For me and my company, Scoop, our boring, unsolvable problem is carpooling. We all know the problem of traffic is real and widespread. Every day, 100M Americans — 80% of working adults — drive alone to work. This year, they’ll spend $250 billion whilst commuting 25 minutes each way (on average). They’ll choose where to work and where to live based on their commute. They’ll even get divorced because of it.
But as we’ve discussed, carpooling is still “boring”. It’s not a new problem. It’s as old as cars, really. For most of us, when we think of carpooling we think about the annoying coordination our parents and our friends’ parents had to do to pick us up from school. We’re just sort of used to it. We’ve come to accept it.
To make matters worse, in the Valley, we act like self-driving cars will be like Santa — all we have to do is wait and then one magical day they’ll drop the present of a traffic-free commute.
But the roads are packed right now and that’s not changing soon. Consider the alternatives. Public transportation is a story of haves-and-have-nots. Just look at this chart:
Shuttles, vanpools, and buses can’t scale to the suburbs and have only worked well in dense urban environments.
That leaves one thing: carpooling. Literally putting more people in fewer cars — and without a professional driver. To-date, no one has made it work. Ever.
But with Scoop, we saw a sliver of light. Companies are starting to search for ways to help. Recruiting and retaining talent are crucial to enterprise success, and a hellish commute creates an unhappy employee. Governments are considering regulations to relieve communities overrun by traffic and congestion.
There are a lot of reasons why carpooling has failed (I’ll save the longer list for another post). But above all else — and this is at the core of it being a wonderfully boring problem — making carpooling work is all about building trust. Not fancy technology. Not sophisticated algorithms. It’s about instilling the trust that you can rely on someone else to be part of your daily routine. Trust that someone else can share the responsibility of making your life go.
The same way Stripe requires trust for payments. And Practice Fusion for medical records. And Slack for company information.
For a commuter, the influence of their co-workers, neighbors, company, the government — they’re all fundamental in building trust. So to really build a carpool network that people can rely on, you have to unite a lot of stakeholders.
That means for Scoop, Superman won’t work. We need the Avengers. We can’t just suit up and go after driving alone. It’s too big of a foe. We need the whole team.
Scoop in Palo Alto: Avengers unite!
As of last Monday, anyone in the Bay Area commuting to Palo Alto can take a Scoop ride to work for just $1. That’s it. And if you pick up a co-worker or neighbor, we’ll reimburse up to 100% of the cost of your commute, saving you upwards of $4,000/year.
And we did this through collaboration. That’s how you unlock this unsolvable problem. We make $1 rides — and carpooling — possible by rallying everyone together. Our $1 rides to Palo Alto are sponsored by the Palo Alto Transportation Management Authority (TMA), the Stanford Research Park, and participating companies.
Our launch is a massive partnership between Scoop and:
- Local government: Palo Alto TMA, the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce and city government
- Bay Area government: 511 Rideshare (of which Scoop is one of the official partners)
- Companies & business parks: Stanford Research Park and its hundreds of small companies, plus larger partners like Tesla and HP
- Commuters: Hundreds of Bay Area commuters who have been signed up for months and are helping spreading the word
- Tech Partners: Ride Amigos, the technology provider behind SRPGo.com and our integration partner
The solution for this “boring” problem is pretty different than the stories we’re used to reading about in TechCrunch. It seems the majority of entrepreneurs have a “disruption-first” view of the world. We’re used to on-demand businesses that subsidize to outcompete or undercut on price. That’s not our world. This problem needs to be attacked with multiple super powers. And that’s exactly what we’re doing with our awesome partners in Palo Alto.
What I learned from Nick Fury
Leaving Google is risky. You’re saying goodbye to solid pay and even better snacks. In all seriousness, the stakes are high and the expectations are even higher. And when you start a company, it’s easy to get caught up in the bravado of it all.
But there are a lot of valuable lessons I’ve learned from starting a collaboration-first, “boring” company. Here are the top three:
- “Boring” problems can have the most passionate supporters. Purpose-driven companies are often dealing with problems that the majority of people would call “boring.” But there are incredibly passionate, dedicated people who understand that boring doesn’t mean unimportant. And they’ll work tirelessly to make things better.
- Uniting can be a lot more fun than competing. Taking down the competition can be a motivator, but nothing is more rewarding than bringing people together to solve a common problem.
- Collaboration problems help startups optimize for cross-functionality. We face unique challenges that require balanced contributions from technical and non-technical parts of a company — and that pays real dividends. Some startups can get away with over-indexing on technology (for a while). Collaborative problems don’t allow for that.
Whether Scoop is the superhero that saves the world from traffic or not, I hope our mission inspires entrepreneurs — and VCs — to take a second look at problems that they may have been overlooked in the past. Student lending. Health insurance. Low-income education. There are no shortage of challenges where collaboration, not disruption, could be the key to success. Problems with multiple stakeholders where your technology can be the glue that brings them all together. Problems you should be proud to say you’re solving.
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Jon Sadow is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Scoop, the fully-automated carpooling solution for your daily commute. Prior to founding Scoop, Jon spent 5 years at Google in both Product Management and Business Development. Jon is a graduate of the George Washington University in Washington DC, and now lives in San Francisco with his wife, Michelle, and their dog — and Scoop mascot — Kugel.
