How Shutto Built a $47 Intercity Van Service and Took a $250K Debt Deal

Look, I thought Uber and Lyft won the ride sharing wars, but there's this new business popping up. Apps doing longer distance at lower price points than the traditional ride sharing apps. One of those companies is called Shutto here in Austin, Texas, offering rides from Austin to San Antonio and Austin to Houston. $50 a seat.

All female riders, they are like the 70% of our customers right now. 70? 70, yeah. It's insane. They feel safe inside.

The question is though, is the company making money? How many total can it hold? People? 12. Making like $600 a trip one way if you're full.

The idea is to end the year with eight vans.

Almost $20,000 per van Per van. Just in December 2026. Yeah. I'm gonna go meet Alberto, the Founder, to figure out if he's got an idea on how to expand this business faster and if My Capital can help. So why would we go spend money on, you know, 16 new vans when the four aren't fully up? But when I pressure you on that, you sort of back up and say, oh, I don't want that pressure actually.

Hey. I'm Nathan.

Hey, Nathan. Nice meet you.

What's your name? Alberto. Alberto. It's really good to meet you. So this is the brand. This is Shutto. Right?

This is the brand.

Yeah. Okay. So what do you guys do? What are you selling?

It's like a long distance Uber.

Which cities are you servicing today?

Right now, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and we will open May this year, Dallas.

I'm gonna pay probably between 150 and $200 to go from Austin to San Antonio if I use Uber. What do you charge?

$47 All in? All in.

No. No One way. Many total can it hold? People? 12. So 12?

Just 12.

12 people times 47. You're making like $600 a trip one way if you're full. Yeah. Are you typically full?

No. Not at the beginning. We We have less than a year in the market. We have just six months. There's something important that probably us as a male do not see it, but females, solo female riders, they are like the 70% of our customers right now. 70? 70. Yeah. It's insane. Why? They feel safe inside.

So 70% female, $47 one way. You're typically filling, you know, 80% of your seats. So 400, $500 top line per trip of revenue, something like Okay. Are you just already like a super rich guy? These are not cheap to buy. No. It's not. So how did you get the money to buy your first truck?

Experience doing business in different topics, like in waste management, like in security and mining.

What was your first real entrepreneur sort of startup?

It was an electrical construction company.

And how old were you when you launched that? 24. Okay. What comes after the electrical concrete company?

Electrical, the waste.

Okay, then it was the waste. I'm trying to search your backstory to try and get connective tissue to where you came up with this idea. So where did this idea come from?

Travel in my childhood to San Antonio a lot because in Mexico in that area, like nineties, you cannot shop like Gap clothes. Mhmm. And the Mexicans came here to do shopping.

Yep. Okay. So your idea for this came from you wanted to buy nice clothes. There were none of those clothes in Mexico. So you're going back and forth to San Antonio, the mining company you get rid of. How old are you at this point? 37, 38. Okay. And, and you launched this business, I believe you said earlier in '20 this year, last year, 2025, you launched Shutto.

Yeah. With, with one of my uncles that knows the transportation business pretty well. Thirty five years working dad in the passenger transportation.

So two co founders, you and your uncle?

That's correct.

Do you split equity evenly fifty fifty?

No. He owns more.

Come on. That means you're a bad negotiator.

He is funding more than me.

So... Okay. So he put in some of the initial capital?

Yeah. That's correct.

How much total equity have you raised to date, both from you and your uncle plus other parties?

Me and my uncle right now, Okay. One

So it took about a million dollars to get this off the ground. Yeah. Have you already spent the full million or do you sell some of that in the bank?

No, we already spent it.

So where have you spent it? What was most expensive?

Well, the bands are not cheap. Okay. What does this cost? $1.35.

$135,000. And how many of these do you have? Four. Okay. Well, there you go. Raising a million bucks on day one from family members can make for very uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinners. What do you guys think? Would you ever raise money from your family to get going? Leave a comment below.

At the beginning, we developed like a booking system. It was not good. So we changed with a a white label system that is pretty good.

And it's an app that you can white label so that people can book shutouts.

Yeah. Our pickup and our drop off points are coffee shops. So it's not like the shitty bus station.

Yep. Do you have to pay this coffee shop right now to use them as a pickup spot or no? No. They don't Do you have to pay for insurance on these vehicles? Yeah. Or is that really expensive? It is expensive. So what do you pay to insure one of these vans for a year? 15. Okay. So it's not cheap.

Yeah. It's not cheap.

So that's $60 a year to insure four four Mercedes Benz vans. Getting in the van was very nice. You know, I get on a Greyhound way back in the day, you have to, like, scoot through people. There's a plenty of space in here.

And the smell. No? Yes. And there's

no there's no smell in here. There is no first year of business was last year, right, in 2025? What was your target? What was your goal in terms of total revenue in year one?

We we start with two bands. So the idea is, like, at least make 10 k per month per van. We start to selling tickets in November of last year.

Okay. And in November, your first month in business, what was the total sales?

It was like 7 k. It was at higher

or lower than you expected? No.

At the beginning because, because our expected it was like 0 k. Why don't

you sum up total first year revenue, even though you only were operating for two months? What did you total last year in revenue? 21. Okay. $21,000. And what's your goal here in 2026?

The idea is to end the year with eight bands. We are not even in in breakeven right now. Mhmm.

How much are you burning per month right now?

35 k.

Does that make you nervous? Does it keep you up at night? No. You don't care about losing money?

For sure. I hate that. Yeah.

How many months of runway do you have left? Like, do you have to turn that around next month? Otherwise, you're out of money or... No. We... Probably, like, in July. In order to extend your life of the startup, you've gotta get sales ramping.

That's correct. You need to gain awareness. An awareness is not free.

What has been the most successful marketing activity you've done to date?

We hired some, Mexican influencers.

She's getting eyeballs on her Instagram that are people that wanna travel around in Austin. Yeah. How many followers does she have? I don't remember. Okay. But, like, hundreds of thousands or millions?

No. No. Like, 20 k or something yeah.

What do you pay an influencer to run a test?

1,000.

Okay. So what happened? You spend a thousand. How much money did that make you back?

5 k.

5 k. Yeah. And how did you track that attribution back to this Instagram account?

Because it was, like, Spanish speakers.

So you knew? Yeah.

It's pretty easy.

Yeah. Yeah. Do those customers come back or they buy $47 seat one time and you never see them again?

They come back... We have like a regular customer.

Okay. Females. The the... So those regular female customers, how many trips will they pay you for on average per month typically?

Six or eight.

Wow. Okay. So they might... They must be working in San Antonio. Yeah. How much of your revenue would you guess is truly recurring? It's people that come back literally every month six or seven times.

83%.

How many unique individuals have paid for at least one shuttle ride since you've launched?

Probably more than five five hundred.

And how many are recurring monthly customers?

Probably, like, 300.

So what are your all in cost just to do one trip?

We just focus on San Antonio, Austin. Okay. It's okay

for you.

So diesel. This vans give us like 22 miles per gallon. K.

$30.

$30.

It's about a 100 miles. Right?

Yeah. No. Seventy Seventy miles. 73. We pay pretty good. K. $26 per hour. K.

Tony, they pay good? Yes, sir. There we go. That's good. No. It is. How many hours will, like, a driver like Tony, how much do you need to book him for to go? Six hours. $30 each way for gas. So $60 there. And then three hours of Tony's time for one trip there and back times $30 an hour is another $90. $90. Yeah. So a $150 so far all in cost. Okay. So for breakeven though, you just fixed cost of the trip, you need to sell... It sounds like about four seats.

Yeah. Four four point seven seats.

Okay. Are most of your trips profitable, or are you still sort of underwater losing money on each trip?

There is some that is profitable, and there is some that we are losing money.

Are they all $50 tickets from Austin, San Antonio, San Antonio to Dallas, Dallas to Houston? No. Okay.

Dollars 47, Austin, San Antonio, San Antonio, Houston, 87. Austin, Houston, 67. Austin, Dallas, 87. Dallas, Houston, 97.

So let's average all those together and say your average per seat potential revenue was about $70 per trip. Quick average, dirty average. There's four vans, 12 seats in each van. Right? So that's that's 12 times four is 48.

48.

Yeah. Let's say the average trip is what? Three hours?

Two hours.

Two hours. Yeah. Divided into ten hour capacity. So that's five trips per day per van on average. So we have 288 sort of seat Per day. Trips per sale per day times 70 average price point. The total potential revenue capacity on a daily basis with four vans and all the math we just said Full capacity. Full capacity would be $20,000 a 160. So there's no need for you to go buy more vans until you fill up

all these vans. Right? Let's talk about the business today and how you plan to quote on a go forward basis. So we're recording here in, late April twenty twenty six. Where are you at today? We have no four vans. What will total revenue be here in April?

Probably, like, 19. 19. No more than that. Yeah.

19,000 of total sales in April. Where were you one month ago?

March, it was like a weird month because we changed the system.

Okay. You're covering up a bad number. How bad was it?

Seventh k.

What about one month before that?

Yeah. It was like, 12.

So you were up at 12, down to seven k. Now you're back up to nine... 18, 19 k a month. Will this be your best month ever?

Yeah. For sure.

Let's go. Yeah. That's good stuff. What is plan though? Like literally what is, is it pay more influencers? How do you grow from where we're at today to $80 a month? Are you doing any paid advertising right now?

Yeah.

How much are you spending a month on paid ads?

It's like 3.5 ks.

3,500 a month? Yeah. Month. And how do you know if that money is bringing enough customers to be ROI positive?

No, it's not bring is, it's not bringing too much.

So why don't you shut it down?

Cause we need awareness.

If I search in Google right now, cheap shuttle to go from Austin to San Antonio, that's what I search. Will you show up? For sure. Is there some way you could use capital to grow the business faster?

Invest in more events because we can fill more spaces in the hours in the cities. Dallas to Houston can handle between each cities like 20 rides.

But these aren't full yet.

No. These are not full yet.

So why would we go spend money on 16 new vans when the four aren't full No, no.

We are knowing what the people say about our service.

So what is the ask? You're saying, Nathan, the ask is a million dollars so we can spend money on marketing and more like, give me the... What's the ask?

First of all, loyalty program.

Loyalty program, marketing. What else?

We need more bands to have more times to fill. How many more bands?

Four more. If I put a million dollars in the business, what do I get for that? Do you wanna do debt? You wanna do equity? If I made you that offer, what would you be willing to give me?

Probably a mixed deal. Okay. So let's say

I did 500 k of equity. How much of the company are willing to sell me for 500 k?

25%.

Okay. That would value the business at $2,000,000. You're doing $17,000 a month today in sales or $200,000 a year. The company is not worth 10 times annual revenue.

It's not. It's not.

I need way more than 25% if I'm putting in 500 k.

The company is is not worth right now. But probably in three months, it's worth, like, double, triple. I don't know.

Do you have any debt on the balance sheet today? No. So you bought these with cash?

Yeah. Cash.

Money. What if I gave you a debt facility and collateralized it with the four current bands? I could give you a $250,000. Right? That's debt. You keep a 100% equity, but the collateral is if you don't pay me on time, I take over one of the bands. Would you be open to a structure like that? Yeah. Probably. Okay. The question then would be how much time would you need me to pay the 250 k back? Three

years. Why three years? Feel comfortable. What interest rate would you be comfortable paying? Remember, I get no equity here.

Yeah. No equity. 7%.

Okay. That's pretty cheap. Have you tried to raise debt already against the Vans? I mean, it's very... Okay. Why haven't you tried to do that already?

If shit happens, I don't wanna lose money and then have a debt Mhmm. To cover.

Well, I would never give you an offer where I felt like I had that risk. I derisk that by saying, if you don't pay me on time, I take over the van. Yeah. For sure. So I don't worry about that.

No. No. No. Why do I take a dev right now?

To grow. If you know those growth tactics are gonna help grow the business and you need money to execute them, why would you not go get the money in whatever means possible if you had conviction around those tactics?

I don't want to feel pretty compromised with with with that debt.

You know? That means you don't believe in the growth tactics then?

No. I I I believe in the growth, but but but I I don't want to have any troubles with with anyone.

Yeah. I don't want my money to go into a tactic that you don't think is actually going to work. So this is where... This is what... This is why these these deals can get... Know? It's like, okay.

Yeah. I know. I I know that this pressuring you on purpose. I have a a mentor in Mexico that always told me, you know what, Alberto? Money is not the problem.

For you, it is, though. You're burning $35 a month in three months of runway.

No. No. No. I need money, but I don't need just money.

Why do you need my help if you have a solid plan already?

Well, because probably instead of take five years, ten years to have that plan in the real, probably just two years.

But I don't know your business better than you do. Right? I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be in here working on the business. The way I have to accelerate plans you already have. Right? I can't be the one leading all the plans. But when I pressure you on that, you sort of back up and say, oh, I don't want that pressure actually. So I'm trying to figure out where you believe you can actually spend money to grow the business. That's what I'm pressure. That's what I'm trying to push on. What do you want my help on?

Easy. With all your contacts to grow. Yeah. But what do you need contacts?

Like, don't... You know a lot of people. Yeah. But who specifically? What do you want? I don't know.

Don't know who, but it's not the same that a Mexican guy came here in Texas with a crazy idea of transportation than than a than a native American people, a white guy tell that.

I get that. You want you want to attract, I'm your perfect customer, and and I can help you potentially reach more people like me who would be a great customer. I'm a business person that travels between Austin and San Antonio.

You will be an ambassador. You will be an speaker to the audience.

Mhmm. Yeah. I I I mean, Albert, to all due respect, mean, that's not revolutionary. Right? There's plenty of transportation executives and founders that that give that exact same pitch. Let me give you my version of what I think you do really good. You've told me specifically there's a demographic you cater to. Mexican speaking females that don't want to take an Uber by themselves with a driver that can conveniently be picked up in nice spots like coffee

shops, that don't have to get on a smelly Greyhound bus and squeeze between people to find a seat. And, oh, by the way, once they're sitting in these beautiful Turkish seats, can open their laptop and work the whole way if they want or put their coffee in the cup holder and relax. That's your demographic. Like, that is what you have told me your strength is.

Yeah.

I am not a Mexican woman.

No. No. No. But it's the Mexican woman. It was just for that lady who who was Mexican. Our customers are like 80% of Americans.

Yeah. But you told me 70% of your customers were females who value the fact that they're with a group. It's like a privacy thing. So how do you... Like, I'm not gonna help pour fuel on that fire. No. Right? Like, that's not me.

But but but you're not ugly.

Well, that's nice of you think. Thank you very much. You too. Post below. We agree with that word though here.

No. It's it's it's it's like it's like you have an authority.

I get where you're coming from. Here's my... I'll make you an offer. My offer will be $250,000. You pay back over two years. 1.3 x to 250 k. If you don't pay back on time, my collateral is two vans because a 130 k plus a 130 k is about $260. So if you're late on a payment, I can take them over and I can go sell them somewhere and make my money back, basically. It gets me well in the business. I'm making a spread because you're paying me back 1.3 x over two years. You get a little bit bit of my time. I can get in the business, but you ultimately have to run it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

What do you think about an offer like that? No negotiation at all? Why? We're... We have a deal? Yeah. For sure. Okay. Let's shake. Done. There we go, baby. Let's get to work. Yeah.

For sure. We need these vans full.

Tony, you're gonna have so much work. You're gonna... You're not you're not gonna know what to do.

Alright, Tony. Tony the driver said he's ready.

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