how a ride share co-op (eva) is pursuing a dao vision

Welcome to the Armada Podcast, where we are focusing in on DAO governance. Let's hop into the show. If you could start with who you are and what you're working on.

Well, hello, my name is Darden Issoufi. I'm working on Eva, Eva rideshare and delivery app based on blockchain.

And in podcast tradition, which fictional character would you like to have dinner with?

For sure, Homer Simpson, uh, for the simple and good reason he looks first very friendly, but he's done so much in his life and he's still very humble and simple. So, uh, I think it's, uh, it's a great quality to have.

Yeah, Homer Simpson, that is, uh, that is one I had not thought of, but he certainly— he's not quite a father figure, I won't go that far, but, you know, having watched a lot of Simpsons growing up, uh, there's certainly some charm to that. So I appreciate you, um, Throwing that out there.

Well, it's just you know this well. This guy went you know into space. He traveled the world. He visited like you know communist Albania and like South Korea, and he's like he he did so much. And I guess I love to you know just be grounded like he is, and like even though like you know I go through different challenges through my life, to be still the you know the same person at the end of the day. So I find it really cool. And you mentioned it, like, he's lovely. He looks funny and joyful. So why not?

Love it. So I reached out to you guys to talk about DAOs, and obviously you guys are not currently a DAO, but what I thought was super interesting was your guys' approach in doing a cooperative and thinking about ridesharing and delivering in a way that was very sort of DAO-inspired. And I could definitely see your organization someday evolving into a DAO or being a sort of predecessor to a company that perhaps emerges in that way. And so I was kind of learning a little bit more about what you guys were building, and I noticed a description of, quote, social franchise ecosystem. And I was just curious if you could kind of talk about that as it relates to what you guys are building and kind of how you see this as a cooperative. And we'll start there, and then we'll slowly get into DAOs over the longer part of the conversation.

Yeah, well, there's many topics to cover. So, well, let's Let's jump right into it. So, what is Eva? Eva, name it the way you want. Eva is a rideshare app and is a delivery app. So, on one hand, it allows a rider to move from point A to point C with a stop to point B through the app itself, the same way as Uber. On the other hand, it's an direct on-demand delivery service which is commission-free and, uh, with that which has no, uh, distance limit for any restaurant or retailer with its own online sales website. So by combining both rideshare and delivery, we create a work environment that enable— that enables drivers to basically work pretty much all day long if they want, and they pick and choose their schedules, they pick and choose where and when they want to be online. So it's a very— I'd say it's a great symbiotic ecosystem that, you know, combining both rideshare and delivery. So this is Eva for the people, and this is how people see us. People don't see the cooperative model, people don't even see the blockchain behind the app. So this is from strictly a user perspective, what they see when they have the Eva app in front of them. But behind that, Eva is much more than a simple app or a copycat of Uber. First, we're entirely based on blockchain. We're using third-generation blockchain, the EOS.IO protocol, to treat every transaction, every element that goes through the app. So customers, in this case, Ryder members, order through the app. The fiat currency is converted into our internal commodity token, which we use to treat the transactions and so on. And the great relevance of blockchain in that is that we ensure data privacy because our database is public by design. Therefore, everything is encrypted. So that's the first thing. Mm-hmm. And then, What differentiates us from, let's say, Uber, Lyft, or other rideshare delivery companies is that we're franchising our technology to co-ops. What is a co-op? It's a members-owned company, meaning that right now in the province of Quebec, Canada, we're up and running in 3 cities, and the owners of that business registered in the province it's a cooperative, and of which every member has one vote. It is run like a country, like the United States is run or Canada is run. So every member has one vote. They democratically decide the budget, the policies, everything you can think of. So this is the 2 elements that differentiates us. By combining both, we're pretty close to a DAO in the sense that You know, for us, when we first started AVA, when we had the idea of AVA, we were truly interested by this very— the core idea of a decentralized autonomous organization. We thought that, you know, having an organization represented by rules encoded, you know, within a smart contract perhaps could be so cool. But we quickly faced a lot of challenges, namely, you know, mobility regulation, as you may know, rideshare, taxi, these are highly, highly regulated industries. And we had to comply, you know, to get licenses, to share some of our data with the airports, with the government, and so on. Right. So, we found a way to be as close to a DAO as possible by having these nodes. So, the social franchises owning their own data, being nodes within the blockchain, And we have the parent company which owns and develops the technologies. And therefore, we're creating this ecosystem which is decentralized and at a local level owned and managed by the members. And at a global level where we're enabling quick scaling up. So, yeah. So,

okay. So each city or whatever geographic region you guys want to define it as, Is this kind of encapsulated social franchise ecosystem. And so, and then all 3 of those are running on the same technology suite, which then your guys' company is helping facilitate. That's correct?

That's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's more simple than what I just explained. But yes, yes.

As a former entrepreneur, I certainly, there's a love and a disdain when someone does that to your complex thing. So I very much have empathy of like, no, no, well, I explained it, you know, very Very accurate, and then you just summarized it in like the simplest of forms, which really takes off a lot of the amazing nuance. So I know that feeling, but, um, that is a helpful framing to understand, and I totally see what you're talking about. I mean, the regulation in the ridesharing space is obviously, you know, is gone, you know, with, with Uber taking the charge of breaking all the rules, and then now the spot that we're at, especially in the United States, and understanding that. I certainly see how that would be an incredibly difficult industry to be able to apply something unique as a DAO to that. And so kudos to you guys for thinking really creatively to empower people to own this asset collectively while still building a sustainable business to support all of that. So that's really cool and creative. How do you think about where this goes? And what I mean by that is So you've built out this process, and you guys are going to be able to scale this, you know, region by region or geographic space by geographic space, and you're going to be constrained to obviously the regulations in order to accomplish this. But is this a— do you think about this as like, you know, right now you guys are figuring out the nuances of Canada, and then does this extend in the United States and globally over time? Or do you suspect that you might have to have a different little version of it as it relates to each country's regulation? Like, how do you think navigating this internationally— and I know it's super early, but How do you think about the next scale point?

Well, nothing is set in stone in a sense that we're pretty agile and we're developing ourselves according to the market needs. To give you just an example of that is before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were strictly a rideshare app. Then when COVID arrived, we decided to develop this business-to-business delivery protocol, and we just basically integrate any online sales website, whether it's by Wix, Shopify, Lightspeed, any transactional website can be integrated with our service. And from that point on, any retailer or restaurant can offer instant delivery with real-time monitoring. And that's a proof that we're always listening to what the market— what's the best market fit for our venture. Right now, we believe that The whole province of Quebec, and that we're operating in 3 cities, including the second largest city in Canada, Montreal. It's a big lab for us. We're testing a lot of things. We're testing, for instance, we have drivers who get a universal basic income. We have drivers that are paid by the hours. We have drivers that are paid as self-employed. We have all kinds of tests going on in the different cities we're in. And the whole point of that is that we gather data. and that we optimize our technologies and our cookbook. Because once we will be comfortable enough, the goal is to replicate the same model that we developed here with over 50,000 rider members, over 2,000 driver members. And we want to replicate this in another province in Canada, ideally in Canada. And then once we're comfortable enough and that we raise funds based on the results that we have in our 2 franchises, well, is to scale it up and just to replicate from one city to another. And our goal, of course, is to see our model scaling up in as much cities as possible. We're not looking to replace Uber or Lyft. I mean, these companies are doing a tremendous job But we think that there is room for more alternatives. There is room for more socially responsible alternatives.

Yes.

And then that's why we think our model should be applied to different use cases. Of course, maybe we'll meet in 2 years and then I might tell you, listen, we left the rideshare aspect of it because it was too complicated and we just kept the delivery because because it's a huge market, blah, blah, blah. I mean, nothing is fixed, but so far, this is our plan. Our plan is to replicate our model elsewhere in Canada into another province, and then scale it up into the United States. I mean, the US is a beautiful market. There's no other words to describe it. It's a growing market. I mean, the rideshare market by 2050 2025, it'll be a market share of around, uh, 200— like over $200 billion. So it's crazy. It's insane, uh, how fast this whole rideshare market and the instant delivery market are growing. It's just crazy.

Totally agree. And, and I agree with you that, you know, I think at first pass it's like, yeah, Uber and Lyft have the whole market, uh, cornered. But I think that is a, you know, very 2016 view of the world, which is I think the new version of the world or the 2030 version of the world is that Uber and Lyft are effectively the new taxi platforms. And so if I were to tell you that there are 2 nationwide taxi organizations or global taxi organizations, is there space for a third social-friendly? You know, it's the same pitch that Whole Foods effectively had with all these grocery providers out there, right? So I totally buy it. I think we will see The removal of the traditional taxi organizations, you will see Uber and Lyft effectively become our new taxi. You know, the floor will rise. And I think there'll be a huge opportunity for exactly this kind of mission-driven, socially responsible, and then like you are driving at this cooperative experience. So I buy that narrative. And now the timing is obviously the journey that you're on. And as you said, like, how do you execute that plan? And, but I think that's super interesting. And I certainly am a believer in that for you. As an entrepreneur, you know, you're applying this cooperative model and you're having this technology platform kind of be the foundation to that. Is it your belief or your kind of position that really any marketplace that is predominantly driven by regular everyday people that are providing both the supply and the demand of the marketplace has an opportunity to have a cooperative kind of social franchise ecosystem applied to it?

Uh, well, that's a good question. Uh, do I believe— I mean, in theory, yes. Uh, I don't know if, if this can be applied to all markets. Uh, but for instance, uh, you know, when we refer to, uh, delivery and rideshare, we're referring to gig workers. And, uh, I think they're the one, uh, having most of the burden. They're paying the vehicle, paying the insurance, the maintenance fees, their licenses and everything. So, I believe that in this very specific market, yes. And that's what has been proven here in Montreal. But can it be applied to all markets? I mean, I'm all for it. I mean, we should decentralize. There's no way— there's no legitimate excuse to have middlemen in the new world.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm getting at. Yeah. Is What I love about what you're getting— you're talking about is this DAO inspiration, right, of saying, hey, you know, if you replace some of these things with tokens and you kind of get the middlemen out of the situation, I mean, that's effectively the market cap of all of the, you know, the eBays of the world, the Ubers, the Lyfts, the Airbnbs. I mean, you could make an argument that that market cap of that collection of those companies is surplus that could have been captured by the people who are actually driving a vast majority of that work, or maybe that number should be a fifth. of what it is. And so I think you're tapping into something. Yeah.

Even social media. I mean, we're producing through our data, we're producing labor, and even social media, there's room to transform or to have like Steemit, like other social media to have a more decentralized version. So I think, yes, the only point why I was thinking is that I guess some industries that I'm less aware of, there could be more technical challenges. Like, for instance, when I think about the space industry, I mean, like, it would be like more complicated to decentralize at least all of it. But as you mentioned, the whole point is not like my— our thesis is not a communist thesis or socialist thesis. Our thesis is that we should just make it as fair as possible and that we can optimize everyone's resources. A driver driving with Eva is gaining 10% more than when he drives with Uber. And that's why we were able right now to close months with thousands of rides completed within a month. And we keep growing because drivers, you know, uh, uh, you know, on board with us, and then riders jump in as well. So it just, you know, we're balancing this supply and demand. Of course, there are challenges for, uh, uh possible DAOs or companies that resemble decentralized autonomous organizations. But I think it's not impossible. And there's so many places, there's so many use cases that we can apply outside of ridesharing and delivery that we can apply such model, and especially the co-op model. I mean, in the US, you folks have something that's very special, is there's a lot of ESOPs, so employee-owned business. It's like a co-op. And this, to me, it's awesome. It's awesome when you have an accounting firm in which all the accountants are all the owners of the company. I mean, why not? Yeah. The question is, why not? Why to have a middleman? Why to have a central bank? Why to have Uber taking 25% while we could reduce this and still have a company providing some services here and there? but like driver, uh, you know, having most, most part of it. So that's, that's the idea behind that.

Yeah. And to clarify one statement that I was trying to make there prior is that I think any marketplace— and by marketplace I mean, you know, kind of gig economy style marketplace, or, you know, I used eBay as an example— really anywhere that the average, you know, demand side and the average person on the supply side is a typical sort of normal person, I suspect that that is— I think your business model might entirely fit. And, you know, Airbnb rentals, you know, most people own or rent a home, they can extend an area. eBay, do you have stuff? Can you sell stuff? You know, drive a car, things like that. But I think you're totally right, as you move into the specialization curve and you get in the spot, you know, Etsy as an example, like maybe that starts to become a little bit more, uh, difficult to do. Etsy probably still in the, in the do it, but you start to get into these more specialty things Totally agree with you that it doesn't necessarily apply across the board. This is like a bit of a tactical question and it's not really quite DAO related, but I'm trying to think about how we take collective ownership and kind of manifest features and products that drive collective success. And Uber's Uber Pool feature, I lived out on the West Coast in high-density areas and when that feature came out as a user, it was great because now I could get from point A to point B at a much cheaper perspective, I was happy to walk a couple blocks in order to have a more efficient route and a price in some cases that was almost 50% cheaper. And every time I got into the Uber or the Lyft for that matter and asked the driver what they thought of that feature, they absolutely hated it. And one of the things that I learned was that, you know, Uber would advertise, hey, you make $20 an hour or whatever it was, and then they would hold that as a floor of the pricing model, but they would then pile more and more revenue opportunities in there to maximize the efficiency of that driver so they could get a bigger, bigger share of that. Because as long as they guaranteed that $20 an hour, then they would let the people go, right? And so the drivers had gotten used to the inefficiencies in the algorithm and the inefficiencies in using something like Uber Pool and getting overpaid. And then when Uber introduced a new feature, it then caused them to feel frustrated because they felt like it was something taken away, right? And so the two were at odds. And the question I have for you is, how does your organization— like, how does an idea or product feature like Uber Pool type idea How would that make its way through a co-op like that in your structure? Like, how would it go from who would make a proposal like that? How would it get greenlit? How would it get into production? And then how would that feedback loop work back into like modifying or changing or removing that new feature?

There's essentially 2 ways right now. And I mean, all our— Eva as an app is fairly young, it's 3 years old. There's 2 ways. The first one is very informal, is through our website, there's a share an idea section, and then you can just share your idea. And every month we take them and then we pile them together and then we select them and we propose it to the board of the co-op. By the way, the board is democratically elected by all the members and it has a seat of every member category. So rider member, driver member.

Interesting. That's cool.

Worker member and so on. The second way is through the general assemblies. So we try twice a year to do general assembly meetings on a per-city. So we localize the management as much as we can. And then there's always time for the features that we want to collect. So these are the 2 ways that we formally get the first initial thoughts. So let's say drivers are like, hey, we should bill restaurants when we wait more than 15 minutes.

Sure.

We took the idea, and right now we're thinking of all the possible all the possible solutions that we have to this issue. We'll propose the different solutions and the GA will select which one is best for it. Then the board will take it and then we'll approve it and then we install it. Ideally, what we're looking to do is to achieve this kind of direct feedback with the members Riders and drivers directly through the app. Right now we're quite responsive, especially from the driver's end, because we're we're we're directly we want to directly add like the direct input from the customers, riders, drivers directly from the app whenever they have an issue, a bug, a feature that could be needed, and so on. From the driver's end, it's fairly easy because we have a good communication with them. They have forums on Telegram, on Facebook, they have groups of drivers, and they basically always share ideas, complaints, stuff like this, and then we're able to work on.

And so the, the general process then is similar to a republic democracy like the United States, where there is a process in which something comes from an idea into a sort of a proposal into a bill. And then you guys, and then they basically, hey, we want that feature. So then you guys effectively get that as an order, for lack of a better word. And it's like, hey, the dev team is going to build this in, operations team, building team, we're all going to turn this into a feature for you guys and then launch it. And then if people want change, then they can obviously go through that process again to either have that modified, removed, whatever it may be.

Yeah, but the whole point, so we want to still keep this, especially for Because the whole co-op governance is good for stuff like budget, because budget and stuff like this needs a lot of reflection, discussions, exchange. So the GA is a good platform for long-term decisions and stuff like this. However, for the features, quick fix and stuff like this, we wanted to make it more bidirectional directly to the app so that we can get the feedback right away. When there's some— something wrong. Let's say right now we're working on this bug that we have with the geolocation of the drivers. Sometimes riders don't see the driver coming in. We're working on the waiting time on the restaurants. That's

right.

That's a real case issue. Yeah. So stuff like this where we're working on because we had the feedback from drivers.

Yeah. And so how does something like— are there things like that where it's a critical bug that is accelerated through that process more quickly that you guys can make a Quick fix. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. So whenever there's a critical bug, so what we think, well, as a management team, being an issue that, you know, could make us lose rides, deliveries, or money, we immediately intervene and we do a quick fix right away.

Interesting. Super fascinating. I appreciate you kind of taking us through some of the X's and O's. I mean, I certainly see how you have a lot of DAO-inspired principles that you guys are operating on in the real world, which is really cool, because I think part of my broader vision of this space has been sort of this aspirational vision of DAOs, or like, hey, how do we, how do we get there, right? And there's certain things like, you know, Bitcoins and Ethereums of the world that might be easier to day one get there. And what I love about what you guys are doing is that you're sort of on the other side of the coin, which is like, well, we actually have to get a vehicle from point A to point B, and that vehicle has to have a driver, and I have to actually tell a city what that person's license and insurance is. And so like, how do I do that without just writing lines of code or a blog post about how to deliver a vision? So I think it's just really cool that you guys are putting out the, you know, the blood, sweat, and tears to try to put elements of this into your actual business. And so very cool. And I appreciate you for kind of sharing behind the scenes of how this whole process works. For anyone that is listening, is there anything that they can do to be helpful or, you know, point certain people to your site or your Twitter handle? How can we be helpful?

Well, first of all, thanks for your words. Well, the best way to support us is to download our app on the App Store and Google Play Store, because whenever you'll visit Montreal, Quebec, or the cities we're in, or the day we'll be in the city you're in, well, you'll already have the app on your mobile phone. The other way also is to directly join our different communities on Telegram, Twitter, and we have also the classic Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn to follow us. We're always sharing and updating on our development projects, ideas. So that's the best way to support us, I'd say, right now. And we truly appreciate any feedback, criticism, insults that could help us to improve our overall ecosystem.

Great. Sounds good. Thank you for joining the show.

Well, thank you very much for, for this opportunity.

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