Making green transport affordable and "ridiculously easy"

Startups & VC

Bike-sharing company Zagster plans national roll-out

 

Premium content from Boston Business Journal by Taryn Plumb, special to the Journal

Friday, November 16, 2012

Business Journal photo by W. Marc Bernsau

Zagster co-founder and CEO Tim Ericson says he believes the Cambridge startup's bike-sharing service has traction.

If you provide it, they will ride.
That’s the way Timothy Ericson sees it: Getting urbanites to choose bikes as a transportation option, he says, requires the simple formula of making them both inexpensive and “ridiculously easy to use” from an accessibility standpoint.
When those factors come together, said the CEO and co-founder of Cambridge-based bike-sharing company Zagster, “a lot of people who wouldn’t normally ride a bike, ride a bike.”
Zagster aims to get more people peddling by differentiating itself in the bike-sharing market. In contrast to the model of city-wide programs involving public partnerships, the company is honing in on private markets — forging relationships with hotels, property managers, schools, and businesses, to provide fleets of bikes for tenants, employees, travelers and students to use at low (or sometimes no) cost.
“We’re really focusing on places that people live, work, and visit,” said Ericson, who rides his bike to work everyday (as does his co-founder and COO, Jason Meinzer), and says he’s never owned a car.
Founded in Philadelphia in 2007 and originally known as CityRyde, the company took part in the TechStars Boston and MassChallenge startup accelerators this year.
In October, Zagster announced a $1 million funding round led by LaunchCapital of Cambridge. The funding also included participation from Detroit-based Fontinalis Partners and well-known local angel investors Jean Hammond and John Landry. The funding is being used for the company’s national rollout; Ericson said the main goals are to double its base of six employees and, by the end of 2013, to have 4,000 bikes under management around the country.
It’s an ambitious plan for growth, with the company now having around 100 bikes under management, according to Ericson. Customers include the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, three nationwide apartment complex management firms, a tech campus in North Carolina and University Park at MIT in Cambridge.
Zagster has a unique ability to scale, according to Hammond, who was also an early investor in Zipcar. The company allows small-scale, low-cost systems to fit anywhere, particularly places that large citywide systems can’t reach, she said.
It’s also a simple and flexible system to use: After becoming members on Zagster’s website, riders use texts to unlock, reserve and return the unisex commuter bikes. Often, bikes are provided free of charge by Zagster’s customers, Ericson said; otherwise, riders can reserve them for a full day, or they can sign up for monthly or annual plans (which, for example, cost $29.95 and $49.95, respectively, at University Park).
With an aim to keep the service affordable for the user, the company designed its pricing structure so that property owners cover most of the cost. The company also enables its customers to track and promote their own corporate sustainability efforts; through GPS technology, Zagster tracks distances traveled with each bike trip to determine how much greenhouse gas would have been emitted had that same trip been made by car.
Ultimately, Ericson sees a future of “intermodal” transportation in urban centers, with biking, walking, driving and public transit options creating “one mix that works really well.”
Hammond agreed, noting that adding bike- and car-sharing to the mix could create a new sort of urban existence.
“They can make it so that the urban native of the future does not need to own a lot of expensive wheels, but instead can use them when they need them,” she said. “Taken together, this is a good first step in reducing the high expense, ‘own everything just for you,’ American lifestyle.”

Original story link here.