Ask HN: How would you monetize a marketplace for commercial drone services?

[dronehire]

My co-founder and I run dronehire.org, where we connect commercial drone operators with clients.

Our core service is facilitating quote requests being sent to drone operators, based on the potential client's requirements such as location and type of service (aerial photography, mapping, hyperspectral imaging etc.). We are currently monetizing this service with premium operator subscriptions, which give them access to a higher number of quote requests.

We've also been approached by multinational mining companies and government departments looking to hire drone operators for lucrative contracts (in excess of 50k). We don't currently have the infrastructure set up for subcontracting, so what we're looking at doing is asking the operators that we connect with these clients to give us a percentage of the invoice, and possibly a percentage of any work done for this client within a certain time period e.g. 24 months. Is this reasonable? How would you go about monetizing these contracts?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[ig1]

What you need to be thinking about is how different models affect incentives.

With your subscription model there's no way for the participant to work around you, but with a per-transaction based commission you need to think about how the participants are going to avoid paying you a fee.

If your drone vendors rely upon you for future work you could use the threat of kicking them off the platform to encourage them to be honest with you, but you'd need still need some independent way to verify if the transaction happened off-platform without them telling you.

Another approach might be to build a service (i.e SaaS) on-top of your marketplace that both sides of the market think is worth the commission-fee (it doesn't have to be SaaS, it could also be a traditional business service like escrow, arbitration, etc.).

[notahacker]

Do the governments and MNCs approaching you perceive you as working on their behalf? Are they willing to disclose a maximum rate they're willing to pay, or is there a reasonable "rule of thumb" estimate you can use to start off with?

If so, negotiate the lowest possible rate with your suppliers - who could get more similar work from you in future - and tell your government/MNC that you have one or more parties willing to do it for $xxk, and your fee for arranging everything is $xk. You'll put them in touch and walk them through the process of actually hiring the drone everything after they've accepted your $x fee.

Congratulations, you're now a drone charter broker, possibly the world's first.