time. The platform is built on microservices-based technology and runs on Amazon Web Services.
In early 2018 a partnership was made among three crucial parties: the founder, Solveo as the business, product development and design team, and doXteam as the development team. The agile and lean approach allowed all of us to work very collaboratively and coordinate across all development processes. At the very beginning it was crucial to understanding the market needs and opportunities, as competition was fierce. We aimed to design and create a product that will be unique and different than the competitors on the market with a different positioning.
Once we had gathered the data and vital market insights, our team started prototyping and testing the application flow, and once we had the final design language and flow defined, the product moved to the development phase. During development for almost 6 months, Solveo team worked closely with the founder in order to create the entire business strategy including designing all internal processes, creating customer journeys and drawing all scenarios in order to identify potential threats upon launch.
The approach and strategy for launching the product was split into two major parts: launching for drivers and launching for passengers. As marketplaces are extremely difficult and challenging to balance, a careful strategy was needed. Our team crafted the approach and all steps for a perfect balance upon launching of the product.
In late 2019 the platform was successfully launched.