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Pioneers & Protagonists

Shelby Clark, Founder of RelayRides

RelayRides aims to…
reduce dependence on traditional car ownership by making it safe and convenient for neighbors to share vehicles.

My “ah ha” moment was …
when I was forced to bike for over 2 miles through the snow to get to the closest Zipcar, while I passed hundreds of cars on the street that clearly hadn’t been driven in weeks. It occurred to me that the cars that are already in our communities are an incredibly underutilized resource, and we just needed a better way to connect among neighbors to leverage it.

I believe it is the right moment for P2P car sharing to take-off because…
the mainstream has started to accept Carsharing. We needed traditional carsharing to take off before a P2P model could succeed, so we own a great deal of gratitude to the early pioneers of Carsharing, like Dave Brook of Carshare Portland and Robin Chase of Zipcar.

The easiest way to explain RelayRides is…
that we’re eBay meets Zipcar. We make it safe and convenient for normal people to rent out their cars to their neighbors.

The biggest misperception about RelayRides is…
that car owners have a lot to lose from renting their cars out. We provide a $1M insurance policy to make things right for a car owner in the event of an accident.

Facts that show the opportunity of RelayRides are …
that there are almost as many cars in the US as people, and that the average car is driven about an hour a day. Finding a way to share those cars will lead to fewer cars on the road, less driving, and a greener environment.

The hardest decision so far…
has been where to pilot the service. We need to consider a lot of factors that normal Carsharing services think about, like population density, demographics, and competition, but have also have additional considerations, like availability of publicly accessible parking. We’ve chosen to start in Boston and will quickly learn the characteristics of markets where RelayRides works best.

The best moment so far…
was getting our first car to sign up for the service. We have done a lot of surveys and spoken to a lot of people to get a pulse on consumer perceptions of RelayRides, but in the early days we still did not have any concrete evidence that people would enroll their cars. When the first car signed up, it showed us that we were really on to something.

Archive of Pioneers & Protagonists Interviews

  10 Questions for Benita Matofska, founder of The People Who Share

  10 questions for Marta Nowinska, founder of Swapsity

  10 questions for Ryan Rzepecki, founder of SocialBicycles

  10 questions for Jamie Wong, founder of Vayable

  10 questions for Theo Kitchener, founder of The ShareHood

  10 questions for Kelly Scales, founder of Bid & Borrow

  10 questions for Campbell McKellar, Founder of Loosecubes

  10 questions for Marcio Nigro, founder of Caronetas

  10 questions for Jess Ratcliffe, founder of GaBoom

  10 questions for Philipp Rogge, founder of frents

  10 questions for Tim Hyer, founder of Rentcycle

  10 questions for Barbara Pantuso, founder of Hey, Neighbor!

  Ella T. Gorgla, Founder of I-ELLA

  Cathy Tao, co-founder of Tourboarding

  Mike Karnjanaprakorn, cofounder of Skillshare

  Juha Koponen, Founder of Netcycler

  Michelle Shearer, Founder of MamaBake

  Leah Busque, Founder and CEO of TaskRabbit

  Ron J. Williams, founder of SnapGoods

  Stephen Rapoport, founder of Crashpadder

  Anthony Eskinazi, founder of ParkatmyHouse

  Drummond Gilbert, founder of goCarShare

  David Mahfouda, Founder of Weeels

  Andreas Randow, Founder of StudioShare.org

  Emma Jamvold, Founder of SwapItBaby

  Dave Llorens, CEO of One Block Off The Grid

  Orli Cotel, co-founder of Swap for Good

  Owen Rees-Hayward, Co-founder of Thingloop

  Juliette Anich, Co-founder of The Clothing Exchange

  Keara Schwartz, Founder of Share Some Sugar

  Hans Schoenburg, co-founder of GiftFlow

  Meriel Lenfestey, Co-founder of Ecomodo

  Steve Sammartino, Founder of rentoid.com

  Micki Krimmel, Founder of NeighborGoods

  Shelby Clark, Founder of RelayRides

  James Reinhart, Founder of thredUp

For a complete archive of Pioneers & Protagonists Interviews click HERE.