Wealth Blog | Taxihero – Hong Kong's upcoming taxi-hailing app reverses the business model

I love tech startups.  Where else, except in cyberspace could you start a company, that’s free to both customers and suppliers, with no planned revenue stream? And be taken seriously enough to get backers? Add that it’s not even really launched yet, but you’ve generated so much advance buzz and publicity that you have not needed to pay one single public relations pixie. Just as well, because you have not yet decided how to make the money you’d need to pay them.

Taxihero’s business development director Lars Maehler says they don’t really plan to be up and running much before Christmas.  When it starts for real, you will download the app, select where you are going via google maps and GPS on your trusty smartphone and hey presto, your personal taxi hero will message you: “Congratulations, you’ve found your taxi!” He or she will then come and pluck you from the pavement.

Maehler and his colleague Kara Ng are infectiously enthusiastic and very confident. But hey do admit that usually it’s the other way around. “Usually the product is finished and then marketing starts,” he says. “But with us, it’s completely in reverse, we have the exposure, but the product isn’t there yet.”

It’s just sort of soft operational. First, they told their friends to use the Taxihero app, then they started a social media site, then they did the Apple and Google stuff. No traditional marketing at all.  And that was enough. “The numbers of growth have been just astounding," he says.