The European Commission has estimated there are approximately 50 million single person-households in Europe where the occupant is aged between 18 and 65. There is actually, believe it or not, the same number of users on the dating service Tinder, although worldwide. Tinder has, to date, identified 20 billion potential matches. That’s certainly quite a number. This translates to 400 matches per user. Note that these are matches, not dates (that would be one too many for most people…). How many of the identified matches eventually end up in real meetings is of course difficult to say, but probably only a select few.
What Tinder does is what so many other digital players are undertaking nowadays, they broker the connection between supply and demand without owning the assets that are brokered. Moreover, both supply and demand are, in the dating domain, extremely “long tail”, meaning that every actor has preferences and prerequisites that are, for all intents and purposes, unique.
Let’s switch industries.
There are, also according to the European Commission, roughly 500.000 haulage firms in Europe. Most of them merely own a small fleet of vehicles, most commonly the owner driving his/her own truck. Single person households, in other words. With profit margins often under 2% and with hefty investments to repay, the financial state of many of these firms is anything but sound and pressure is mounting. A haulage company owns vehicles that perform services to shippers. The higher the utilisation of the vehicle, the higher the coverage of the fixed costs. Personnel and investment normally account for more than 50% of the total cost volume, and these need to be paid regardless of the revenue, if any, made by the company. Fuel amounts to 20-25% of the costs.