When Dylan DeForge noticed all of the Pokemon Go related posts on his Facebook newsfeed, the 24-year-old Uber driver saw it as an opportunity to increase his customer base during the slower summer months.
So, he posted the following ad on Facelist Tucson, which is basically Craigslist on Facebook, advertising his services to Pokemon Go players:
“My name is Dylan and I will be your Pokemon Uber driver. I drive a 2015 Honda Civic with ice cold A/C...I am a certified Uber driver and am willing to offer up my services to help catch them all. This includes fancy maneuvers and driving 20 m.p.h down side streets to hatch eggs.”
Within 24 hours it had been shared 28 times and had received more than 500 likes.
DeForge doesn’t play the game himself, though he was a fan of Pokemon in the ’90s.
“I used to beg my dad to get Pokemon cards every time we went to the mall,” DeForge recalled. “Anyone that was around Pokemon as a kid is insanely obsessed with this game, from what I’ve seen. ... People are taking days off work to catch Pokemon all day.”
An interaction he had when picking up a “kid and his girlfriend from the movies” made him realize he was really on to something.
“The first thing they asked me was ‘are you a Pokemon trainer?’ That kinda sparked the idea in my head,” DeForge recalled.
So far, he’s gotten a few gigs from the ad. Most customers have been in their late teens to early 20s, “which is great because they’re the ones who are willing to spend money for various games.”
