Bandit: Year One
A retrospective on co-founding a student transportation startup in San Luis Obispo.
What It Was
Bandit was a student transportation company — an LLC I co-founded to provide safe, reliable rides for college students in San Luis Obispo. We weren't just building an app; we were trying to build a brand that students actually identified with.
The driving company for the thrifters and coffee lovers, the band players and house show dancers, the party hosts and study-night warriors. That was the vision.
The Problem
Surge Pricing
Uber and Lyft prices would 3-4x on weekend nights in a small college town. A 5-minute ride could cost $25+. Students were either paying through the nose or making dangerous choices.
Unreliable Supply
SLO isn't a big market for rideshare drivers. Wait times of 20-30 minutes were common on busy nights. Sometimes no cars were available at all.
Safety Gap
The combination of high prices and long waits meant students were driving when they shouldn't have been. We wanted to make the responsible choice the easy one.
What We Built
The technical foundation for a real-time ride scheduling platform — from native iOS to backend infrastructure.
iOS App
Native SwiftUI app with real-time ride tracking, scheduling, in-app payments, and push notifications. Built for both riders and drivers.
Backend
TypeScript/Node.js API with MongoDB, WebSocket connections for live updates, Firebase for auth, and Stripe for payment processing.
Marketing Site
Built the brand identity and public-facing website. Designed to resonate with the college demographic — not corporate, not generic.
The Journey
Filed the LLC, assembled the founding team, and started building. Two college students with an idea and enough stubbornness to try.
Built the iOS app, backend infrastructure, and scheduling system. Iterated constantly on the UX based on early tester feedback.
Developed the brand identity, website, and marketing materials. Built partnerships with local businesses and student organizations.
Ran live operations — managing drivers, handling scheduling, dealing with the reality of running a transportation service. Learned that operations complexity scales faster than you expect.
Made the decision to wind down. Not a failure — a deliberate choice. The unit economics and operational overhead in a small college town didn't support the vision at scale.
What I Learned
Brand Resonance
People connected with Bandit as a brand way more than we expected. The identity mattered. Students wore the merch, talked about it to friends — that part worked. Building something people actually care about is a different skill than building something that works.
Operations Complexity
The tech was the easy part. Managing drivers, insurance, scheduling, customer issues, and regulatory compliance — that's where the real complexity lives. Software scales. Operations don't — at least not the same way.
Knowing When to Stop
Closing Bandit wasn't giving up. It was recognizing that the market conditions, our resources, and the timing didn't align. Knowing when to stop is as important as knowing when to start. I'd do it all again.
A Brief Note on Sobro
Before winding down, we explored expanding Bandit into a SaaS platform called Sobro — a white-label scheduling and transportation management tool for other small operators. The concept had legs, but we decided to shelve it along with Bandit rather than pivot into a space we weren't ready for. Maybe someday.