We recently had the pleasure of interviewing with ABC news reporter Jonathan Bloom, who covers technology for the station. His story covered KurbKarma and a company called SideCar, a cool new ride sharing app that recently launched in San Francisco.

Check out the video here:

And the original full text can be found here and re-posted below:

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SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) – Getting around San Francisco can be a big headache, whether you’re stuck in traffic or just trying to park. But now, two apps for your mobile phone aim to make your trip around town faster and cheaper.

San Francisco’s streets are lined with restaurants, people, and of course cars — a problem if you’re trying to park yours. After almost an hour circling North Beach without finding a single spot — Neha Sampat came up with KurbKarma.

“KurbKarma is a social network for parking that helps you find parking where and when you need it, in cities like San Francisco,” said Sampat.

She and her co-workers demonstrated it for us. Just open the free app on your smartphone, and tell it where you need a spot. Other users who have a parking space, but are about to leave can offer you theirs.

“And they make an exchange. And the person who leaves actually gets an incentive called a ‘KarmaKredit,’” said Sampat.

You get one credit for every space you give up, but you have to spend two credits to get someone else’s space. Why the imbalance? Well, for the system to work, they need more people offering spaces than taking them. In fact, they want you get in the habit of always offering your space.

“Just like you might check in on Foursquare when you walk in, we want you to check out on KurbKarma when you walk out,” said Sampat.

Once you do drive off, look around your car. Odds are you’re the only person in it.

“Right now, drivers, they drive by themselves all over the place,” said Sunil Paul, the Sidecar CEO.

However, Paul’s company wants to change that with another social app called SideCar that matches up those solo drivers with people who need a ride.

“We’ve only been testing for four months and in that short amount of time we’ve already had 10,000 rides,” said Paul.

We got two SideCar users to show us how it works. The smartphone app finds your location and asks where you’re going. It alerts a nearby driver and if he’s going the same way, he can agree to pick you up.

Based on how far you drive, the app suggests a donation, which you can pay to the driver by credit card. It’s voluntary and often much less than a taxi.

“It definitely replaces both taking a cab and taking a bus, it’s just probably the most convenient thing I’ve found,” said Holly Kinzell, a SideCar passenger.

And for some drivers like Eric Janson, it’s a way to turn your free afternoon into some extra cash.

“It can average from as little as maybe $50-60 to maybe $120 if you’re driving more hours,” said Janson.

But SideCar’s getting a lukewarm reception from the San Francisco MTA. They’re concerned it’s an unlicensed taxi service, skirting around all the city’s taxi laws that are designed to keep people safe. SideCar’s CEO insists those laws don’t apply.

“We’re operating under rules created for ridesharing and carpooling. So those are state level regulations,” said Paul.

The critical distinction is if the passenger chooses how much to donate, if anything at all. Paul adds they do background checks on everyone who signs up to drive.

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As you can see, we’re pleased to see the ongoing momentum around KurbKarma! (KurbKarma Yes!)

by Ingrid Lunden, TechCrunch | Original Post

KurbKarma: A Social Network, And App, To Find Parking Where And When You Need It

INGRID LUNDEN

Monday, May 21st, 2012

19 Comments

We have all been there: you are in your car, you need to park, and you cannot, no matter how much you try, find a space. You see cars pulling away, but it’s too far for you to get there before another car swoops in. You see people walking and you trail them, hoping they’re heading to a vehicle. It’s a frustrating state of affairs, but a new startup, KurbKarma, is launching today at TC Disrupt New York to try to solve it.

“Parking where and when you need it” is the basic idea here: you have people who have spaces they are about to leave; and you have people who need spaces. The app (available for iOS) works like an ad hoc social network to link these people up. Those who have a space can post their status on an app, those who need a space find one on the map. The app integrates with Google Maps to plot spaces near you, and lets you send messages — several sendable with the touch of a button — to let the space owners know how far away you are.

Spaces are “sold” with KarmaKredits: people who donate their spot pick up one KarmaKredit. People who need a space use two KarmaKredits to buy them.

Like many of the best ideas out there, KurbKarma came out of the immediate needs of its founders. Neha Sampat and Matthew Baier are friends with longstanding backgrounds in tech, who are both also qualified as sommeliers, and they had a plan to get together to scheme for their next enological activity. Arranging to meet in the North Beach district of San Francisco, they drove around, looking for a place to park — which can be an impossible task in that part of town. By the time finally found a place to park, they knew what they had to do next: try to solve this problem for themselves and others.

What’s interesting about the app is that it has both a practical and a moral twist to it. “There’s an element of paying it forward,” says Baier. “It’s a community effort to make parking easier; you are adding additional parking spaces to the public domain.” He also points out that the app helps aid the “peace of mind” of the driver, allowing them to focus on driving rather than looking off the road for a spot.

But it’s not all about charity and goodwill: KurbKarma has also started to work a revenue model into the business, in the form of a virtual currency. You can always use the app free of charge, but if you have not had the chance to pick up KarmaKredits by offering spaces to the network, you can buy some through the App Store, with each credit costing $0.99. The app is free in the app store, and every new user gets 10 free KarmaKredits for signing up.

The pair have been picking up a mailing list of users for launch with a bit of viral marketing that has clearly struck a chord in the traffic-choked streets of San Francisco: they went around a few areas of town — including the financial district and Dolores Park — and put what looked like parking tickets under the wipers of various cars.

Then they stepped back to watch: people would pick them up, thinking “Oh no, not another parking ticket,” said co-founder Matthew Baier. Inside: a note about how annoying parking can be with a link to a fun domain offering a solution for how to improve it. (example: parkingisabitch.com) They’ve collected 2,500 names this way so far.

In the future, there are some exciting developments planned for KurbKarma. They include an Android version to complement the iOS app coming out today. And there are also discussions with other device makers (eg GPS system producers) to integrate with some of the other tools that drivers already use to get around. (The reason that the pair went with iOS first, says Sampat, is because they are launching in New York and San Francisco — both cities where people use their smartphones for navigation; in the future, when the company expands to other markets, especially in regions like Europe, where GPS in-car navigation systems are very popular, other hardware will need to come into play.)

Baier also says that KurbKarma is working on expanding the kinds of spaces that they will integrate into the app: right now it’s geared at public parking, but down the line there will also be options to take private parking, in the form of garages, driveways and other off-street spaces. And, crucially for the business’ scale, it is talking with some large third parties that already focus on car-based city travel to help market the offering.

I have to admit when I first heard the idea for KurbKarma, I had my doubts: it puts too much weight on the goodwill of other people, and being able to plan and stick to commitments with total strangers — and there are so many variables: traffic that can delay you; people needing to rush away and leave the space before they said they would; and people changing their mind and staying longer than originally intended.

There are some elements already worked into the app that should help discourage flaky behavior, such as user ratings after a transaction is completed (or not, as the case may be): “It will happen from time to time that people leave,” notes Sampat. “But if they do that they will see negative ratings. The ratings will weed out those who do not follow the rules.”

And sometimes it is the most unlikely — and original — of ideas that really take off. Just think of Airbnb and the idea of people who had never thought of themselves as ad hoc hoteliers suddenly giving up rooms in their private homes: that, too, sounded like a big leap for people to take. And yet today I think it’s miles better than most of the hotel options many cities offer. “Sharing models are becoming more mainstream,” says Baier. “The idea is already out there.” I’d put a few KarmaKredits on KurbKarma striking a similar chord.