Boxcar's Goals for 2023
Yes, we are hiring!
This is the first of the short intra-quarter investor updates I promised in my Q4 update.
This one is all about what we’re going to accomplish in the next 12 months.
2023 Goals
Meta goal: return to startup mode.
Over the past three years Boxcar has weathered a tumultuous period of uncertainty, whose hallmark was the total evaporation of commuting demand. During this time, we found ourselves forced to adopt a more conservative approach to decision-making and we priotized stability over the nimble flexibility that defines a startup.
We have weathered this period of uncertainty, but now demand for commuting is back and we're ready to take risks again.
Every day we are shifting more towards a growth mentality and embracing agility, speed, and innovation to capitalize on the opportunities before us. By the end of 2023, we'll fully transition back into full-on startup mode while simultaneously possessing mature revenue streams. All of this will set us up for sustainable growth and profitability.
Specific
Financial:
Double gross revenue to $6M
Increase net revenue150% to $1M
Turn a net profit
Personnel
Hire 2-3 full-time business development associates
Hire a full-time CTO
Expansion:
Launch 2-3 new bus routes in New Jersey
Fill out Ridgeliner/Rocket/Bullet routes
Obtain new municipal parking client
Process
Automate marketing/user acquisition
Re-commence parking inventory acquisition for first time since pre-pandemic
Trigger will be: parking returning (to be discussed in next update)
2023 Financial Goals
2023 Hiring:
CTO
Our goal for 2023 is to bring my longtime business partner, Dan, on full-time as a CTO. This is so important because we will be able to ship faster and scale tech like never before.
The prerequisite for this is profitable operations so that salary can be funded out of operations and not invested capital. The best way to do this is to get to a $5M run rate, with gross margins of 20% or roughly $1M a year.
Our main goal will be launching new bus runs over the next few months and concentrating on filling those buses with new customers!
Business Development
As a marketplace company, business development means the acquisition of both supply and demand. Historically, we hired biz dev for supply acquisition for parking spots/other supply that we could add to our platform.
We are likely to be adding a partnerships/parking sales role like this in the near future, but right now we are hiring for 2-3 salespeople who will be able to speed the plow on the demand growth.
In 2017 we acquired customers manually, by generating town-specific lead forms on instapage and then reaching out directly to the people who inquired. Then we launched our app and built in the analytics that allowed us to track funnels.
Our new hires will be returning to Boxcar’s roots of manually onboarding leads. I have been doing this role and testing this method myself for the last few weeks and it has proven successful, so these new hires will pay for themselves by helping to accelerate our ability to run buses.
Transportation Growth
New Routes
Our goal is to launch two more routes with Boxcar this year:
SoMa Speeder
Short Hills, Millburn, Maplewood, South Orange
Grow to 5 daily runs by end of year
Montclair Mountaineer -
Upper Montclair, Walnut Ave, Bay Street, Glen Ridge
2 morning, 1 evening bus by year end
Growing Current Routes
Below is our average daily transit revenue by route. As you can see, the Morris Meteor accounts for nearly 50% of our gross transit revenue.
It also accounts for 100% of our net revenue from transportation. You can see in the below chart how the Morris Meteor turns a ~$7,000 weekly profit and the Rocket/Ridgeliner/Bullet turn a combined $9,000 loss.
The below chart also shows how we are scaling buses to an extent - you can see that the moment the Ridgeliner becomes profitable, it swings back to a loss because we choose to add more bus capacity.
You can also see what our bus profit looks like when we fill up our buses as we did during the March 2022 rail shutdown. If we had a similar utilization rate today (95% - which we possess on our most mature bus runs), our bus profit would be $40,000 weekly.
None of the above even includes membership revenues, which currently adds $350,000 of 100%-margin annual revenue to our transportation business.
Visible below is a chart showing our daily bus runs, by route, since pre-pandemic + planned routes.
As you can see, we generally do not add bus capacity over the summer, as commuting plateaus and then plummets in the last two weeks of August.
Here is what growing our routes looks like for the rest of 2023 in plain english:
Grow Morris Meteor top line 20% and bottom line 50% - Should be $1.5M top line and $400k annual net revenue by end of 2023
Grow Ridgeliner to same level as Morris Meteor - $1.2M gross revenue $300k net revenue by Summer 2023
Grow Raritan Rocket to same, by end of 2023
Double size of Bergen Bullet, to roughly where Ridgeliner is today, by end of year
Grow Montclair and Millburn to size of where Bergen Bullet is today
The above equates to roughly $7M in annualized revenue by December, and about $10M by May 2024.
Thanks for your support and stay tuned! Future updates will cover:
Parking Update and plan for restarting parking acquisition
Boxcar’s flywheel effects
Ongoing and future partnership discussions
Thoughts on raising money vs growing organically
Boxcar’s regulatory environment
“Thinking Big” and Boxcar’s potential and roadmap as a super-app mapped out.
Customer Acquisition strategy, cost, and payback period