Podcasts about Robin Chase

"If you can build your company without raising money, do it because then you're in control. There's this idea that you're really cool if you've got some venture money. And I want to say the coolest is if you own the whole thing yourself." Robin Chase, Co-Founder of Zipcar, GoLoco, Buzzcar, Veniam, and NUMO.In this episode of "Open for Business," we speak to serial entrepreneur and transportation innovator Robin Chase. Robin is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest car sharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer car sharing service in France (now merged with Drivy); and GoLoco, an online ride sharing community. She is also co-founder of Veniam, a network company connecting vehicles to the cloud. More recently she established NUMO, a nonprofit aimed at leveraging new urban mobility technologies for sustainable city development.From starting Zipcar back in 2000, Robin has decades of experience in revolutionizing urban mobility and entrepreneurship, and she shares her unique insights and the key lessons she's learned along the way.Among other things, Robin discusses:Her motivation for diving into urban mobility and the challenges she faced along the way.The importance of timing and being at the right place at the right time in business.The concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and its critical role in launching successful ventures.Navigating the complex dynamics of fundraising and maintaining control over your company.Her vision for the future of transportation, including the rise of electric bikes and smaller vehicles.There's a lot to learn from Robin's experiences over the last 24 years, including practical advice on how to approach entrepreneurship, the importance of innovation, and how to adapt to ever-changing market conditions.

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Imagine: Sustainable mobility that lets people move autonomously at all ages and income levels! Our special guest Robin Chase paints a clear vision and says when people try and see for themselves, they'll love it! We speak about overcoming resistance against new solutions, the responsible use of data, and why electric private vehicles won't save us from the climate crisis. The co-founder of Zipcar and founder of NUMO discusses why it's imperative to actively invite different perspectives to change one's mindset. Her role models are young professionals advancing transport systems in a new way. This is the first episode of a series of interviews with some of the Remarkable Feminist Voices in Transport 2023, who were awarded by TUMI's Women Mobilize Women initiative. Tune in!

Robin Chase was a stay at him mom & Antje Danielson was a mom and academic researcher. They never had any prior experience starting a business but they had deep passion to make the world a better place. They started ZipCar and even though they faced several problems and came close to shutting it down, they survived. Finally they sold it for $500 million. Let us check out their story.

The serial transportation entrepreneur discusses the promise of electric micromobility, finding joy in transportation and why “infrastructure is destiny.”

This is the recording from our Tuesday June 28th interview with Sassquad Race Director Kim Levinsky! Kim was in the hot seat and shared about her experience at the Tahoe 200 mile race. After training for more than 640 days, Kim completed Tahoe with the help of her Crew and the support of her Community. 204+ miles in 96 hours, 5 minutes and 45 seconds. Sassquader and 2021 Triple Crown Finisher (Tahoe 200, Bigfoot 200, Moab 240) Matt Klein led the interview with guest appearances from some of Kim's Crew Members, Grace DiPaolo and Robin Chase. You can check out Kim's Tahoe 200 Vlog that she's been updating since April of 2021 here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_c5oG3sQ7vH_GL0t54ajSQ

Robin Chase, Executive Chairwoman of New Urban Mobility and founder of Zipcar, talks about the future of bikes with Bike Talk co-host Andrea Learned in June, 2021.

Episode 7 of Feel Free to Deviate is a conversation with Robin Chase. She was a teacher for 20 years, some of which she was miserable due to a less than favorable work environment. After some soul searching and encouragement from her support network, she pivoted and became a food photographer. Sometimes I forget to ask the key question, “What is your definition of success,” and this is one of those times. I think we can infer from the conversation that she views success as making a living in a fun way while simultaneously finding time for herself and her family. She's excelling at this, and should probably do an online course… Robin and Jim discuss how she and her partner organically grew their food photography and styling business and how working for herself gives her the freedom and flexibility to do the things that bring her happiness. I'm inspired by her story, and deeply impressed. If you are interested in Robin's work you can go to https://robinandsue.com to see her portfolio. She's also on Instagram @robinmc. While you're there you may as well go over to @feelfreetodeviate to follow this show and like all my posts. Every single one. They are all gold, and I'm working on diversifying the types of posts. It's about to get good. Or, at least, better.  Feel Free to Deviate is the podcast about people, their careers, and their relationships with success. My name is Jim Turbert, and I am the host. Find Free to Deviate on your favorite podcast app, and new episodes are released every other Thursday. Visit https://feelfreetodeviate.com for more information. Feel Free to Deviate and host Jim Turbert can also be found on Instagram and Facebook @feelfreetodeviate.  https://instagram.com/feelfreetodeviate https://jtfanclub.com https://jimturbert.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/turbert/ Feel free to send inquiries to mail@feelfreetodeviate.com Also go to https://feelfreetodeviate.com/feel-free-to-donate if you are feeling generous and want to contribute to the production of Feel Free to Deviate. No pressure. Uh… Not much pressure. 

Andrea Learned interviews Zip Car co-founder Robin Chase on car independence. Robin Chase is co-founder of Veniam, a network company that moves terabytes of data between vehicles and the cloud. Her recent book is Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism. She is working with cities to maximize the transformation possible with the introduction of self driving cars.

Learn about the power of the collaborative economy and why it’s changing the world. You know Robin Chase as a transportation entrepreneur and CEO of Zipcar. But Peers Inc (2015) is your personal guide to the business strategies that built her empire. Providing a sneak peek into Chase’s extraordinary mind and philosophy, Peers Inc. will teach you how to unpack and implement the peers model in your own life and business. And, believe it or not, Chase’s solutions might also help you save the planet! Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. DISCLAIMER: This book summary is meant as a preview and not a replacement for the original book. If you like this summary please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the original author intended to. If you are the original author of any book on QuickRead and would like us to remove it, please contact us at hello@quickread.com

Sometimes being green means charging ahead even when everyone else is applying the brakes. Robin Chase is a serial transportation entrepreneur, but she had no idea what she was getting into with her first project — and that’s how she pushed the market forward.Robin is the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the car sharing service that connects members to available cars nearby, which they can use for an hourly or daily fee. It’s a recognizable model today, but being first came with unseen obstacles.First, Robin hadn’t realized that the software that would link the internet to the car for the customer didn’t exist. “We had to build that and it was incredibly challenging,” she says. In the meantime, everything was done manually. In addition to being time-consuming, this led to a potentially disastrous mistake. While closing Zipcar’s Series A round, Robin suddenly realized her original revenue calculations were way off. According to her new calculations, Zipcar needed to raise the fee for daily rentals.Because she believes that honesty and empathy are integral to customer service, Robin personally dealt with angry customer phone calls to explain the situation.“If you've built yourself to be a responsive and thoughtful and consumer-centric company, then missteps or errors get put into a larger track record of how you address issues,” she says.The Zipcar sharing model is commonplace today, whether you’re renting an ebike or scooter, or using a rideshare app. But Robin thinks that some new companies in this space are unstable.“Investors that have way too much money and no knowledge are throwing gigantic sums of money at companies that are too young and have not yet figured out the business model or the operating model,” she says.That said, Robin is a fan of modes of transport that replace personally owned cars, which have long been prioritized even though not everyone can afford them. On that note, she also wants to see local governments set legislation that makes it easier for these companies to operate safely and responsibly. “I would love us to build what I'm calling a freedom network: a network for pedestrians and unlicensed vehicles that enable all of us to regain the freedom of mobility that we once had so that for the 50% of your trips that are less than three miles, you could go without a car without putting your life in danger.”Featured Entrepreneur

2020 has been a strange and difficult year. In the midst of the global pandemic, Michael decided to reach out to some familiar faces in global climate leadership not only to catch up but also to discuss how the world can move towards a more sustainable and equitable future. In this Holiday Special, we look back at some of the most insightful, revealing, and humorous moments from Series 1 of Cleaning Up.   Michael talks to guests including Professor Ernest Moniz, former US Secretary of Energy; Robin Chase, founder of Zip Car and expert on sustainable transportation; and Kandeh Yumkella, former Director-General of UNIDO. From the future of the energy system and inclusion to behind-the-scenes moments and personal philosophies. Enjoy our favourite moments, have a restful winter holiday, and a prosperous new year! About Cleaning Up Once a week Michael Liebreich has a conversation (and a drink) with a leader in clean energy, mobility, climate finance, or sustainable development. Each episode covers the technical ground on some aspect of the low-carbon transition – but it also delves into the nature of leadership in the climate transition: whether to be optimistic or pessimistic; how to communicate in order to inspire change; personal credos; and so on. And it should be fun – most of the guests are Michael’s friends. Follow Cleaning Up on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLCleaningUp Follow Cleaning Up on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cleaning-up-with-michael-liebreich Follow Cleaning Up on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MLCleaningUp Links to other Podcast Platforms: https://www.cleaningup.live/

For this year's Christmas Special we give you a podcast out of the archives! Enjoy listening to Robin Chase on the Value of Space. “I like to put all cars in one category: are you a vehicle that moves in the city? If you are a vehicle that moves in the city, everyone is paying the same thing, for parking, for moving during congestion periods.” In the sixth episode of A Radical Redesign for Amsterdam, Geert Kloppenburg and Carin ten Hage speak with entrepreneur Robin Chase (Zipcar, Veniam) about how the shared mobility principles can help to regulate platforms and the role that excess capacity can play for a municipality.Shared mobility principles: https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/ For a tool on how to address new silo-agnostic vehicle regulation: https://bit.ly/3fcVzwl A Radical Redesign for Amsterdam is produced on behalf of the municipality of Amsterdam.

What is the future of urban transportation in the world’s cities? Will autonomous cars revolutionize our lives? Meet the woman behind the world’s largest car sharing company, Robin Chase, the transport entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of Zipcar, Veniam and now, co-founder of NUMO. She is also a public speaker, author and entrepreneur seeking to change the landscape of mobility on a global level.       Bio/Introduction   Robin Chase is a transport entrepreneur. She has co-founded Zipcar, Veniam and NUMO. She is also the author of the book ‘Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism’ about how technology has paved the way for a new collaborative economy in which companies are able to help solve large scale social problems. Her current occupation is working with cities to maximize the benefits mass rollout of self-driving cars and low-cost electric bikes can bring.   She sits on the Boards of the World Resources Institute and Tucows, and serves on the Dutch multinational DSM’s Sustainability Advisory Board. In the past, she has served on the boards of Veniam and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the French National Digital Agency, the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce, the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation, the OECD’s International Transport Forum Advisory Board, the Massachusetts Governor’s Transportation Transition Working Group, and Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force.   Robin lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment, including Time 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators, and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers. Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT's Sloan School of Management, was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow, and received an honorary Doctorate of Design from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Key links Official Bio:   http://www.robinchase.org/     Peers Incorporated Book (2015) http://www.peersincorporated.com/what-we-do     Tucows https://www.tucows.com/     World Resources Institute https://www.wri.org/     What's the golden age to become an entrepreneur? (1st of Nov 2020) https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2020/11/01/golden-age-entrepreneur     Q&A with Robin Chase (Oct 2019) https://www.autonews.com/shift/qa-robin-chase     The Future of Self Driving Cars in Cities (June 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUE4kHRpEk&t=2s       Self Driving Cars will Ruin our Cities if They Don't Improve Them (Backchannel, 2016) https://www.wired.com/2016/08/self-driving-cars-will-improve-our-cities-if-they-dont-ruin-them/     Disrupted Transport will Be Better for Us in the End (Financial Times, 2015) http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/38d423ac-c266-11e4-ad89-00144feab7de.html#axzz3WSwmWIIW   Peers Inc. as a keynote (2014) https://vimeo.com/showcase/2901711/video/103922581   Will the future of Driverless Cars be Heaven or Hell? (Atlantic Cities, 2014) http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/04/will-world-driverless-cars-be-heaven-or-hell/8784/     Fossil Fuel is the New Slavery (Huffington Post, 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-chase/fossil-fuel-is-the-new-sl_b_310007.html     Time for Cooperative Capitalism. (2008) http://networkmusings.blogspot.com/2008/11/time-for-cooperative-capitalism.html     The idea behind ZipCar and what comes next (2007) https://www.ted.com/talks/robin_chase_the_idea_behind_zipcar_and_what_comes_next   About Cleaning Up Once a week Michael Liebreich has a conversation (and a drink) with a leader in clean energy, mobility, climate finance or sustainable development. Each episode covers the technical ground on some aspect of the low-carbon transition – but it also delves into the nature of leadership in the climate transition: whether to be optimistic or pessimistic; how to communicate in order to inspire change; personal credos; and so on. And it should be fun – most of the guests are Michael’s friends. Follow Cleaning Up on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/MLCleaningUp](https://twitter.com/MLCleaningUp) Follow Cleaning Up on Linkedin: [https://www.linkedin.com/company/cleaning-up-with-michael-liebreich](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cleaning-up-with-michael-liebreich) Follow Cleaning Up on Facebook: [https://www.facebook.com/MLCleaningUp](https://www.facebook.com/MLCleaningUp) Links to other Podcast Platforms: [https://www.cleaningup.live/](https://www.cleaningup.live/)

“I like to put all cars in one category: are you a vehicle that moves in the city? If you are a vehicle that moves in the city, everyone is paying the same thing, for parking, for moving during congestion periods.” In the sixth episode of A Radical Redesign for Amsterdam, Geert Kloppenburg and Carin ten Hage speak with entrepreneur Robin Chase (ZipCar, Veniam) about how the shared mobility principles can help to regulate platforms and the role that excess capacity can play for a municipality.Shared mobility principles: https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/ For a tool on how to address new silo-agnostic vehicle regulation: https://bit.ly/3fcVzwl A Radical Redesign for Amsterdam is produced on behalf of the municipality of Amsterdam.

In the midst of a pandemic, what is the future of ride sharing and mobility? Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by Robin Chase and Carlos Pardo of the New Urban Mobility Alliance and the director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at U C Davis, Daniel Sperling to dig into the challenges ahead. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/smart-driving-cars-podcast/support

Driving the Debate: Amazon Zoox and beyond features a wide ranging discussion featuring author, consultant and digital age pioneer Brad Templeton, moderator Dick Mudge and a panel chock full of expertise that includes Robin Chase, Alain Kornhauser, Henry Greenidge, Jane Lappin, --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/smart-driving-cars-podcast/support

Robin Chase (@rmchase) is the founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a carsharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community as well as co-founder of Veniam, a company that moves TBs of data between vehicles and cloud. Her recent book is Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism and current passion is working with cities to maximize the transformation possible with the introduction of self-driving cars.Robin is on the Board of the World Resources Institute, the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce and the OECD's International Transport Forum Advisory Board. She also served on the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation, the Massachusetts Governor's Transportation Transition Working Group and Boston Mayor's Wireless Task Force.She lectures widely, is frequently featured in major media and has received many awards including Time 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers.In today's episode we discuss:- How Robin invented the ride-sharing market almost a decade before Uber- What does the future of urban transportation look like- The important difference between ridesharing and car-sharing, and what that means for climate change- Why Europe is so far ahead of the US when it comes to livable cities- The reason decentralization is so valuable and why it doesn't always work- How to fix our cities for healthier, happier people- What will driverless vehicles mean for the future of car ownership- Why electrics bikes and scooters change everything when it comes to transforming cities- What Robin thinks about Lyft and Uber's business models- Why Robin is intrigued and worried about blockchain and Bitcoin

Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast EPISODE 242: A Different World, A Better World, A Bicycling World Thursday 9th April 2020 SPONSOR: Jenson USA HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Sydney's manager of cycling strategy Fiona Cambell. Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and the New Urban Mobility Alliance of Washington, DC. Tim Blumenthal, president of People for Bikes, USA. PLUS: An audio interview with Automobile Association president Edmund King. TOPICS: The future for cycling in a post coronavirus world. PLUS: the president of Britain's Automobile Association muses that, if car use doesn't recover after the end of the COVID-19 lockdown, it would be best not to splash £27 billion on building more roads for motorists.

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE. Eve Picker: [00:00:14] Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing.   [00:00:21] Today's guest is Gabe Klein. Gabe has invested his life and career in all facets of urban mobility, both as an entrepreneur and within halls of city government. That's made for a very interesting point of view, from Zipcar to bike sharing to transportation commissioner to book and now to Cityfi, Gabe has left a mark on mobility in this country.   [00:00:50] So, listen in and be sure to go to EvePicker.com to find out more about Gabe on the show notes page for this episode. And be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small Change.   Eve: [00:01:18] Hello, Gabe. Thanks so much for joining me today.   Gabe Klein: [00:01:20] Thanks for having me, Eve.   Eve: [00:01:22] So, you've done so much, I really don't know where to begin. Zipcar. Bike sharing. Transportation commissioner. A book called 'Startup City.' And my personal favorite, On The Fly, your own electric-powered, organic, food truck chain.   Gabe: [00:01:37] That's correct.   Eve: [00:01:39] And, of course, now you wrap that all up in your company called Cityfi. I'm wondering how you got there and why transportation issues matter so much to you.   Gabe: [00:01:50] Yeah. Well, you know, I grew up in the 1970s, actually, as a kid, and 80s, but I grew up during the energy crisis, and I remember the rationing of fuel and it inspired my dad to get into the bicycle business. And so from the age of, like, five years old, six years old, I was always around bicycles. We had skateboards and we had mopeds in the stores. And we used these things at home, too. And my dad actually commuted by bike, many days. And so I grew up looking at these quote unquote alternative modes of transportation, actually as normal ways of getting around. And, by the way, we lived in a rural area. So, we would commute all the way from our rural home into the local town on these busy roads. And so, as I got older and I was, so, you know, in the bicycle business, even post-college, I realized that in urban areas there was this huge opportunity to rethink the way people got around. And I had moved to Washington, D.C., in the mid 90s, and, you know, our major arterials were speedways. People were doing 65, 70 miles an hour ...   Eve: [00:03:04] Oh, yeah.   Gabe: [00:03:04] ... completely out of control. And yet, we had all these people moving back to our cities. So, I met Robin Chase, and that was around 2002, and she hired me as an executive at Zipcar, and I helped build that business, and it was really instrumental in me understanding the relationship between public and private sector, and how important the public sector was in empowering small businesses like ours, and tying them in to the existing infrastructure in the city, in the space, in, you know, in terms of giving us parking spaces, in terms of tying us into the transit system. And it was really the key to our success, I think. And so, ever since then, I've been really focused on, you know, how do we do good, make money and enhance the lives of people in our urban areas.   Eve: [00:03:59] From those early beginnings, because things have changed a lot since Zipcar, right? Zipcar has waned a little bit because other things have popped up instead. What is the mobility landscape look like to you in the U.S. today by comparison?   Gabe: [00:04:13] Yeah, well, look, I think businesses always need to evolve, right? I mean, look at Amazon. It started out as a bookstore out of a garage, right? So, I think that there's been a lot of evolution related to the technology that we have in our hands. The GPS technology that allows us to geolocate where things are. Solar and electrification. Obviously, the backbone of it all, the enhanced cell phone networks. And that's what's really powered the transformation in mobility. At the same time, what we find is we have all these new modes, and they're really exciting, and it's actually gotten a lot of people on bikes, which I love.   Eve: [00:04:50] Yes.   Gabe: [00:04:50] Right? But on the other hand, things are pretty pedestrian. And what I mean by that is, like, there's a basic way that we've been getting around for a couple 100,000 years. You know, we've been walking, we've been riding the horse. Then we start riding bikes, taking streetcars. And fundamentally, you have a sort of geometry problem, and you have, sort of, movement of people and the geometry of how you move them, and it's really about volumetrics. And so, in a dense urban area, you can only move so many people so quickly. And so it becomes about bigger things. It's about, like, what creates a healthy city, what creates a safe city, creates an equitable city, or town, by the way, it doesn't have to be a big city. And so, you know, my time in government was really instrumental in seeing that the levers that we had that could really change the quality of life for people. And now we're talking about things like universal basic mobility. We're having conversations in the public square about, you know, because mobility and transportation are so closely tied to land use and real estate, and because so much of people's income goes to those two things, that if you can create a system where people don't have to use a very complex transport system, and you don't have to make a capital investment in the transportation, they can afford to live in a place ...   Eve: [00:06:16] Yeh.   Gabe: [00:06:16] ... that they want to live and they can do it in a way that they have a higher quality of life, and more access to jobs. And so, that's ...   Eve: [00:06:22] Solving the mobility issue actually makes housing more affordable.   Gabe: [00:06:29] Well, look, if you shed one car like, let's say you're a two-car family, you shed a car, that's 150,000 dollars more real estate you can afford.   Eve: [00:06:36] Yes.   Gabe: [00:06:37] Right?   Eve: [00:06:37] If you're a worker who needs to get to a job every day and there is, you can walk to pick up your groceries, and there's a train or bus near you that gets to work, you can shed both the cars.   Gabe: [00:06:50] Right. Right. I mean, look, people say like D.C., San Francisco, Boston, these are the most expensive places to live. However, you know, in D.C., car payments are less than 10 percent of people's income, right? And you look at a lot of other, like Sunbelt cities, it's 20, 25, 30 percent. In a low-income neighborhood, over 50 percent. My household? We've gotten to, because we have an apartment downstairs, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people. And there's one car, ...   Eve: [00:07:17] Yeh.   Gabe: [00:07:17]  ... you know. And so, actually, our cost of living is relatively low.   Eve: [00:07:23] Yes. Yeah. So, you know, interestingly, I mean, I think about this. So, while technology has been advancing some mobility solutions, we're really kind of still stuck in how to model the physical landscape, right?   Gabe: [00:07:38] Oh, absolutely. And that's what I was getting at when I was saying, like some of the problems are very pedestrian. I was trying to be funny, but it's like, it's really about the reallocation of space, right? It's like, you can only move so many people if you allocate all the lanes to cars that carry one or two people, what we call single-occupancy vehicles. And so, there's a big movement, like, if this technology and these new modes are going to be successful, like scooters, for instance, and shared bicycles, you've got to give space to them or people won't feel safe. And if they don't feel safe, even for a small portion of the trip, let's say they're driving, or riding, excuse me, from home to work, and it's a five mile trip and there's two blocks that feel terribly unsafe. That mom may not make that trip, the entire five mile trip, because of those two blocks. And so, it's really about creating a safe system for people.   Eve: [00:08:28] I know that the public sector is thinking about this. Is the private sector thinking about this? Who's more advanced in their thinking? Are they talking to each other?   Gabe: [00:08:40] Well, that's actually why I wrote 'Startup City.' When I went into the public sector, I had never worked, I mean, and I came in running the agency, I had never worked in government in my life. And so I had a very different perspective. And I'm really fixated and focused on this exchange of ideas between public and private. Because, to be honest, to solve the climate crisis, our affordability crisis, all the major problems of our time, we're not going to do it without the two sides working together. Now, government has a very strong arm in terms of regulation and setting the tone, which I think they are going to need to flex. But the more we can work with the private sector, understand the private sector's, you know, business models, their motivations, their, the outcomes that they're looking for, and we can inform the regulatory environment and policy, then we can come together and make change a lot more quickly. And to be honest, in the situation we find ourselves in, particularly with climate, we need to move a lot faster.   Eve: [00:09:38] So, do you think that the public sector can somehow be infused with the urgency and energy of a startup?   Gabe: [00:09:47] Well, that's what I did. I'd like to think I did. I mean, I ran these two agencies as if they were well-funded startups. And, you know, there were some people that thought I was crazy.   Eve: [00:09:59] Ha.   Gabe: [00:09:59] And, you know, one of my mottos is, like, if you're, if somebody is not calling you crazy, then you're not working hard enough. You know, like, if somebody doesn't think that your ideas are a little crazy, then you're not challenging the status quo enough. And I think the government can work on behalf of taxpayers, move a lot faster, and also, to be honest, be fiscally responsible, and in some cases, share in profits, or losses, with the private sector, which is what we did with some of our bike share programs. I think the private sector needs to be much more open to working for the greater good, taking a long term view versus the short term view. And looking at the long-term sustainability of their business, and sustainability of the planet, and the urban environment that they're operating in. And if we can get the two thinking alike, and I work with a lot of companies and governments, it is just amazing what they can do and the speed that they can do it in. A lot of it comes down to ... tried and true old school relationships, and understanding and trust. And that's what we try to build.   Eve: [00:11:02] Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, Then how should equity play into transportation solutions?   Gabe: [00:11:11] Yeah. I mean, there's so much to talk about here.   Eve: [00:11:14] Yes.   Gabe: [00:11:14] But it's actually, at the end of the day, and I hate to say something like this as an entrepreneur, but transportation doesn't make any money. I mean, like how many transportation systems, you know, that consistently make money. Like Pepsi does, right? Almost none. Uber lost almost eight billion dollars last year. There are a couple of transit systems that are profitable because so many people use them, like Hong Kong and Singapore. There are some private sector companies that make money some times, like some of the airlines. But fundamentally, it is not a big moneymaking business. And so, we need to think about the outcomes that we want for our people, We need to think about creating equitable outcomes around all the elements that make up quality of life, or the happiness index, for instance, and then figure out how do we fund transportation to make that work. So, Uber today might be funded by venture capitalists, and long term it may be partially funded by the government ...   Eve: [00:12:08] Yes.   Gabe: [00:12:09] ... for certain types of trips. For low-income people, late at night, hourly workers, when the bus isn't running, to make it home, you know? So, I think the business models are going to change and shift. We saw this around the turn of the last century where there were so many streetcar systems built by developers, funded by developers, so that people could reach their new streetcar suburbs. And then over time, as the automobile came up and you had such a fractured marketplace, you had the consolidation of them, and then you eventually had the collapse of them, and then they became public sector entities, and then they were killed by the car companies. I mean, it's a little bit of an oversimplification, but that's sort of how it went down.   Eve: [00:12:47] Yeh. Pretty correct.   Gabe: [00:12:48] Right? And so, I mean, you know, everything's cyclical. We're going to see a lot of interesting high-flying startups. We're going to see a lot of consolidation. We're gonna see mobility service systems, where you see, like, Spin scooters and Argo autonomous vehicles, and the bus. And you're gonna see a lot of public-private partnerships where good actors, that want to share in risk and reward with the government, will be given concessions to operate various types of services. And that's, I think, how it's going to shake out in the long term.   Eve: [00:13:21] Yeh, also last week, and I'm trying to remember where this was, I read an article about a town, city, that had done the analysis on what it will cost them to upgrade their fare structure. And they decided it was cheaper just to make it free for people who ride the bus. Where was that?   Gabe: [00:13:39] You're probably thinking of Kansas City?   Eve: [00:13:40] Yeah.   Gabe: [00:13:41] I have, actually, I was out there a few years ago. One of my partners was the chief innovation officer there. And I went out and met with the city manager, years ago, and he wanted to do this and they finally got it done. And the argument was, look, you know, we're spending five million dollars a year to recover eight to 10 million dollars of farebox, right?   Eve: [00:14:07] Right.   Gabe: [00:14:07] So, you have a net positive of three or four million. You know, what if we just made it free, how many more people would ride? What kind of friction would we reduce? How many cars we take off the road? How much more equity would we create with low-income people that need to take the bus and maybe a dollar or two every trip is a lot. I think that's really interesting.   Eve: [00:14:29] I think it's fascinating, but I'm wondering why it took them so long to come to it, to, you know, to decide to do it. It seems obvious.   Gabe: [00:14:36] This is why we need more rebels, right? In government and in the private sector. Like people are very critical of Elon Musk, particularly in my sort of urban, you know, transportation world. And I get it. And I'm critical of him, too. But at the same time, we need people pushing the envelope, even when we don't agree with that. Even when we think that some of their ideas are crazy. Because sometimes the application of things – like the Boring Company, for instance, you know, tunneling – the ultimate application may not be what they're selling today, and it could be very, very useful. And let's face it, the Second Avenue subway that took 100 years to build in New York. We can do better. So, we need to take disparate ideas, different types of people, put them in the mix, be patient, have some tolerance, and try some things.   Eve: [00:15:24] Yes. So, failure could be a good thing, right?   Gabe: [00:15:27] Absolutely. We ...   Eve: [00:15:28] People don't like failure in the United States. We gotta try, right?   Gabe: [00:15:33] Well, we're either obsessed with failure and think it's a good thing, it's a horrible thing. It comes down to, you know, government risk aversion vs. private sector risk acceptance, right? And we have two very different cultures. And so, when you try to bring the two together to work on things, this is actually one of the big issues that keeps them from understanding each other. One is trying to keep their name out of the paper. One is trying to not get noticed. One is trying to do good for the citizens, look out for the greater good, but not make a big splash, typically. And you have the opposite on the private side. And these are generalizations. Sometimes it's the opposite. But if you get the two to understand how they can benefit each other, and the value that they each bring, and the leverage they can get out of each other, it's amazing what could happen.   Eve: [00:16:18] Yeah, so, the interesting thing is what you're talking about, you know, is that's really the way I developed my real estate portfolio, in partnership with the city of Pittsburgh, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority. And we both fully understood what we were bringing to the table and how we could help each other. That was in real estate. And I thought that was an amazing opportunity for both of us. And the city understood that, and I understood that. So, it's kind of puzzling why ... why this doesn't extend to other things, I think.   Gabe: [00:16:49] I agree 100 percent. That's why people like you, me, and many others are important in pushing that envelope. Pittsburgh is a really interesting city, and we're doing a lot of work in Pittsburgh right now, trying to create a first-of-its-kind, mobility-as-a-service offering, basically, for the city. So, unlike Lyft and Uber, which are creating their own, like, walled gardens, and I don't fault them for that, but they're creating their own sort of systems within their app. We're saying, how about if you bring best in class providers together?   Eve: [00:17:23] Yes.   Gabe: [00:17:24] From all different walks of life. And then let, aggregate the services in one app, transit app ...   Eve: [00:17:29] Right.   Gabe: [00:17:29] ... and let people use them, and create a physical installation, right? Near real estate. So, create a physical mobility hub, and there'll be like 50 of them. So, you get some of that enhancement around real estate like you get from a TOD metro stop, but then also have to be virtual, too. And give the city some level of access to data and some level of control ...   Eve: [00:17:55] Right.   Gabe: [00:17:55] ... versus being 100 percent private.   Eve: [00:17:58] I actually interviewed Karina Ricks on these little mobility stations. It's a very exciting program. And, you know, you just led me right into my next question, which was how do you think data can help to formulate better solutions?   Gabe: [00:18:17] Oh yeah. Data is really important. And it's really evolving and changing. And there's all kinds of arguments, you know, within our little nerdy world about privacy and, you know, very important topics, but at the end of the day, this idea that data that's generated by citizens belongs to somebody, is sort of misguided, right? I mean, at the end of the day, it really belongs to the citizen that's generating that data. And you could argue in some sense that it belongs to nobody. But the data is now being shared a little more widely with cities. So, that cities can plan more effectively for the future. So, that they have a sense of what's happening on their street. And we're really moving from an analog system of operational control of how the city signal system works, for instance. We started moving to GPS about 10 years ago, where we started to gather a lot of data from GPS trackers on our buses and our taxis, like in places like Chicago. We could start to estimate for our constituency what congestion was looking like in real time. But now it's becoming more about operating, than just planning for the future. So, it's like, how you operate day to day, a very complex system where Waze might have better data than the city does? And so, it's really interesting how it's playing out. And the Open Mobility Foundation, which we worked with LA DOT and other consultants on helping to set up, is a really interesting place for a lot of these ideas to germinate, and a lot of the cities to work together and figure out with the private sector, by the way, how to share data, effectively, how to be very respectful and careful about privacy, and how to look at both planning, as well as day to day operating, utilizing these very rich data sets.   Eve: [00:20:12] Can you give me an example of a solution that was crafted from data that you think is fabulous?   Gabe: [00:20:18] Sure, sure. Well, look, scooters have been very controversial, right? Some people love them. some people just despise them. And that goes for politicians as well. So, you know, you go to a place like D.C. or L.A. and you have, you know, very smart, bold leadership. And they see the potential with an electric scooter to displace fossil fuel-powered car trips. So, they want to go big. But they know that you have elderly people that need access to the sidewalks, and disabled people, and children. So, if you don't have some level of control, then what happens is it doesn't work. And it ends up, you know, flaming out.   Eve: [00:21:00] We're rubbing up against the physical landscape again, right?   Gabe: [00:21:03] Exactly.   Eve: [00:21:04] Yeah.   Gabe: [00:21:05] But often people who have not worked in government don't understand it. They understand it theoretically, they understand the data side, but they don't actually understand how this plays out politically in a city. And so in a place like L.A., we have council members saying, hey, I don't want any of these in Brentwood. Right? The ability to geofence, and to then know if, like, not just to say we're gonna geofence scooters out of this council member's ward, but we're actually going to be able to know and validate if the scooter company was able to get people to adhere to that. That's very important. You know, that's how L.A. went to 30,000 plus scooters, because the council members ...   Eve: [00:21:49] Wow.   Gabe: [00:21:49] ... and the people felt comfortable that LA DOT actually had the tools to manage a program that large. In Dallas, where it was a total free for all, they had no data, and they told people to just do whatever they wanted, it was a disaster.   Eve: [00:22:05] Oh, interesting.   Gabe: [00:22:05] And so I think it what ... yeah. So, what we've learned is that, and the private sector has learned right along with the public sector, is like, oh, we need a common data standard. We need to share data. We need to be more transparent. Or the public and the politicians will rise up and boot us out of here. And so, it's very much, actually, the folks that are running the DOTs that are trying to help a lot of these new companies be successful.   Eve: [00:22:31] Wow. Is there a current trend in transportation that holds the most hope for you?   Gabe: [00:22:38] When you say trend, do you mean a mode per se or do you mean ...   Eve: [00:22:41] I mean a mode or, you know ... even like, I'll give you something that I've been reading a lot recently. And one thing that I read that I thought was fascinating was a couple of cities and states taking a look at their very wide roads and very heavily trafficked roads and actually deciding to give them a road diet. I think this is an example in New York State of one of the most heavily trafficked roads, and rather than widening it, they decided to narrow it, which I think is really an interesting trend. Because it opens up space in an unexpected way and it controls traffic in a very different and unexpected way, as well. So, I don't really know what the outcome will be, but I've noticed, I suppose, experiments like that, more and more.   Gabe: [00:23:34] Right, uhm, no, I would say the number one thing I'm excited about is the reallocation of space that we're finally starting to see on our streets. The closing of Market Street in San Francisco. You know, I put a bike lane down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, and, you know, there's a real movement towards serious reallocations of space, as was as the idea of actually implementing congestion pricing in cities. So, I think that's a very positive movement. And then, obviously, on the private side, the venture capital investment and efforts in active mobility, you know, and bike share and scooter share, I think these are very positive movements. You know, not to say that all the companies will be successful, but the realization that the majority of urban trips are less than one to three miles and that there's a big market there, and that cities also want to get people out of cars. So, I think, you know, these are the things that that give me quite a bit of hope.   Eve: [00:24:35] Yeah. And then there's some fallout that I just personally find very interesting. I had a conversation with someone last week who said, you know, in the next five years, we're going to be figuring out how to repurpose parking garages. And I thought that was like, that's really fascinating.   Gabe: [00:24:50] Well, yes. And the important thing is to build them in such a way that they can be repurposed. Flat, right? That the ramps are on the exterior. That you run the ductwork for the electrical and HVAC when you build the garage. So, the smarter people are about what the potential is, the more they can build into their developments, and I have a lot of funny stories about conversations I've had with folks over the years that were building buildings and, you know, feeling like I should have been paid for my 15 minute conversation that saved them millions of dollars. Because, I mean, I'm sort of kidding. But, you know, shared parking facilities, not building parking facilities and convincing cities to move more towards parking maximum, shared parking zoning and ordinances, creating mobility wallets to give people access to mobility instead of incenting people to use parking. There's so many interesting things that we can do and a lot of it comes down to carrots and sticks, both for developers, for cities and for individuals.   Eve: [00:25:53] Right. I'd love to know a little bit more about the sort of you tackled through Cityfi.   Gabe: [00:25:57] Yeah.   Eve: [00:25:57] It's a great name.   Gabe: [00:26:00] Thank you. So, we do a lot of different types of work. I'll say that about half our work is public sector, mostly cities. And then about half is private sector. And we do some foundation work as well. We've been working with the Knight Foundation on autonomous vehicle piloting and outreach, which has been fascinating work. But we do a lot of public-private partnership work. We do a lot of urban planning, around everything from strategic plans for cities, shared mobility plans, curbside management, which is becoming a huge issue with the change in how people move around. And a big opportunity as well. And then, you know, we do a lot with the private sector on go-to-market strategy, and positioning them to be triple bottom line companies that the government will want to do business with. Which means sometimes like a wholesale revamp, not just of how they market themselves, but how they conduct their business, and making sure that sustainability and health and equity and positive outcomes for society are not just talking points in their marketing, but key pillars, north stars of their strategy. And when we're successful there, I mean, it's very rewarding. Very ... it feels really good to have that kind of impact.   Eve: [00:27:14] So, I think right now, socially responsible real estate is still a minority fraction of what is going on in this country. I'm wondering what you think it will take to kind of move it to the only way to do real estate development, or think about building in cities.   Gabe: [00:27:30] It'll be a combination of the regulatory environment changing. You know, we're gonna get away from single-use anything. We're going to get away from fossil fuel-powered anything. And so, you know, as these are put into a regulatory form, these policies, that will change the way people build. We need more affordable housing. We need more workforce housing. I do think that government leads. I know we have challenges with the finance folks who will say, yeah, I'm not going to finance that if you don't build two spaces per unit. And this is where government is so important, because obviously if a local government says, look, we're going to parking maximums for minimums, it's not like finance companies will say, oh, we're not going to build in New York City, we're not going to build in Nashville. They will. And that's why government's got to lead. I think, also, the other side of this coin is that once people see what they want, they will buy it. And then once you hit a tipping point ...   Eve: [00:28:32] Right.   Gabe: [00:28:34] .... the market sort of takes over and ...   Eve: [00:28:36] Kind of like iPhone, right?   Gabe: [00:28:39] Yeh. I mean, look, government used to lead. Government incented Tesla to build electric cars and loaned them a billion dollars, and all of that, right?   Eve: [00:28:47] Right.   Gabe: [00:28:48] But now the reason people are buying Teslas is they're saving money and they're really high quality cars. And so people are self-selecting into micro-units or developments without parking that are cheaper, but also maybe closer to the things that they want to experience. And the market is begging for this. We are so ... like I was talking to Chris Leinberger the other day and he said we have 40 years of pent up demand for urban, livable, walkable. And so at some point, the next generation of developers are going to come out and say, well, why the hell are we building that?   Eve: [00:29:23] Right. You know, I think that zoning is a really important piece in this. And I was involved in the zoning code rewrite, and it is huge. You know, and every municipality has a different zoning code. When I think about this, it's overwhelming how you kind of move towards countrywide acceptance and regulatory changes to really make this happen for everyone. It's a big, big job.   Gabe: [00:29:51] That's interesting. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see when when we get a new president, hopefully in November, you know, the tack that they take towards transportation, and, you know, hopefully getting away from the sort of modal silos that we have DOT and thinking much more across HUD and DOT and DOE, which, you know, was attempted last time, but it was never funded. And I would love to see that really happen. I mean, you could almost see collapsing these agencies into one, and ... with different divisions internally based around land use type, you know, urban,  suburban, exurban, rural, versus the bimodal stuff and then addressing the energy, you know, around housing and transportation and production.   Eve: [00:30:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this has been fascinating, but I want to know what's next for you.   Gabe: [00:30:48] Yeah. Well, you know, I'm really enjoying my work. I mean, we'll see if the entire economy just grinds to a halt.   Eve: [00:30:56] For at least a month, right?   Gabe: [00:30:57] Yeah. Maybe we'll all be living in communes soon and just dancing and eating tofu. But in the in the meantime, I going to continue working with cities, working with companies. I also work with Fontinalis Partners out of Detroit, wonderful firm, and we invest in scalable platforms, you know, often software based, but sometimes hardware based also. So, I really enjoy working with startups. And we do that at Cityfi. But also, obviously, at Fontinalis, there's a lot of work to not just invest in these companies, but then to help make them successful. And in my personal life, I'm revamping a beach house.   Eve: [00:31:37] Oh, lovely.   Gabe: [00:31:38] Trying to get that done by summer.   Eve: [00:31:41] I'm revamping a tiny little rural cottage. It's fun. Well, thank you very much, Gabe, it's been really delightful talking to you. And I can't wait to see what you do next.   Gabe: [00:31:54] Well, thank you and thanks for thinking of me and I'll be following your work as well.   Eve: [00:31:58] OK.   Eve: [00:32:02] That was Gabe Klein of Cityfi. Gabe believes a few things adamantly. First, that there is enormous power in collaboration between the private and public sector. Second, that data rules. And third, that over the next few years we'll see a reallocation towards pedestrians first and automobiles second.   Eve: [00:32:32] You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access, the show notes for today's episode at my website, EvePicker.com. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate while building better cities.   [00:32:50] Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And thank you, Gabe, for sharing your thoughts with me. We'll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.  

Robin Chase is the founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a carsharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community as well as co-founder of Veniam, a company that moves TBs of data between vehicles and cloud. Her recent book is Peers Inc: How People and Platforms... The post Zipcar Founder Robin Chase on Lessons Learned Inventing Ridesharing Almost a Decade Before Uber and What It Means for Future of Urban Transportation appeared first on The Syndicate.

Today we talk about something that we are very passionate about, it's NEVER too late to find success. You don't need to make it by 25 or by 30 to be successful and we share with you a handful of some of the most successful people, like Samuel L. Jackson or Stan Lee, who made it big later in life.

In this episode, we talk with transportation entrepreneur Robin Chase, the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar. We have a wide-ranging discussion on the state of transportation in cities today, the impact of new mobility services and the policies cities should adopt to encourage a multi-modal future. You can learn more about Robin’s work here: www.robinchase.orgFor more on the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities, please visit: https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/smarter-cars/support

Robin Chase (@rmchase) is the founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a carsharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community as well as co-founder of Veniam, a company that moves TBs of data between vehicles and cloud. [spreaker type=player resource="episode_id=19159221" width="100%" height="80px" theme="light" playlist="false" playlist-continuous="false" autoplay="false" live-autoplay="false" chapters-image="true" episode-image-position="right" hide-logo="true" hide-likes="false" hide-comments="false" hide-sharing="false" hide-download="true"]

Robin Chase (@rmchase) is the founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a carsharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community as well as co-founder of Veniam, a company that moves TBs of data between vehicles and cloud. Her recent book is Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism and current passion is working with cities to maximize the transformation possible with the introduction of self-driving cars.Robin is on the Board of the World Resources Institute, the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce and the OECD’s International Transport Forum Advisory Board. She also served on the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation, the Massachusetts Governor’s Transportation Transition Working Group and Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force.She lectures widely, is frequently featured in major media and has received many awards including Time 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers.In today’s episode we discuss:- How Robin invented the ride-sharing market almost a decade before Uber- What does the future of urban transportation look like- The important difference between ridesharing and car-sharing, and what that means for climate change- Why Europe is so far ahead of the US when it comes to livable cities- The reason decentralization is so valuable and why it doesn’t always work- How to fix our cities for healthier, happier people- What will driverless vehicles mean for the future of car ownership- Why electrics bikes and scooters change everything when it comes to transforming cities- What Robin thinks about Lyft and Uber’s business models- Why Robin is intrigued and worried about blockchain and Bitcoin

Mobility is a gateway to opportunity, and transportation can make cities more wonderful, livable and equitable. WRI Vice President Lawrence MacDonald is joined by Robin Chase and Harriet Tregoning to talk about the New Urban Mobility alliance (NUMO) and how they are building better cities for all. Chase is the Executive Chair and Tregoning is the Director of NUMO.

Episode 4: Redesigning Cities for the Collaborative Economy features Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and author of Peers Inc., and Gabe Klein, author of Start-Up City and former Commissioner of Transportation for both Washington DC and Chicago. Together they draw on their broad expertise to discuss both the role of cities in shaping entrepreneurial, collaborative economies and in being shaped by them.

In 1999, Antje Danielson wanted to start a car-sharing company. But she was a scientist, not a businesswoman, and she knew she couldn’t do it alone. After launching Zipcar with her friend Robin Chase, Danielson had to come to terms with one of her biggest mistakes: asking a close friend to become an equal partner in her company. Danielson tells host Ann Friedman what happened when Chase fired her, and why her choice to walk away ultimately saved the company. 

Robin Chase is the co-founder of Zipcar and the author of Peers Inc. Robin is a serial entrepreneur within the mobility and transportation sectors with a special focus on sustainability. Her mantra is to “everyday, create the world you want to live in”, meaning she's helping to create cities that are livable, environmentally sound, and full of joy for all who pass through them. Working closely at the intersectionality of transportation and climate change, Robin is a passionate advocate of our environmental impact. Since 2000, Zipcar has lowered CO2 emissions by 1.6 billion lbs per year and taken away the need for more than 415,000 privately owned cars. Her new initiative, The New Urban Mobility Alliance (NUMO) continues to further the aim of creating cities where the new normal is both sustainable and livable. In this far-reaching conversation Robin had a lot to say on how she manages her personal commitment to creating more sustainable futures whilst recognising the immensity of the task at hand and our chat with Robin is full of advice on: Ways to be impactful within a very complex global problem Why diversity and thinking of your “single and best use” are the most powerful tools Adapting and continuing to learn over time Why we're all role models to each other and so need to hold ourselves accountable It's a great episode for anyone interested in effecting a positive global change and if you're interested in platform companies such as Zipcar, or how to go about building them, check out Robin's new book, Peers Inc. If you enjoy our conversation with Robin you can: Follow Robin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rmchase Learn more about Robin on her website: http://www.robinchase.org/ Check out her new book, Peers Inc: http://www.robinchase.org/#peers-inc Read more about Zipcar: https://www.zipcar.com/ Read about the New Urban Mobility Alliance (NUMO): https://www.numo.global/ And check out the Shared Mobility Principles for living: https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/ If you want to listen to more women who are following their passions to create better futures then check out episode #40 of the podcast where we spoke to seed.com founder Ara Kratz about how she's redesigning microbiome science: https://www.rolemodels.co/podcast/40-seed-com-founder-ara-kratz-on-finding-your-path-without-following-the-recipe/ And you should also check out our Medium site where we post articles featuring all the best insights from our podcast guests. To find us head to: https://medium.com/@rolemodels Thanks to Samsung NEXT for supporting this episode. Find out more about their mission to support entrepreneurs: http://samsungnext.com/berlin A big thanks also to our Patreon patrons who support this podcast: Megan Quinn, General Partner at Spark Capital who supports the organization: http://www.code2040.org/ Anna Caroline, a leadership coach based out of Berlin that you can find on truthcircles.com Emma Harris And please follow Role Models! On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_rolemodels/ On Twitter: https://twitter.com/rolemodels

Today’s guest is a pioneer in the world of high growth women entrepreneurs. As the CEO of the Thought Leadership Lab, she works with purpose-driven entrepreneurs, executives, and non-profit leaders to scale their influence and impact. Previously, she was the founding CEO of the first trade association for high growth women entrepreneurs and the co-founder of Springboard, the women’s startup launchpad that has led to over $8 billion in funding for women founded and led companies. She lectures at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is the author of “Ready to Be a Thought Leader?” Please join me in welcoming Denise Brosseau. Would you leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcast? Or Stitcher? They are extremely helpful and I read each and every one of them. Thanks for the inspiration! In this episode we discuss: her thoughts on leadership: “My view of leadership was formed by a mentor I met in my thirties. He saw leadership as vision, relationships, and executions.” how leadership showed up in her early life and how it has grown over the years. her passion for the work she does today, working with purpose-driven leaders of all ages. her method for creating and sustaining relationships with people through consistently showing up. how her college taught her about women in leadership and where the alumni association has taken her. her strategic plan for making an impact, learning and going into all situations with curiosity. Links Denise Brosseau on LinkedIn and Twitter. www.thoughtleadershiplab.com Books mentioned in this episode: “Croissants vs. Bagels: Strategic, Effective, and Inclusive Networking at Conferences” by Robbie Samuels “Ready to Be a Thought Leader? How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Success” by Denise Brosseau and Guy Kawasaki “The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea” by Bob Burg Other Resources Learn more about Robin Chase. Interested in booking Robbie to speak? Learn about his signature Art of the Schmooze session on strategic, effective and inclusive networking, and the other sessions he offers. Thinking of hosting a podcast? Writing a book? Want to launch an Amazon bestseller? Ready to make the most of your next conference experience? Robbie offers several free Masterclasses on these topics. Each one of these Masterclass replays is over an hour-long and contain valuable takeaways to help you grow your business or in your career. Find all the free Masterclasses at www.robbiesamuels.com/masterclass. Are you ready to create a Relationship-Based Business Plan that will help you achieve greater impact (and income)? The next cohort for The M.O.R.E. Program for Entrepreneurial Women begins in Spring 2019. You want to have a greater impact and increased income. The problem is that there are so many options for how to build your business that you can feel stuck, overwhelmed, and like you're running out of time. The reason options are overwhelming is that you're looking at them as a series of disconnected steps when -- to make the most of your time -- you need a strategy that connects only the most important and highest impact ones. Why? Because you know it's true that if you try to do everything, you will accomplish nothing. Which means, to achieve your goal, you have to invest in a strategy to put time on your side. How? This program will help you find the clarity to determine what is the right next step for your business. A book? A podcast? An online course? Masterminds? Speaking on bigger stages? Together we will design a 12-month Relationship-Based Business Plan that will allow you to stack your successes to create momentum and leverage your limited time. Read about this program and then schedule a complimentary 60-minute session to see if it's a good fit. www.robbiesamuels.com/more Stay Connected: Connect with Robbie on LinkedIn @RobbieSamuels on Twitter and Instagram New to this website? Start here

Take the driver out of the car and what do you get? Heaven or hell? Will the rise of the robocar lead to a revolution in safety and change how cities allocate public space? Or will pedestrians and cyclists get pushed aside to make way for Skynet? Aaron, Sarah and Doug tackle these questions and more as we anticipate the imminent arrival of our autonomous vehicle overlords. Become a Patreon Supporter and get exclusive War on Cars stickers, t-shirts and other premiums. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.  Episode Notes:  Video on The Future of Autonomous Vehicles by Robin Chase. Article on China and social credit: Leave No Dark Corner by Matthew Carney for The Australian Broadcasting Corporation. On Twitter: Follow the show @TheWarOnCars  Doug Gordon @Brooklyn Spoke Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1 Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek  Email: thewaroncars@gmail.com Thanks for listening!

We are watching the economy change before our eyes, and Zipcar Cofounder Robin Chase has been at the forefront of that change. She gives her observations on the platform economy, automation, self-driving cars, and how a basic income could be what smoothes the transition as we move to a different type of relationship between people and their work. This is a rebroadcast of a previous episode, and the final rebroadcast in this series. New episodes coming next week.

"Infrastructure is destiny,” says Robin Chase, the co-founder of Zipcar, Veniam, and SharedMobilityPrinciples.org. We sat down with Robin at the Urbanism Next conference to discuss her work in drafting the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities, the dire need to take action on climate change, and — of course — a good joke. Keep up with Robin's work by following her on Twitter @RMChase, and read about the Shared Mobility Principles at https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/

More than a dozen of the world's leading shared transport and technology companies will come together to announce their joint vision for the future of cities on Thursday February 1 at 9:00 am ET. Despite competing for market share, the companies have a shared vision for making cities more livable by prioritizing people over vehicles, lowering emissions, promoting equity and more. Press call speakers: • Robin Chase, Co-Founder of Zipcar • Bill Peduto, Mayor of Pittsburgh, USA • Jean Louis Missika, Deputy Mayor of Paris, France • Clement Michel, International Regional Director, Keolis • Joseph Okpaku, VP, Government Relations, Lyft • Chris Martin, Vice President, Mobike • Chris Taylor, Vice President and Head of North America, ofo • Jake Sion, Chief Operating Officer, Transit • Andrew Salzberg, Head of Transportation Policy and Research, Uber • Andrei Greenawalt, Vice President for Public Policy, Via • Jyot Chadha, Director of Urban Innovation, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities • Justin Holmes, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy, Zipcar • Moderated by Michael Oko, Director of Communications, World Resources Institute (WRI)

Robin Chase, Zipcar Co-Founder, believes the status quo is broken, and that sharing economy platforms—which she refers to as “peers inc”—can help rebuild a new status quo. Chase devised the “peers inc” terminology because of the mutual importance of what she sees as two halves of the sharing economy equation: the platform and the peers. As co-founder of one of the original sharing economy companies, Zipcar, Chase believes that harnessing excess capacity is both attractive economically and vital for the sustainability of our planet.

Robin Chase is here to say the future is coming much more quickly than many of us think, particularly where autonomous vehicles (AVs) are concerned. Chase, who co-founded Zipcar, believes that AVs will go on the market as early as 2020. Chase is a proponent of what she refers to as FAVES (fleets of AVs...

We are watching the economy change before our eyes, and Zipcar Cofounder Robin Chase has been at the forefront of that change. She gives her observations on the platform economy, automation, self-driving cars, and how a basic income could be what smoothes the transition as we move to a different type of relationship between people and their work.

If you want to live near a vibrant downtown but don't want to share a walk-in-closet with eleven roommates… maybe you should consider someplace other than San Francisco or New York. And yes, we know, self-driving cars are coming. But you'll never guess how they're actually going to change your city. Finally, refugee camps are becoming more and more permanent. And we need to build them better.

Self-driving cars are going to be a thing. Soon. But how are they going to reshape cities?

When Zipcar first started it was nothing more than a green Volkswagen beetle named "Betsy." It was parked outside of Robin Chase's house and the key was hidden underneath a pillow on her porch. Inside the glove box was a piece of paper where you would write down the time you rented the car and the time you brought it back. That was it. These days, Zipcar is the largest car sharing service in the world, with more than 13,000 cars spread across almost every major city in the world. The first time Chase encountered her idea with Zipcar was when her co-founder came back from a vacation in Berlin. Among her many stories about her vacation, she told Chase about a peculiar business she had witnessed where she saw multiple people sharing a single car. Taken with the idea, Chase immediately began setting out to build a better version. "It's an idea that we didn't even invent. We just executed it way better than other people," Chase says. Zipcar launched within six months, with a founder who was a mother of three and had no technical experience. It was 1996, when the internet was still new and very different from what we know today. Nevertheless, Chase was determined to make her startup a reality. We had the pleasure to speak with Robin Chase about her incredible journey as an entrepreneur, a disruptor and a world-changer, and all the lessons she learned in her inspiring career. In this interview, you will learn: What it means to create a true minimum viable product to validate your idea Why the best ideas come from solving your own problems Advice on who to hire when you're a struggling startup What qualities you should be looking for when bringing in new people to your team The importance of user feedback and always listening to your customer & much more!

From clean energy to shared cars to open data and online platforms, this week's podcast brings you the best of VERGE 2015 from Silicon Valley.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: Lucy Sanders:  Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. This is part of a continuing series that we're doing of interviews with wonderful, creative, innovative women who have started successful tech companies. With me, Larry Nelson, w3w3. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson:  It's my pleasure to be here. We've got about... Lucy:  About a hundred. Larry:  ...About a hundred interviews with women in this area. It's very exciting. It's very popular on our website. Lucy:  It's wonderful. We've got a great one coming today. Larry, it's summer. People are hitting the road. All kinds of car trips everywhere. The person we're interviewing today is a serial entrepreneur in the transportation sector, as well as being one of "Time 100 Most Influential People in 2009." Today we're interviewing Robin Chase, who is the founder and CEO of Buzzcar. Got to love that. Before that, the founder and former CEO of Zipcar. I'm sure all of our listeners have seen Zipcars out and about. A very novel concept. We've seen them everywhere. Zipcar is an industry leader today in car sharing in the United States, but Buzzcar's only available in Europe. It does some things slightly different, in that it allows users to rent out their own cars. Larry:  Oh. Lucy:  I know. Pretty interesting, right? Has over 5,000 cars in France, with 15,000 users. That's a real novel twist to ride sharing, for sure. Robin has also appeared in national media on "The Today Show," the "New York Times," and "National Public Radio." Welcome, Robin. Why don't you tell us a little about what's going on at Buzzcar? Robin Chase:  It's nice to be here. The update on Buzzcar is that we have now about 7,500 cars owned by people across France available for rent, and about 80,000 users who are renting them. What's exciting and fun for me when I think about this company, that the reason I started it is that Zipcar will only place cars where it knows that it's going to get a return on investment. I was constantly being asked as CEO, and once I left, "How come Zipcar doesn't have cars in my neighborhood, downstairs in my building in my town?" Zipcar doesn't want to take those risks. We only put them where we're really sure that it's going to happen. What's exciting for me with Buzzcar is, since we're using people's own cars, and if they rent it once a year, they're happy, because they've already paid for it. If they rent it once a month, better. A couple of times a week, best yet. It means we can have cars for rent in places that are any population density. While we do rent a lot in Paris and major cities, it's always exciting for me to see a rental happen in a place where there would never be any car chain or car rental for that matter, because it's such a small location. It's a new way of providing services I'm very excited about. Lucy:  It's certainly very novel. We were just in Europe, my husband and I. We used Uber for the first time... Larry:  Oh. Lucy:  ...which is a great way of finding a cab or a ride when there aren't any taxis. Robin:  Both of those services and many others, is something that I see happening now. I think there's a real organizational shift. There's this new organizational paradigm that I've been calling "Peers Incorporated," which is a collaboration between independent individuals or small companies and a larger institution or government of company on a platform for participation. If you think about Buzz Car, we are doing that. As a company, we made this platform, got insurance through the nice online payments, great apps facilitate everything. We give individuals the power of the corporation and the individuals are micro‑entrepreneurs. I call them auto‑preneurs. [laughter] Lucy:  That's great. Robin:  Uber is the same organizational structure, in that Uber offers a platform and then people who are current black car drivers or current taxi drivers or current individuals who want to drive their cars as taxis, can leverage the Uber platform. It's something we are seeing. Other examples would be Arabian Bee. I look at them and I think Google, Facebook, Flicker, and YouTube are all examples of this new kind of business model that is really on the rise and has a lot of great attributes. Lucy:  I'm sure it uses a lot of technology. These kinds of platforms do. Why don't you tell our listeners how you first got into technology, Robin? What kind of technologies do you like? You've already talked a little bit about these types of sharing platforms but do you see any other technologies out there that you think are especially interesting? Robin:  My other fascination, and also still in the realm of transportation, is I'm interested in mesh networks and how wireless is going to be playing out in the future. What we're seeing increasingly is that we need heterogeneous networks that we don't use. Lots of healthcare products use different types of...spectrum, and in our cars we use Bluetooth or the upcoming vehicle to vehicle. I see the future as having these heterogeneous networks and a lot more emphasis on WiFi and getting to WiFi through these mesh peer to peer networks. Two things. One is, I've co‑founded another company in Portugal called "Veniam Works," that is providing vehicle communications for public buses and in ports to the trucks. If we think about dark spots or urban canyons, having a box in your car in your car that has 3G WiFi and vehicle‑to‑vehicle means that we can use vehicle to vehicle to get to a WiFi hotspot without you having to pay for cellular. It gives you a very low‑cost, reliable network. Back to my earlier comment, this is of the same ilk, which with mesh networks, which means my wireless device doesn't just send things and receive things, it also can serve as a router. We, as individuals with our own devices, can create a wireless infrastructure on the back of the assets that we've already bought. We're rolling this out now in cars. Why cars? Because cars are batteries that are being recharged constantly and it's an easier start than in your cell phone. For me, it's an incredibly exciting part of the future of thinking about infrastructure as being built by stuff that we already own. It's infrastructure being collaboratively built and collaboratively financed. I'm excited also about it because of the resilience and redundancy it gives, so that we don't have to be reliant on an uphill. Larry:  With your interesting background, I have to ask this question. What is it that made you become an entrepreneur, and what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Robin:  I was talking to my mother about this, and I think that I've always been a person who's very interested in how things work and doing things myself, doing it myself. Way back, when I had braces, I was constantly asking the orthodontist, "Why are you doing that? What's happening now?" Or the person's cutting my hair, I now am a great hair‑cutter, so say my children. I've always been a person who wants to make it themselves, to try that. That is a fundamental piece of an entrepreneur, maybe there's two parts. One is that every problem I see, I'm always thinking about how you solve that problem. Some of them, I put my hand in and try to start it, try to make it. I make things before I buy things. I think I've had that in me for a long time. Larry:  [laughs] Good. Lucy:  She's a maker. Larry:  Yes. Lucy:  A maker entrepreneur. Along the same line of questioning, who influenced you or supported you to take this type of an entrepreneurial career choice? Robin:  I feel that especially since we're talking about women and technology, I am a woman in technology but I'm not an engineer. My husband is an electrical engineer from MIT and he was my CTO for Zipcar, was my CTO for seven years. He's been my CTO in my later efforts. I definitely have relied on him to advise and to do the technology piece that is not something that I pretend to have skill in. I was listening to something recently, and there are needs for translators. I would say I'm perhaps a translator between engineers and the common man. If we think about Zipcar or other things that I've done, I could do Zipcar because I'd never done car rental, and I didn't have any firm stereotypes about how people mistreat cars. I could do Zipcar also because I didn't know anything about wireless networking, and I had no idea that we were going to have to build our own from scratch, doing a consumer product for wireless that no one had ever done before. I could see issues that made sense, but I didn't know all the barriers and impediments. In general, I think that multidisciplinary endeavors and diversity of people is incredibly helpful. I've been lucky that I've had my husband as a great help, and that I've had a lot of advisors. I have my go‑to in the technology realm, and today my inspiration is people who are building what I see as new economy companies. There's a whole bunch of them and I'm always awestruck how these individuals are breaking the mold and doing brand‑new things that are hard, and some of them successfully. When you see people doing hard, crazy things and succeeding at it, in places where no one imagined it was possible, it's very inspiring. Larry:  Robin, with all of the different things you've done, and doing a lot of business outside of the United States, what is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Robin:  I think some of the toughest things that I had to do are firing people, which is remarkable thing. I've done business issues and negotiations that were incredibly difficult, but having to do negative things with people that you know and like was the hardest thing. For me, those interpersonal, unpleasant things were harder than technology barriers. I want to give you a metaphor that I came up with talking to my cofounder [indecipherable 10:41] that talks about these issues. I was thinking about what it's like to be a start‑up versus an old company, so here, listen to my metaphor. When you're a start‑up, you have your hand‑plough in an untilled field that is something completely overgrown. You're there pushing your plough through things and you'll hit pebbles and you'll hit rocks and then, "Darn it!" You hit these gigantic boulders and you have to go round, and you didn't expect it and it's a gigantic, gigantic effort. You're pushing and slogging and sweating, and it's huge [indecipherable 11:13] , and you have this vision of what you're going to do with this piece of land. Then you look over to the right, and you see the person on their tractor riding high and their field that's been ploughed thousands of times going down the same furrows. It's like that's the legacy that is [indecipherable 11:32] . And you look to the left and right, and it seems so easy that all the money, and it just seems so clear sailing. In meantime there you are, pushing, pushing tons of instructions. It's hard work doing this, thinking novel thing. You think, "How is that start‑ups ever manage to succeed?" Lucy:  That's a wonderful metaphor, and obviously start‑ups do succeed. Entrepreneurs have great skills and have great advice to give to others, so if you were sitting here talking to a young person about a career, an entrepreneurship, what would you tell them? Robin:  Generally overall, I talk a lot about intellectual honesty ‑‑ there's a lot wrapped up into that. To be an entrepreneur, you are constantly selling your concept, your vision, and you're selling it to prospective employees or selling it to prospective suppliers, to consumers, to investors. You're hyping it because it doesn't exist yet, and it's always got plenty of problems. I think intellectual honesty is constantly being aware of what isn't working and what you personally aren't good at, and whether your idea is a worthwhile one. I think of entrepreneurs, and we can think of people who can waste too much time on bad ideas and ruin their lives or people who don't hire others to match their own weaknesses, so to be very clear on what your own weaknesses are. I'd say the most important thing to going back to the plough versus the tractor, start‑ups succeed when they are fast‑learners, when they are learning organizations. It still comes back to this intellectual honesty. When you hit that rock and that giant boulder, recognize it for what it is. Instead of keep pushing into that same spot, figure out, "How do I go around this? What do I need to do? Do I make some serious adjustments?" Start‑ups can move very quickly, because they hit the rock right away and they can decide and make decisions that same day. Whereas if you think of big companies, it takes some months to realize there's an issue, months for it to go up the ladder, months for people to decide, "What in heck is going to go on?" and correct it. So this is how I do think start‑ups succeed, is that they can be learning organizations and learn at a pace that is just so much faster than a bigger organization that has bureaucracy and lots of layers of people and separation from their customers. Larry:  With all the different things you've done and your different companies and all, what are your personal characteristics that have given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Robin:  [laughs] I have to say the luck of fabulous parents and a good education, and the luck of some great genes. I have to attribute a lot of that to things that were outside of my personal control. To give myself some credit, I am very tenacious and incredibly hardworking, and I do my homework and I work hard at things. I give myself lots of credit for the hard work part. Larry:  Boy, that is for sure. Lucy:  We hear a lot from entrepreneurs about being tenacious, relentless, and resilient ‑‑ not quite the same word. [laughs] But we hear that a lot. You mentioned earlier that you've become quite a good hair‑cutter with your children's hair. Larry:  [laughs] Lucy:  Our next question has to do with this sort of, always talked about balance between professional and personal lives. What are your secrets for achieving it, if it in fact exists? Or how do you manage to integrate the two? Robin:  I think my children will tell you that I'm a terrible balancer. I constantly have my laptop open, and the joking refrain is I'm always saying, "Let me just finish this email, let me erase this one email before I go do something." [laughter] Robin:  On the other hand, I feel that I have demonstrated to my family ‑‑ I have a husband and three children that are now really grown ‑‑ that there's a real consistency in my values and my interest within work and my personal life, that they are very integrated. That itself is a kind of balance, that I work on things that I care about, I am interested in those topics, and my values and many of my friends and things I like to do all match. While I am terrible on the balance and trying very hard to work on it, it feels very unified inside myself. Lucy:  That word, "unified" is an interesting word, like, "integrated." And I don't think we've heard it used before, that unifying family and work. It's interesting. Larry:  I like it. Being a father of five, I like unity. [laughter] Robin:  I particularly think about values, and I would like business to have the same values as I would have in my personal life. I'm reading right now a book by Michael Lewis called "Flash Boys," and there's this one aspect in it that it's about a young Wall Street‑technology‑guy. At a certain point, he's thinking he's figured out how everyone or a large percentage of firms on Wall Street are screwing other investors. He has this choice, this young Canadian‑blood, that he can either correct the problem or start making money in the same, very deceptive, horrible way. He decides to figure out how to correct it and have everyone do things in a less deceptive way, rather than having uncovered the secret and starting to cheat people. I was struck by that this is a great book, and that this is the subject of the book, and I think, "Wow! Why is it that that's a novel idea, that we begin to know fair value for things that we do, and we are honest and helpful and fair and all of those things?" That's where this unity‑piece is coming from me. I'd like to businesses ‑‑ I think we're seeing more and more of them ‑‑ that have social and environmental goals that are now very embedded in their mission statement and how they do things. I don't know if you've heard of this, but there's a new form of corporation called the Dcorp. Dcorp embeds in its mission some social attributes, and therefore we think of companies that always must be following in other shareholders, and what's the best for shareholders. These Dcorps are required to follow their mission, and they are not for profit, but it's a balance that they have to be a profitable company and they have to fulfill their other mission, goals. I think we'll see more of those. Lucy:  Maybe there'll be a financial investment fund for B Corps. Larry:  All right, let's go. Let's do it. Lucy:  401K. [laughter] Larry:  Boy, we are certainly very impressed with everything you've been through, what you've done and accomplished, but I have to ask this. What's next? Robin:  Right at this very minute, and at the very minute I'm talking to you, I'm writing, and not writing, a book on this new organizational paradigm that I've been calling "Peers Incorporated," and how it's going to be changing the way we build businesses, the way we work, and the way we use assets. I think it's kind of leading edge to what I see is a new collaborative economy. That's what I'm doing right now when I'm not doing all the other things I do. Lucy:  [laughs] Fascinating. Larry:  It really does. [laughs] Larry:  It really does, wow. So, Robin, thank you very much. Our listeners will just love this interview and all of your insights into the different kinds of business models and everything is just very interesting so thank you very much. I want to remind listeners they can find this on W3W3.com, and also on the NCWIT website, NCWIT.org. So, thank you. Larry:  You bet. Robin:  You're welcome, bye. Lucy:  Bye. Larry:  Thank you so much, Robin.   Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Robin ChaseInterview Summary: Robin Chase is the Founder and CEO of BuzzCar, and also the founder of ZipCar. ZipCar is an industry leader in car sharing in the United States. They provide cars on demand for users with thousands of available cars around the globe. BuzzCar is only available in Europe, but it allows users to rent out their own cars, and has over 5,000 cars in France with 15,000 users.   " I've always been a person who wants to make it themselves, to try that. That is a fundamental piece of an entrepreneur, maybe there's two parts." said Chase on being an entrepreneur. "One is that every problem I see, I'm always thinking about how you solve that problem. Some of them, I put my hand in and try to start it, try to make it. I make things before I buy things. I think I've had that in me for a long time."   Release Date: October 20, 2014

Robin will tell not only the story of how the Zipcar began with Lean Startup techniques, she’ll also reveal the economic framework that will help you build the next Zipcar.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Bettina Hein Founder and CEO, Pixability Date: March 7, 2011 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes: Interview with Bettina Hein [music] Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy, board member for the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT. I am also CEO of Bolder Search. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom just have terrific stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Oh, hi. I am really excited to be here. Once again, this is going to be a fantastic interview with a number of high powered women who have really been examples of super entrepreneurship. Lee: Wonderful. You want to tell us just a little bit about w3w3. Larry: Well, we have been doing it for 12 years. We are an Internet‑based business radio show. We host everything and archive everything. We have over 17,000 pages on our website and they are all business interviews. We are excited about that. Lee: Wonderful. Well, today we are interviewing Bettina Hein who is the founder and CEO of Pixability. Pixability helps small and medium sized businesses increase sales by using video. Bettina is a repeat entrepreneur based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to Pixability, Bettina cofounded Swiss based SVOX AG in 2001 and led the venture‑backed speech software company to profitability. Then in 1996, Patina was the initiator of START, an organization that advances entrepreneurship among college students. She is also the founder of SheEOs, and that's a network for female CEOs and founders of growth companies. So Bettina, welcome. Bettina Hein: Thank you very much for having me. Lee: Well, we'd love to hear a little bit about Pixability before we jump into some questions we have for you. Bettina: Well, you said it correctly. We help companies and non‑profits create and promote themselves via online video. We help you create a great video by for example sending you a flip camera and you shoot the video. We spruce it up and then we have software that publishes that video all over the Internet and search engine optimizes. We are really the experts for video marketing. Lee: Wonderful. Larry: Oh I love it. Lee: We are just going to jump into things here. We'd love to hear how you first got into technology. Bettina: I've been in tech all of my career. I guess it started a little bit earlier than that. I started with computers and programming in Logo when I was in fourth grade on an Apple IIe way back when I went to college for business administration and did finance. But I was always in love with technology and would spend lots of time with all the guys in the windowless rooms with the computers. When I got out of grad school, I had offers from investment banks and consultancies and all of that. But I really wanted to be in tech. I took my fourth grade book where I had written down these Logo programs, written them out, so I took them to talk with the founders of tech companies. I became involved in SVOX my first company which is a speech technology software company based in Zurich, Switzerland and became a cofounder there. I've been in tech and an entrepreneur all of my career, basically straight out of grad school. Lee: Well, and the other question I had is what today you think is really cool, what technologies do you just love to play with? Bettina: Well, you should really play with Google Translate because that has my SVOX [indecipherable 00:03:56] and the company SVOX's technology. There is a speech technology that is pretty cool. But apart from that, the obvious thing video. There is a lot of things happening around video and into active video and video on mobile phones. That ties in with all the things that are happening in the mobile space. I really think that there are lots of things happening that are relevant for businesses in mobile and that again ties in to the social web, social media. As a geek on the side I am also really interested in things like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, because that sort of shows the human computing interface. Probably you saw what was on Jeopardy last week was IBM's Watson. I am really fascinated on how humans and AI that interface there. But that's something that's a little bit further out for commercialization, actually. Larry: With your experiences now, what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick, and why did you become an entrepreneur. Bettina: I didn't know any better. All of my four grandparents are actually entrepreneurs. My grandmothers as well as my grandfathers were entrepreneurs in their own right, and my parents as well. They are professionals and nobody in my family ever had a nine‑to‑five job. I didn't really know what that meant. I heard that you have this career thing and you go to an office and you come back at night. But I never experienced that from home. I didn't really know what that meant. For me it didn't seem like a far reach to become an entrepreneur. Also, I love creating something from nothing. It's really so wonderful if you do it with an organization or if you do it with a company, that you have this idea in your head that you want to create something that helps fosters entrepreneurship in college students. What I did was START. Or you want to make speech technology an everyday then people use, and you have this idea and you work really, really hard. It's extremely hard, but it comes alive when you create all these jobs. My last company has over 120 people. My husband is also an entrepreneur. Together we have created over 500 jobs. I am really, really proud that I figured out by hard work how to take something and turn it into an entity that provides a livelihood for so many people. Lee: Boy, that's so cool. This question is a lead on to that. Who influenced you or supported you to take the career path you have? Do you have any role models or mentors? Bettina: Well, my family, definitely. My grandfather grew a company. He was a coal miner and when he was 15 he went into the coal mine and was under the earth. It was a really back breaking hard job. Over the years, he found ways to make money in other ways. He ended up having a wholesale Coop providing hundreds of millions of tons coal to the big energy producers, electricity producers. He was retired by then, but he would always tell me how he did that. How he used his knowledge, when he was 15, to do all of that. He would do math problems with me on this and tell me about how he negotiated across the table and that he always was really faster in his head. They couldn't pull out a calculator as fast as he could do the math, so we would work on that. Up to about five years ago, I had mostly male mentors because I haven't seen any women doing what I was doing. As a female entrepreneur in technology, in Europe there were hardly anybody to look up to. But then I moved from Zurich, Switzerland to here to Cambridge Massachusetts. I found that well there are these people I can look up to that can be a mentor. You interviewed Gail Goodman the founder of Constant Contact, or the founder of the Zipcar, Robin Chase. People like Beth Marcus who sold her fifth company. People have done this here before. I now feel like I am living in Disneyland in a way because I have so many people that support me. I am trying to give it back with SheEOs group that I created to foster more female entrepreneurship. Larry: That's terrific. By the way Lucy Sanders always likes us to ask this tough question. What is the toughest thing that you had to do in your career? Bettina: So I started my first company when I was 27. This was in 2001. So it was post dotcom boom. But there was still money around and a little bit of hype around. But that very quickly evaporated. But, we were able to raise money and we hired people and that was going pretty well. Then we just did not make any of our goals. It was terrible because I, the young person, had promised the world to all these people. We hired over 20 people. I had to fire half of them at a certain point, together with my co‑founders. That was really, really, really hard to do that. In Europe, it's also harder to fire people. You don't fire them and they leave that day. You have to keep them on for three months. You have to continue to paying their salaries so, that was really, really hard. It made me very prudent about over hiring and making sure I meet my goals before I promise people too much. Lee: Yeah, I think we've heard from a good majority of the people we have interviewed that having to lay off people or fire people is not easy. Larry: Yeah, Bettina, you're absolutely right about in Europe. My wife and I have owned a number of companies in Europe. We had some of those similar experiences. Bettina: Yeah, you have to look people in the eye for three months and say, "I failed you." Every single day they look at you while they're searching for new jobs, but they still work for you. I didn't feel so hot. Lee: If you were to think back of all the things you learned through growing businesses and having the networking, the CEO, what would you advise a young person about entrepreneurship if they were sitting with you there today? Bettina: That's one of the things I really love doing. I really love helping other people make their dreams come true. I typically tell them anybody can be an entrepreneur. I tell them that "You can do it." There are three things I tell them that they need. The first one is naivete. If you knew what was going to hit you during the course of building your company, you would not start. [laughter] Larry: You're right. Bettina: You should really, really start young and go at it. That doesn't mean to be unprepared, right? That means, you have to do your research. You have to look for a good market. But, if you knew too much, you would not be able to be an innovator. Naivete is the first thing. The second thing I tell them they need to have is chutzpah. Do you guys know what that means? Lee: Yes. Larry: Yeah, we do, but why don't you explain it to our listeners. [laughter] Bettina: Yeah. I always usually ask them. It means being audacious, putting yourself out there. You really have to own it and say, "Yes, I am convinced I can do this and I can solve your problem." Let me give you an example. When we started SVOX, we were a small company, but we had the chutzpah to go to Mercedes Benz and say, "We have the solution for your flagship product, the S Class and we want it." We didn't know at the time how we'd be able to deliver. I mean, we had a plan, but we couldn't the next day have delivered. But, they gave us an order for this, and that made the company. Chutzpah means putting yourself out there. It doesn't mean winging it. You have to do your homework and be prepared to deliver. But, you have to also say, "I know I can do this for you. Trust me on this." Then the third thing is perseverance. You have to have the willpower to see it through. Because It's hard. It's very hard and you're going to want to quit. Often. You have to see it through. But, that doesn't mean being stubborn. You do have to take cues from your environment and pivot and change your business model and evolve it. Just as I said my toughest experience was firing all those people. Well we didn't give up. We laid off all those people because we said, "OK, with the cash that we have and where we need to go, this is how we can get to growing the company." Since then, the company has grown more than 10X. But, we knew we had to see this through. If you have those three things, I think any young person can make it in an entrepreneurship. Larry: Wow. You have hit on a number of different things that you've done, and so on, but let me just see if we can narrow this down. What are personal characteristics that have given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Bettina: Well, first of all as I said before that not know any better, the family background, definitely. Also, if you statically look at it, what makes people more inclined to be entrepreneurs, is if they have role models in their family to do that. But, just personally, I have a dogged determination to succeed, to make things happen. I think that's really the most important thing that people say to me. I feel that motivates the people that I find to work for me most is that people can serve me all kinds of punches and I will get back up, get back on the horse and just continue on. Obviously, that's my strategy and learning from those punches, but I will do that. I think my team also [indecipherable 00:14:46] the energy through hard times to keep going. Lee: With all the startups and things that you've done, how do you bring balance into your life, between personal and professional? Bettina: It all melds into one, in a way. I just don't believe in this myth that you can completely separate your personal and your professional life. I think that's just not true. I do think that you have to have some little bit of distance. I try not to work on Saturdays. That's what I try not to do. I also advocate that people take time off and I do that myself. It's very hard to do that, but being from Europe, a lot of vacation there is mandated by law. What I always try to train everybody in the company to tag team it. We're experimenting this year with a vacation policy that says you get two weeks off a year, or you get four weeks off a year, if you take two weeks at a time. You have your pick. You can either get four weeks, or two weeks. But, of you want to take off time, don't piecemeal it a day here or a day here. You have to take two weeks off. The reason for that is, that I want people to do their jobs and document them so well that other people can take over their jobs for two weeks while they're gone and they don't have to worry. I try to do that with myself. I really try not to be a bottleneck for decisions or for things that are happening in the company. For me, I think, it's very hard to do. But, I am really working hard on it. Right now, I am getting ready to have my first baby so I am really working very hard in order to be able to take four weeks off of maternity leave and trying to get everybody transferring enough responsibility so I can go do that. It's a big challenge, but I absolutely believe if you fail at that, then your company will collapse like a house of cards if you leave. That means you didn't build a good organization. Larry: Bettina, you're right on. My wife and I, who are in business together, we have five kids, so we have some empathy for what you're talking about. Bettina: I'm glad, yes. It's going to be a challenge. I know that. Larry: Besides your new baby, you've already achieved a great deal. What's next for you? Bettina: Well, I think there's lots more out there. I think I am 10 years into my apprenticeship of being an entrepreneur. I think I'm constantly learning. I do have a dream of taking a company public one of these days, like Gail did with Constant Contact. Pixability we often sell ourselves to investors as, "What Constant Contact did for email marketing we're going do for video marketing." But, maybe being public these days isn't the most attractive thing anymore, but I do want to grow a company in a substantial way and into the thousands of employees. That's my dream that's still out there. Larry: I have a feeling you're going to do it too. Lee: That is a wonderful dream. Bettina: Thank you for that confidence. Lee: We thank you for interviewing with us today. For everybody out there listening, you can find these podcasts on W3W3.com and as well at ncwit.org. Please pass it along to a friend. Thank you Bettina. We've enjoyed having you today. Bettina: Thank you very much for inviting me. Larry: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Bettina HeinInterview Summary: Bettina Hein believes there's a recipe for successful entrepreneurship, and in this interview she shares it. Ingredients include chutzpah and persverance. Release Date: March 7, 2011Interview Subject: Bettina HeinInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 18:34