Ride-sharing pioneer Sidecar to shut down ride, delivery service

Sidecar, which pioneered the on-demand ride model but was left in the dust by bigger rivals Uber and Lyft, will shut down its ride and delivery service on Thursday, co-founder and CEO Sunil Paul wrote Tuesday in a post on Medium.

“Today is a turning point for Sidecar as we prepare to end our ride and delivery service so we can work on strategic alternatives and lay the groundwork for the next big thing,” Paul wrote, without specifying what business Sidecar might pursue.

The shift underscores how money and marketing can trump innovation, experts said.

While both Uber and Lyft rapidly added new markets, Sidecar operated in only a handful of U.S. cities, including its San Francisco hometown, and Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Boston and Brooklyn, N.Y.

[...] that business model put it in competition with companies like Postmates.

While Sidecar was first with many innovative features that benefited drivers, he said passengers found it confusing when compared with Uber’s “just press a button” model.

Uber and Lyft are now replicating many features that Sidecar initiated, Campbell said, including letting passengers going the same way split rides, letting drivers input their destinations, and letting passengers specify favorite drivers.

Sunil’s Medium post enumerated still more firsts for Sidecar: a marketplace model where drivers set their own price and turn-by-turn directions, for instance.

A tech entrepreneur, Paul founded e-mail filtering company Brightmail and co-founded Web service Freeloader.