Arthur Simanovsky
The holidays are the perfect time to celebrate with family and friends. Whether you celebrate at home or out on the town, there’s typically lots of food involved — and lots of drinking.
For those who celebrate out in the city, it’s often a hassle to find and pay for a taxi or convince one of your friends to serve as the designated driver for the night. Beachwood resident Arthur Simanovksy noticed this problem and decided to create a solution by starting his own business.
“The idea came from us being the end user of the service,” explained Simanovksy, the 26-year-old co-owner and CEO of BeMyDD.com, a unique transportation service website. “My friends and I liked to go out to downtown Cleveland and such when we came home from school and taking a taxi one way from Solon or Beachwood is about $60 to $70, so it can get really pricey.”
Simanovksy, who studied finance and entrepreneurship at Miami University of Ohio, said he had an interest in starting a company right out of college. He looked in to creating a driving service.
“We always liked to designate a driver and thought it would be pretty cool to have a professional driver to be able to take you out in the evening,” he said.
BeMyDD offers a designated driver service, which provides a driver to chauffeur you and your friends around town in your own car for the evening. The company also provides a pick-up service, which is useful those nights you’ve driven somewhere and realize at the end of the night that you shouldn’t be driving home. With this service, two drivers are dispatched to your location — one to pick you up and the other to safely drive your car home.
Simanovsky and his partners tested the service in Cleveland for about a year and a half before officially launching on St. Patrick’s Day in 2010. The company grew in the Midwest before expanding throughout the country. BeMyDD now serves 31 states and 74 different markets.
Simanovsky said the holidays are a big boom for business with a lot of customers requesting drivers during the month of December. He believes his company is a good fit for people.
“People see the service as being a better fit for what they’re looking for. Taxis take you to only one place at a time, and chauffeurs and limos are too expensive for an average gent. Our company offers convenience and the price point,” Simanovsky said.
Simanovksy hopes to provide the BeMyDD services to all Continental U.S. states by the end of 2014 and also launch the company in Canada.