building app for 'Driving for Dollars' nationwide

[Mohit Madaan]

Hello Fellow BPers,

i just finished listening to podcast 154 where Bob talks about hiring interns who drive for dollar for his company and in return they get a referral fees if the deal gets closed, listening to this i just thought of business idea, that i would like to discuss with everyone.

Here is snapshot of idea that i think can be turned into a real business:

• Build an app for anyone to download and drive for dollars.
• Free to use, anyone can download who has time to drive and want to make some extra cash.
• When they find a distressed property, they mark the house on the app, including occupied or vacant.
• Backend team research the owners information from county records and send out mail piece.
• Sales team, find and sell leads of people who call back.
• Upon closing, the person who found the property will get a flat referral fees or Flat cost per lead can be charged for each consumer who calls back from a letter and % paid to original lead finder.

Here is why this really is exciting

• Nationwide scalability
  • Imagine launching a marketing campaign, something along the lines of "Make money while driving" lol, gotta be careful with that....
  • Basically, this can grow to hundreds of people willing to drive for dollars within matter of days/weeks.
• Amazing lead source for investors.
  
  • Alot of small investors might not be able to drive for dollars and would prefer if some one else did it for them and they just paid for the leads.
  • Selling leads to investors seems really easy.
• No time limit for drivers - There is a potential because the drivers can literally do this while on a trip to super market for groceries (but they drive everyday to same supermarket, lol)
• The website www.DriveForDollars.com is available at only $5,000 or so. Quite frankly, i am excited about buying this domain anyway for something to do in future.

Challenges i can think of right now

Above and beyond the normal problems with executing any business idea, i think these things can come in the way

• Not enough response from the mail peaces.
  • Imagine sending mail peaces to all the properties found by "Drivers" and not getting enough results for them to keep doing it. I know, the mail peace has to be researched pre hand to make this work but this could happen, specially because the mail peace is going out from a company and not from an individual and we can't put individuals name as the leads can't be pre sold without knowing how many leads will/can be generated in certain market.
• Not enough drivers signing up.
  • This could be a problem to start with as you need to spend alot of money to market this. Without any research/numbers i am not sure how many people would want to do this?

Just thought of all this in last 10 minutes and there is alot more to think/do before pulling the trigger but i seriously like where my head is right now regarding this.

Please provide your feedback @Joshua Dorkin @Brandon Turner