Company
Date Published
Author
Kyle Kelly-Yahner
Word count
798
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

viaCycle is a bike-sharing system that allows users to quickly checkout bikes for short trips using their cell-phones, similar to Zipcar but for bicycles. The company was founded in 2009 by Sid Doshi and his Mechanical Engineering Grad friends at Georgia Tech as a student project, with the goal of making bike-sharing simple and accessible. viaCycle uses an electronic lock system powered by Twilio SMS and Voice, which includes GPS tracking, allowing users to find the bike, call or text in the PIN, and enjoy their ride. The company has developed a turn-key bike-sharing program that can be set up for universities, corporations, mixed-use developments, neighborhoods, etc., with costs per bike reduced by 1/2 or 1/3 compared to existing bike-sharing systems. viaCycle is now operating and managing programs for Georgia Tech and plans to expand to other schools, companies, and resorts in the near future. The company's team has a background in Mechanical Engineering with Master's degrees, and they use Twilio for Voice and SMS access, as well as a basic web application stack (Django/Postgres) for back-end operations. viaCycle is focusing on bringing its product to more places and developing its next version of the system.