When he was a senior studying at Texas A&M University, Matthew Iommi realized that there were no good options for transporting groups of people. Fellow college students heading out for the night together didn’t have access to on-demand rides with the same convenience, accessibility, and affordability of typical ride-hail platforms, like Uber and Lyft.
“Once you hit that six to seven [person] mark, you had to split up and take multiple cars, which is inefficient and not great for sustainability. Plus it’s an inferior experience because everyone can’t ride together,” Iommi, now 25, told TechCrunch. “The other option was to reserve a charter vehicle days or weeks in advance.”
The latter choice usually entails paying for more hours than the group needs the ride, with no easy way to split the payment between friends.
In 2020, he and his co-founder Justin Rath decided to buy a party bus and experiment with creating an on-demand group rideshare service that serves between seven to 14 passengers. They named it Fetii, a French Oceanic term for an extension of one’s family.
“We like to say that the mantra of rideshare is bringing people together,” Iommi said.
Five years later, Fetii now claims to be operating in 68 cities across six states – including Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Atlanta, Nashville, Phoenix, and Scottsdale – and transporting over 200,000 passengers each month. And while Fetii does offer the ability to reserve rides in advance, Iommi says the majority – 75% to 80% – are on-demand.
The Austin-based startup has closed a $7.35 million seed round led by Mark Cuban, with participation from Y Combinator, Goodwater Capital, and others. Fetii will use that money to expand into new markets, including Florida, California, and Massachusetts.
For young people, by young people
Fetii isn’t the first startup to build a business around group rides. Years ago, there was Chariot, a commuter shuttle startup that Ford acquired in 2016, before shutting it down in 2019. Iommi explains that Chariot’s focus on employee and commuter rides is a difficult model because it only requires service for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening.
In 2022, Uber launched Uber Charter in partnership with US Coachways as a way to help riders book party buses and passenger vans through the app, but that quietly went bust, too.
These failures were lessons for Iommi and Rath. As a couple of college kids bootstrapping a startup they, “had to figure out a way to launch in a city without burning millions of dollars, like these rideshare companies typically do whenever they just raise these huge rounds and just try to figure it out.”
Rather than target corporate events, weddings, or other use cases that charter companies typically focus on at the start, Fetii honed in on college students.
“I think that’s the biggest thing that people before us haven’t figured out, is creating a service and a brand that’s more geared towards young adults and people who tend to congregate in groups more often,” Iommi said.
Most of Fetii’s riders are between 21 and 30 years old, and the platform’s use cases range from nights out and bachelorette parties to weddings and sports games. Fetii also provides rides for groups doing corporate events, conferences, and festivals.
“They’re using us multiple times a week, whether it’s just to go out with friends or they have a formal or an event or anything like that,” Iommi said.
Thinking through the payments system was also a unique challenge for Fetii.
“When that van shows up, the way [riders] pay is a lot like Lime and Bird by scanning a QR code, so each person in the group – rather than one person having to put the whole payment down and hope they get paid back – can individually pay their fare,” Iommi said, noting that the typical fare is about $5 per person.
By focusing on college students first, Fetii has developed a playbook to scale.
“We like to start on universities first. We partner with a lot of the orgs, the sports teams, the fraternities, the sororities, and really teach them how the product is used,” he said.
The first ride is always free, which Iommi says helps Fetii build a foundation in the college community. This allows the startup to attract drivers and ensures that there’s a supply-demand equilibrium.
Fetii uses a program called “Fetii VSP” (vehicle service provider), which allows entities with their own fleets and drivers to put their vans on Fetii’s platform.
Once the startup establishes a base in colleges, it expands outwards. People start seeing branded Fetii vans driving around and word of mouth spreads. As Iommi pointed out, each rider in a group can be converted into a customer, who can then go on to convert others, resulting in healthy, cost efficient growth.
In fact, it was rave reviews from one user, Mark Cuban’s daughter, that attracted the billionaire investor and former “Shark Tank” star to Fetii’s seed round.
“My daughter used Fetii nonstop with her friends and raved about it,” Cuban told TechCrunch. “She told me I should invest. So I reached out to Matthew and the more I heard about it, the more I liked it.”
When asked if Cuban was trying to make up for rejecting an offer to invest in Uber in 2009, he said: “Uber was first, so it was a different market back then. Fetii has a chance to be global and do amazing things.”
Iommi told TechCrunch that when he started the business, an Uber or Lyft acquisition was top of mind as an exit strategy. That changed over time, though Fetii would still be interested in partnering with the ride-hail giants.
Cuban also didn’t seem jazzed about Fetii going the M&A route. “I always prefer to be obscenely profitable and throw off cash,” he said.
Add comment