Background
A couple of Harvard students started Get Out of Cambridge (GOoC), a pretty simple site that lets you share taxis (and car rides, eventually) as well as book flights (with Harvard vacation dates baked into the date picker).
Controversy
Today the UC decided to “endorse” GOoC, as well as contribute $200 towards GOoC’s publicity (facebook ads, door-dropped banners, etc). As far as anyone can tell, this seems to be the first time the UC has given money to a for-profit student business.
My Take
GOoC is a pretty smart idea, with a few nasty flaws in execution.
It’s definitely a pain in the ass to look up vacation dates (this iCal subscription helps). Mashing up this info with a date picker for flights is a solid idea, and the taxi/ride share platform could become a great way to generate traffic. But, the site’s date picker is sort of broken (riddle: try to modify your departure date after choosing your return date). And I’ll be sticking with kayak because GOoC has no way to search for flexible dates, multiple airports, etc. Not to mention the whole taxi/ride sharing thing has failed in the past…
This could be pretty profitable (aka I’m kicking myself for not doing it myself).
GOoC affiliates pay between $0.25/click (kayak) and $7/ticket (studentuniverse). If the site gets some traction, I could see it bringing in anywhere from ~$4k/year (10% of students booking 2 flights/year) to ~$25k/year (40% of students booking 3 flights/year).
I can’t believe the UC funded this.
Admittedly, the amount was pretty trivial. That said, on principle the UC shouldn’t be funding for-profit student ventures with termbilled funds. And even if the UC wanted to play venture capitalist, it should “invest” in startups that actually need the money! GOoC is already up and running, it has next to no costs, and (as Joyce Zhang pointed out on UC-open) there are countless ways to publicize that are both free and more effective than doordropping + facebook ads.
