The Next Web NYC - Robin Chase, Zipcar

She's really a transport expert. She's also seen all the good and all the bad. She of course is the former CEO and of course co-founder of Zipcar. Ladies and gentlemen, please raise the roof for Robin Chase. Robin Chase, CEO, Zipcar, So the first thing I want to do is, you guys have been sitting here for a long time, so I want you to stand up, stretch, so you have some more energy to listen to me, like shake it out. I want to control the audience. Yes, excellent. You guys feeling slightly better? Okay. So, I want to take you back to 2000 and put you in a totally different world where we were born. We founded Zipcar. 25% of the people had a phone, a cell phone, definitely not a smartphone. And only 50% of the people had access to the internet and that was mostly at work. Can you believe what 16 years difference had made? And all of these platforms, things that you guys have didn't exist. And I look back at that Zipcar and I want to say it inspires me when I look at it. And the most amazing part, it says my time is up and I've gone 14 years. What's incredible about Zipcar is that we launched that company with $75,000 six months after it was incorporated. And I had this little thing that I used to want to wear a t-shirt that said IANAE, I am not an engineer. And I look at it and think, how in hell, how in hell do we possibly start this company with $75,000? And I've done three startups since then. One, I gave half the money back because after two years I realized it wasn't going to work. The other one, we were the number two and we merged with the number one. And the last one, which I'm working on now as a happily board member co-founder called Venium that does vehicle network communications, it's going to be bigger than Zipcar. But I still look at this thing, how in hell, how did we do that? So you guys have heard some amazing CEOs today. And I know that whenever I listen to them I say, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, that one too. Yes, exactly. So I decided to shake this up a little bit and I'm not giving you my usual startup talk. And so these are different ideas that are definitely dear to my heart. This is a photo of when Zipcar launched in Washington, D.C. as our second city, September 1, 2001. And at the end of that first September, after September 11th, and at the end of September I was so proud. I called up my board members. And one I liked in particular. And I said, the car rental industry has completely crashed. The hotel industry and tourism has completely gone down. But Zipcar grew 20% this month. And I'm telling you, it's a utility. No matter what the market is, we grow. And this picture I took by hanging out the window of another Zipcar because, of course, the CEO has to do it all, right? And look, it was like a great photo. So I, like you, went to a whole bunch of startup things. I was listening to all these different CEOs who had gone ahead of me. And the year Zipcar was founded, exactly the same time as JetBlue. And so I went to a talk with David Neilman. And he was saying, okay, you know, our core values are, and he was saying, there's four of them. And he says, it's first, and he was going like this. And he was saying, oh, my God, my marketing person is going to kill me. Like, he couldn't come up with his core values. And then I went about a week later to this other startup talk. And the CEO said, our core values are first, F for I, R for I. And I just thought, oh, man, that is so lame. So at Zipcar, I said, okay, here's mine. So Screech, simple, convenient, reliable, economical and environmental, admirable, customer and community focused and humorous because that's not how you spell Screech. And so what was interesting about this is that everyone in my staff understood it. And we scotch taped it to the bottom of all of the screens. And my point here is you really got to know who you are. And knowing who you are enables you, gives you your priorities for not just all the good stuff and you want to hone and do the right stuff, but really importantly to know what you're not going to do. That when you have got these value systems down and you know your focus mission, when people are going to be able to do it, you're going to be able to do it. And when people are telling you all these great ideas or there's this really interesting e-mail you got or this guy talked to you, you can say, no, that's not on there. So just getting that really tight is important for your priorities. But for me, it was even more important to be able to say that's not who we are. I'm not even going to worry about that. I'm taking that right off. I just was going through some file drawers very recently and cleaning out some stuff. And this was Zipcar's exhibit. I'm going to give you an executive summary in June of 2000. And I'm so dumbfounded when I found it. I had to take a little photo on my phone. So June of 2000. Zipcar provides convenient economically and environmentally sensitive transportation to urban residents and workers. Using a Zipcar is convenient as using an ATM and integrates car access into members' lives just as seamlessly. Leveraging the Internet and new wireless technologies, Zipcar is blah, blah, blah. And I just want to put you back where you are. We were and I was doing a fireside chat with the CEO of Netflix, founder and CEO, former CEO. And he was saying, yeah, everybody pivots all the time. And I said, wait, wait, actually, we didn't do any pivoting. And I'm being a little disingenuous because Zipcar is an idea that was happening in Europe. But we took it, totally rebranded it and applied technology in this beautiful way to it. And it was and is exactly as planned when we found it. I'd say we have the companies change things by 5% since that initial vision. And this is the symbol of my failure. And so I wanted to point this. So I used to keep this on my desk as a symbol of hubris and failure and money poorly spent. So one of the things we changed is when we launched in June of 2000, I had this vision of what Zipcar was going to be. One of the things we always thought was going to happen, and I told you the statistics. I told you the statistics about how well people were connected or not. Was that we were going to have a device in the vehicle so you could say, here's my member number. Is the car okay? Yes, no. Do you want to extend it? Yes, no. Does it need to be cleaned? Yes, no. So I had this idea. $75,000 to raise. We started that company. $50,000 of that went to engineering. The next $25,000 went to this stupid blasted product. And so that was like 25% of the money I had raised. And you guys know what fundraising is like. And here it was because I always imagined, yeah, you're going to have to have this thing in the car because people don't have cell phones and they're going to have to do these things. Within three weeks of it being put in the car, when you do anything with the car, it has to be military grade because it gets really, really hot and really, really cold. So it had to be built with these fancy materials. And then the LED screen. When it was in sunlight, no one could read the LED screen. It was always kind of kicking around. It was attached by this tether. It was kicking around the car. And it caused so much trouble. So even though it was 25% of what I had to spend, after three weeks we pulled it. I said, that's it. We're not doing this thing. We're going to have what you saw today, just the card reader, nothing else. If you have a problem, you're going to go to a phone booth or use your cell phone. And if you think about the beauty of Zipcar, that decision was one of the fundamental things that I had to make. It was one of the fundamental turning points for the entire company. Everybody who has done this after us around the world has this dramatically more complicated thing going on. And ours was dead simple. Hold the card on the screen. Door unlocks. Done. And my point here is why startups succeed ever is because they learn continuously. They become learning machines. And you've got to learn. And even when it's something that's dear to your heart. Like, that was something that we had in our mind and I was going to be so proud of. And it was this thing that I spent so much money on. And it sucked. It was a bad idea. And I had to give it up. And I had to give it up really fast. So as I say, I kept this on my desk at all times as a symbol of fast learning and expensive failure and to learn from that failure. Here is another one of these. So that we launched in June. And that August, I went on vacation with my family. I had three young kids. And my engineer, my senior engineer, of which I had two, and we had cycled through a lot. While I was on vacation, he was supposed to be coming up with a priority list for the company from a technology perspective. And I remember sitting looking at this view on a landline phone and he was describing to me what he wanted to do. And what he wanted to do was all of these easy parts and not the hard part, which was connecting the cars wirelessly to the car. We talked today about minimum viable products. Zipcar launched with one car on the street in front of my house. You would make a reservation online, which was not connected to the car. You would walk up the backyard, onto the porch, lift up the pillow, find the key, go back into the car. And then there was this little log in the car that would say start time, stop time, start odometer, stop odometer. So the first four months in which we were running, there was no connection between the server and the cars. Because it was a really, really hard problem. To tell you how early we were, cell companies did not sell data plans. Data plans were not a thing. They wanted to charge each company as if it were a phone. So on the phone, there sitting with me, he said, oh, I want to do this and that and the other. And he's my engineer. And I love my engineers. And I trusted him. I hired him because I'm not an engineer. And I had to say, you know what? All of that is wrong. The number one thing is we have to connect the car to the server because that is the fundamental differential. The fundamental differentiator between this company and any other car rental. So I'm telling you this story because I knew profoundly that was a connection that was on the very direct straight path to success. And I'm giving you an example of where I did not trust and respect my team. And I want you guys to trust and respect your senior leadership team. That the only reason you hire them to complement your skill set and you hire them because they know things you don't know. And so trust and believe. And their choices. So while I told him, no, your technology roadmap is wrong from a strategic standpoint, how you're going to execute that, I have no idea. I know it's going to be hard. I'm not an engineer. You're going to execute it the best way you can. But I can tell you from my strategic perspective, this is really important. So I'm trying to give you some nuance in how this works. Another key point is this idea of leveraging excess capacity. And I think one thing away from this, I want to open your eyes to the idea of excess capacity as this unbelievable asset for entrepreneurs and for startups. And I would define excess capacity as something that already exists. It's already been paid for. But you can get it for free. So this is a picture of MIT. And our first corporate partner was with MIT who gave us a parking spot. One parking space. And so you might think, as people did, like, wow, how great. You got a free parking space from MIT. $150 a month or whatever it was. But that was not what was interesting to me. What was interesting to me was now MIT sent out an e-mail to the 35,000 staff members and students that said, yo, there's a new thing on campus called Zipcar where you can rent cars by the hour and by the day. And that was what I needed. I could no way pay for that kind of exposure or get at those people. So the only reason I wanted the parking space was so that they would send out that e-mail. And I was tapping into that. You know, hundreds, thousands of students. Anybody just ran out of hardships in見てουν legions en advance? When you say it in favor of people, what are your thoughts? wow, that is free teaching. I'm going to take advantage of that. So this idea of excess capacity, when you have no money and you're launching a company, $75,000, so key to looking around you and saying, where is there excess capacity that I can tap, that I can harness? I love this really goofy, icky stock photo slide. Another one of your free excess capacities and continuous learning is when you describe your company to someone. And I will go straight to your mom. You describe it to your mom and she says, that's a dumb idea or how does this work? And instead of thinking, my God, you are so dumb. Didn't you get it? This is such a brilliant idea and how smart and what's wrong with you? You should be thinking, whoa, I'm a complete idiot because that question was so obvious that she had to ask. I should preempt the asking of that kind of question. Or that's the kind of question that I should know the answer to. So when you're pitching your company to your friend, to your mom, to some other cool person, to an angel investor that's not even on your list, those guys are your free consultants. And when I launched Zipcar, one of my friends who was the first person I knew to become a millionaire, she had told me to write down the questions that people asked and I thought, I'm never going to write down the questions people ask. That's a dumb thing. But I want to tell you, it's not so dumb because people have the same questions in their mind when you do things. It's going to keep coming back and coming back. So you want to preempt those questions and you want to use these people as your free consultants. The first time I gave a pitch for Zipcar, I spent a week, day and night, doing my pitch for these angel guys and I practiced it and I did everything. And after my, it was like eight minutes and two minutes of questions or whatever crazy timeline it is, the first question was, so who fills up the car? And the entire two minutes was absorbed with people asking inane, stupid questions. And not asking me, how much money am I going to make and how fabulous is this product? And I thought, every time I describe this company, I need to describe who fills up the tank when it gets to a quarter full and how. But so, it's really important to get past these questions. So, summarizing, I feel like the most important thing to succeeding is to have what I think of as intellectual honesty. Which, if I think of all of these things, if you are not honest with yourself about what you're doing, what the reality is, you will fail. And so, there's a lot of hubris and ego and I had this idea for a long time and I'm smarter than those guys. That is what is going to make you fail. I feel like when you're doing a startup, just think of how you are constantly selling, selling, selling. Yeah, this is a great idea, even though we don't know if it actually succeeds yet. Yes, invest in my company. It's going to be fantastic, even though you don't have any proof points. Yeah, come work for my company and quit your day job even though I don't have money. Yes, buy this great thing even though I know it's not great. So, you're constantly selling, selling, selling. Do not drink your own Kool-Aid when something is wrong. Fix it. Know what your own weaknesses are and hire to them. You will never be able to be a company that can learn continuously and can learn fast. You will have a team that will not love you and respect you and will want to leave because you don't respect them. So, this idea of knowing your weaknesses and being really, clear about your company's weaknesses and never failing to change problems as quickly as you can as well as to, when you're looking closely, to see opportunities really fast and run with them. I had a board member who I loved and he would say to me, Robin, he told me after, after three years at Zipcar, he said, you know what I like best about Zipcar, Robin, is the cocktail. When I'm at cocktail parties, I can say that I'm on the board. It's like transformed my life. But he would tell me that, Zipcar was like a peacock. He said, everyone thinks that you're like this big and you're so beautiful. And he said, and what I know is you're this little tiny eight pound hen. And so I want you guys to think of yourselves in that reality, that outside, you exhibit yourselves as a spectacular website and all these great things and these great stories, but you know in your heart, behind the scenes, like in a hotel, it's dirty, crummy, and you're this light little, pathetic little thing. And so I have this, which is a blind mole rat. And I feel like this is how I actually, was. That you're starting this company and you're there underground and you're trying to go up and you're like scribble scrabbling and you're like, I'm going to talk to these three people. Wrong, dead end. I'm going to go this way. Dead end. And you're going up to the top and when you get to the top, you look back, you say, oh my God, what a straight shot. And you forgot all those thousands of dead ends. And you are this puny little thing, but I want to tell you, you really have what it takes. You have got these like, mean look on your face. You've got your big paws. You're in a scribble, and you can make it done. So for these, these are my two spirit animals as I was doing Zipcar. Is both the beautiful and the mundane. So I did write a book on these topics. And so I urge you to go find it and read this one chapter about how to build these things. I want to leave you, I've been feeling, I was feeling today as I was coming onto the stage and thinking about this today. I personally am in a position of turmoil around, about the world, the state of the world as it exists today. And in particular, what I think about all you guys building companies, I want you to take into account the urgency of addressing climate change. And I see I have just an extra minute, so I'm going to use this minute and I still have another slide. So the thing that is preying on my mind, and I want to pray on your mind, is this extreme urgency around climate change. Scientists tell us that if we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to have plus seven degrees Celsius warmer. And the question, if you're like me, is what does that mean to warm a planet by seven degrees Celsius? Like, what does that mean? To express to you what it feels like to warm a planet by that amount, the last time it was minus four and a half degrees was 20,000 years ago, the last ice age. Where you were sitting right this minute and where I sleep in Boston was under several kilometers of ice. So think of the planetary change of that four degree warming and picture we are going forward that amount in 85 years. So when people say this is catastrophic, it is catastrophic. There won't be humans. Humans have never existed at these temperatures. We're about to kill all of these ecosystems. I read two days ago in The Guardian, 70% of wildlife will be dead by 2020, of wild animals, since 1968. 70, 50% of the Great Barrier Reef is dead. A very close friend of mine who ran the UN FCC, which was the UN's climate negotiating team that came to the Paris Agreement, she said to me this sentence that is tattooed on my brain and in my heart. The infrastructure we build over the next four years will determine the fate of humanity. So the infrastructure we're going to build over the next four years will determine the fate of humanity. And I love you guys. I don't care what startup you're working on. We are living in a fossil fuel soaked economy. And we have to get every scrap of it out. We have to get it out now. Immediately, right now. So I'm going to leave you with an inspirational moment. When I, three years, when Zipcar was three years old, we got an email that was sent to info at zipcar.com. So it was the big, slush bucket email. It was apropos of nothing. And I'm going to show you the entirety of that email. It said, have I told you lately that I love you? So I want you guys to reflect. And for me, this is my standard. I want to create a company in which people send unsolicited love letters. That we are a company that provides such an amazing service that works so deeply into their lives. That they want to send unsolicited love letters. And so as you go about building your companies today, in this particular moment in which we live, you need to be thinking deeply and desperately about what kind of world you want to create. And every day, we are creating the world you want to live in. And so I want to leave you with that. Thank you. Thank you so much, Robin. And on that note, going into a little break, we'll get back here at quarter past three with some really amazing speakers and also the scale challenge. So we have a couple of startups that are going to be pitching. Very exciting stuff. See you all in a bit.