#EnergyChat with David Mahfouda of Bandwagon.io

Today's Energy chat conversation I'm Jesse Jenkins for the energy collective.com and I'm speaking today to David mauda CEO of bandwagon a new app-based service for your smartphone designed to make taxi sharing and trip pooling much easier and hopefully much more common uh David and the bandwagon team recently took first place in a future energy pitch competition held in New York City on June 13th the event hosted by ultralight startups and in partnership with the energy Collective among many others gave eight new energy startups a chance to pitch their ventures in front of a Discerning panel of VC investors so David congratulations on your win at the Future Energy pitch competition and thanks for joining us thanks so much Jesse thanks for having me of course so after winning this competition I'm sure you've got your elevator pitched down pretty cold so let's hear it uh what give us the scoop on bandwagon so you You' you've done a good job already bandwagon uh is a ride sharing app for taxis and car services uh unlike other Taxi sharing apps it's not a message board so we've actually built a sophisticated route coordination server that we call the ride batch server uh that identifies and gracefully combines itineraries doesn't matter how many it doesn't matter how how dispert they are it's a very sophisticated tool that does all the matching for users uh so that they don't have to spend uh time searching through uh searching through a message Bo figuring out who the right person to share with is um and that so that ridebat server Powers two products uh one we call the Hop Lane which is a physical system uh that passengers who are waiting in line at airports use uh to identify the best passenger with which to share their ride uh and then we have a web and mobile app that does the same thing in reverse the problems are slightly different uh from the airport of 2 the airport um but in general what we're doing is combining trips reducing uh VMT uh and saving passengers saving passengers money and time on their trips tune from from Transportation hubs great so do you envision um this primarily being rolled out at places like airports where you have a lot of people uh you know standing line kind of all waiting to go generally towards the city center you know in a common direction or you know is this something that in the future I can kind of walk out on the curb open my phone and and find somebody that is passing nearby that's also headed to the same place as I am yeah so yes to the second one so we do en we do Envision this as a broad uh distributed platform we actually think it's a new mode of transportation um we so we've in the past we've called it modular public transportation it's it's a responsive Transportation network uh it's a we think it's a new form of of we ultimately call it social transportation that sits in between traditional fixed infrastructure buses and buses and trains uh and more responsive taxis um and so in the first part of your question you said do you you know do you think of this as primarily a tool for transportation hubs the answer the answer is no but we do initially we do think so the the correct answer is initially we think of it as a tool for for transportation hubs um also event venues concert venues uh even smaller events Gallas any time where there are a group of people sort of all coordinate all sort of aggregating in one place or being dispersed from one place um so that it's a initially we're sort of working Prim initially we're working on a on a hubby Hub strategy um but ultimately we do see this as a distributed platform great and um are your initial customers then uh you know taxi companies themselves or are you sort of rolling this out to to end users or individuals yeah so it is a two-sided Market uh we work uh the the taxis are actually our customers um so we purchase trips uh from Taxi and car services uh then we break those trips up into individual seats uh and we re resell those individual seats at a slight markup uh to uh to to our customers uh and users pass who are pass so we you know we do have we do uh we interface both with um uh both with uh car services and drivers uh and and and passengers great um so from what I gather your you know your vision is to make uh sharing a taxi your pooling rides like this from events uh or for conferences or corporate meetings pretty much second nature um I imagine that a lot of uh you know regular taxi Riders might be reluctant to hop into a cab with a stranger what do you see as the sort of the key obstacles to making this uh so you know more common and how do how do you plan to sort of bridge those and address those obstacles yeah so I don't think about it in terms of obstacles I think about it in terms of incentives right so what can we so how do we how do we incentivize passengers in order to make them excited about getting into a taxi with another passenger taxi or any other vehicle so we say taxi but it's really just Shand for a sponsor vehicle I think I think we're going to see a lot sort of differentiation and variegation in the kinds of responsive vehicles that are providing transportation and urban centers in the next couple of years but we'll just say taxis for the time being um so how do you incentivize passengers so the the first thing I already mentioned um you make it cheaper for passengers to share um but also particularly when passengers are waiting in line uh the the real driver is making it faster for passengers to share um so the reason our product is called The Hop Lane is a it's a spin-off on high occupancy vehicle Lane uh so basically sharing passengers uh get Priority Access to departing taxes so if you're if you're willing to share you get to come up to the front of the line uh and that's an incentive um that the airport has been granting us for the for the demonstration that we're running at the Guardia Airport uh because the airport runs into problems where they run they run out of taxis um the the the demand for taxes is higher than the supply uh and we we can step in in those situations uh and basically consolidate demand uh and get get more passengers home uh in in an effective Manner and then so but I I should also say you're talking about sort of what are some of the barriers we also do want to lower the costs uh involved in Sharing um and some of the ways that we do that I mentioned Also earlier you know a ride bet server does all of the sort of organization for our passengers so that that that's a significant way of effectively lowering the cost of participating in shared rides um and then also uh we we don't have it yet um but very soon we are going to have uh social rating systems uh and Facebook integration so that some of the you know awkwardness Factor um is really going to be I think brought down significantly uh because passengers will have some more information about the people that they're traveling with that sounds good um so you mentioned uh a pilot at LaGuardia Airport um I see that your site's sort of in a beta mode so where are you at in your launch process um and what kind of early results are you getting from your trials and and what are you learning as you roll this out that maybe you weren't expecting yeah so we're still in demonstration mode uh we've been um booking trips both to and from the airport we've done more trips from the airport at this point it's about 300 trips so far about a, passengers so far um uh what are we learning um I think I mean I think a lot of the learning that we did was really early on and really figuring out what the right incentives were um and and really really sort of uh even some of the physical even some of the very simple physical infrastructure that we're that we put it in place at the airport uh just sort of signage and a specific Zone where passenger super sharing can meet one another and clear Artic articulation of what the value propositions I think all those things uh are super important uh especially when you're teaching a new Behavior to passengers um so I think really just the the simple stuff is is the stuff that's really important to get right um and and uh we spent a lot of time on it and are you finding that the biggest incentive is saving time or is it money or or what are the big things for people it's really so um personal uh passengers that are traveling for leisure are sort of more more incentivized by by saving money especially students they'll actually wait around for shared rides um but really you know time is the driver uh whenever whenever we bring a shared pair up to the front of the line everybody in line is interested in Sharing um somewhat unsurprisingly yeah and so you know it's really just the same logic uh that's applied to Road systems to Road networks uh and we're just applying it very very locally to this particular to this particular queue uh at the airport and I should say the I'm not sure how familiar you are with the history of ride sharing but really the only like organic successful real-time ride sharing programs um in the United States have been facilitated basically by n city HOV lanes um so the examples are casual car pool over the Bay Bridge slugging in Washington DC and these you know this is what we were looking at when we designed the hot Lane the the examples that were working organically were these examples where passengers were actually saving time getting into the city or out of the city uh and that's that's what we've recreated at the airport in order to facilitate this behavior in in for higher Vehicles yeah I was wondering if they had that in mind I I used to live in Oakland California um for about four years and it was always amazed to see the folks lining up for Casual Carpool at different parts in Oakland and Berkeley uh you know for those who don't uh know Casual Carpool that um you need three vehicles to use the carpool Lane to get across the bay bridge and into or out of San Francisco which at rush hour can mean quite a lot of time saving so there are different uh sort of drop off and pick up locations throughout the East Bay and San Francisco uh where folks can just queue up in the morning and um and drivers come by and pick up two or three people and fill their car and head into the city where they drop them off at a couple of common locations at a couple of friends actually and that communed into the city regularly using the the system so uh interesting to see that that concept applied here to taxi sharing I've run into those situations where they've run out of taxis at the airport as well so I can certainly relate to to the motives there yeah so um let's talk about I mean you the energy implications this you you pitched this comp this at a uh you know a future energy pitch competition you're competing against some solar energy startups and other others so what do you think uh the ultimate kind of energy use implications of this are and and how do you sort of see this why do you think you sort of edged out some of the other energy uh startups in that competition yeah so very very straight I think one of one of our advantages at pitching at the energy conference was that uh our technology was very simple for people at the at the event to understand yeah um where some of the other some of the other Technologies were were significantly more sophisticated and sort of difficult for P for the people that were at the event to relate to personally um so I think that was definitely a competitive advantage in that context um so the you know the other companies presented some really interesting Technologies so you guys are you're going to be doing some interviews with them as well correct uh yeah might do a couple more interviews with the the runners up as well yeah yeah so some really really interesting stuff um I do want to say though that we're um we really so we're the so our our contribution to the energy space is is a behavioral comp is a behavioral contribution um and I think um regardless of how efficient you make various Technologies there if you don't if you don't change if if you don't figure out compelling ways of uh of incentivizing people consumers businesses is um to use responsibly and to and to consume efficiently uh um you're going to be missing out on huge huge huge chunks of efficiency that that can be gleaned in uh in the utility space in the transportation space all across the board um and and so that's and so I would just urge anybody that's listening to this podcast or or to to this uh to this interview sort of not to Discount and to really take seriously uh thinking about um the behavioral economics around all around all these new technologies uh because there there's there's a lot to be gained there and that's that's sort of what we're that's what we're going after specifically um and they're and they're fast right so if you can if you can there's it's not a it's there there's definitely development time associated with the technology that we've built and figuring out the correct incentives um to to motivate passengers to to reduce their V to reduce their vehicle miles traveled um but uh but once it Cates on it's it's incredibly effective it's incredibly easy to uh to propagate and you can see really huge uh you can see really huge Energy savings as a result yeah I mean I guess just the basic math if you double the number of people in a car you double the fuel economy for you know passenger mile traveled so pretty big impacts pretty quickly um are you usually seeing one two three how many people are are um pulling together in these yeah it's about it's between two and three uh so it's you know either either two single passengers or a single passenger and a and a and a group of two right and tell me a little bit about your yourself how did you end up at the helm of bandwagon uh it's somewhat of a convoluted story um I was initially really interested in trains uh and wanted to wanted to build some software to make trains more accessible um but then pretty quickly realized that in the United States really the the transport the transportation mode that needed addressing was the vehicle uh and so um got interested in taxis because taxis operate you know are these vehicles that operate sort of almost like public transportation systems um the Y New York City's taxi and limo Comm taxi and limousine system is effectively the seventh largest public transportation system in the United States uh in terms of um passenger in terms of Passenger volume uh so um yeah so thinking thinking about what sort of what can we do to basically increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of our road road and car networks uh and sort of the taxi space really the four high vehicle space seemed especially with driverless cars coming really see really seemed to be the space to to start thinking about the future of Road networks yeah so you mentioned driverless cars um you sort of evolution then potentially of kind of a personal rapid transit or or um you know common car sharing in the future if we can sort of hop in order these you know self-driving taxis and I'll hop in uh as we go it's an interesting vision for how this might evolve the self-driving yeah self-driving it's kind of it's kind of ancillary it's not it doesn't to me it doesn't matter too much if there's a driver in the front of the vehicle or not it's just an indication when you think about a taxi that's driven by a computer you start really understanding that how how it's a system how it really is kind of a yeah how how how you can Envision it as public transportation people don't currently see taxis as public transportation but once you take the driver out of the equation all of a sudden it becomes more reasonable to think of these vehicles as as as stand-ins as sort of this future response of public transport Network yeah it's interesting so I guess you know as we're talking about the future um you know if all this takes off where do you sort of see this in five or 10 years U you know where are you and bandwagon at after you know a fully successful launch of this thing yeah so ideally this is you know Vehicles aren't owned by people anymore right so uh nobody very few people own planes very few people own buses um we think the same should be true of cars cars should be or you know smaller smaller Vehicles should also not be owned by people um they should be parts of not should ideally eventually they're mostly displaced by these smaller vehicles um that are uh that are owned and operated by cities or private companies that provide transportation to populations instead of individuals yeah that's like an interesting vision and I think um you find a lot of alignment with the folks at uh zip car or city car share or some of the other car sharing services that are also recognizing just how often your car sits unutilized in the driveway or or the parking lot and uh you know why not put those to Greater use and and to more efficient use if you're pooling passengers the way you're envisioning yeah and taxis so by by contrast taxis already have significantly higher utilization rates uh than than private than private vehicles um so um yeah so I think I think we're just going to see more more more you know more of this more and different uh way of sort of thinking about vehicles in terms of the services they provide uh instead of um thinking about Vehicles as uh as material as a material good as an own good great well so before we wrap up is there anything else you want to add um any uh heads up to give our our listeners or our viewers yeah sign up fanwagon doio uh we're in beta please please please sign up we uh we'd love we'd love your feedback and we wna we want to get you uh we want to get you to the airport efficiently uh and inexpensively and should that that heads up mostly be for folks flying in and out of LaGuardia at this point or where should uh where should our viewers expect to to see yeah any really sort of to any of the um so our best prices are going to be to LaGuardia um but we are going to be offering rides uh to all three New York City airports so so for the time being New York City um if there is anyone else on the east or west coast uh that has some vehicles that they want to incorporate into our Network feel free to reach out to us also but we're you know initially for for signups for users uh looking for Transportation uh in the next couple of weeks New York City is our is where we're where we're offering service great well thanks David again this is Jesse Jenkins with the energy collective.com and I've been speaking to David mauda CEO of bandwagon you can check them out at as he said at bandwagon doio um and David thanks for speaking with us appreciate it thanks so much Jesse