Business as Usual: Gridwise

Transcription: 

So good afternoon, everyone. This is Audrey Russo, President and CEO, the Pittsburgh tech Council. And today is another great day of business. As usual, I'm thrilled to be here, I'm joined by Jonathan kersting. He's vice president of all things, media, and marketing and even got dressed up for today's guest. So you can see he is wearing a tie is that a locally made bow tie? Jonathan,

of course, I wear nothing. I'm exclusively wearing not slanted bow ties, of course.

Very, very cool. You're looking really good. So I'm gonna say that. So Jonathan, will be here. And we'll have plenty of opportunity to ask our guests questions, we're going to be using the chat, we're going to mute you. So making sure that we don't hear anything in the background. And we will jump in a moment by introducing Ryan green. So I do want to thank Huntington bank, they've been amazing, amazing partners, just they have been providing incredible support to the business ecosystem, particularly through the pandemic, but even beyond. So if you're looking for any kind of help, in terms of banking needs, reach out to Huntington bank, they're amazing team, and they've been great supporters of the tech Council and the tech community. So today, we now like to say every day thanks to Brian Kennedy, who really serves as our executive producer, he reminds me that today is number 147. Business as usual, for those of you that might not know, our vision, was doing it for two weeks back at the onset of COVID.

Maybe three,

and, but the thought we have an action packed schedule for the next couple of weeks. And it is beautiful out here in Pittsburgh today, like a summer day. But appreciate all of you spending the time with us at lunch and just joining a little bit of a bite sized opportunity by hanging out with some incredible people in our region. So I'm going to jump in, we're hosting Ryan green, he is the CEO and co founder of a company called grid wise. And Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. We are going to just jump in, we're going to start a conversation and say, okay, who is Ryan green? Who is Ryan green? The man? Why did you start this company? What is grid wise? So let's start there.

Great. Great. Yeah. So I'll touch on, I'll get into a little bit about myself and can jump into the path that led me led me to grid wise. So currently, currently living in Pittsburgh, PA I'm not originally from there, I would say that I've taken a fairly non traditional route to get to where, where I am. It being in Pennsylvania now it's actually the 12th state that I've lived in, been all over the US graduated, ended up going to the Naval Academy for my undergrad and study economics and Chinese there. I played football as well. And, and I would say that I really through leading up to that point, as I look back at kind of this non traditional route is back towards even sixth grade is really where I started to experience my had my first entrepreneurial venture and had some sort of informal, side hustle venture. That was all legal. Up until that point of the Naval Academy where I actually started my first company in the financial services space, leading into my second my junior year there. Going into as I graduated, I continued to run this company in parallel of being active duty military. And really just I would say running that company ignited the entrepreneurial flame for me and just understanding how to stand up a business and operated generate revenue, hire people, things of that sort, while balancing the military. As I ended up.

During my military time, I ended up getting out after I got during before I got out the military. I actually had some experience driving on the side which this will be relevant in our discussions driving for Uber and Lyft as it was this new concept that had just come to our city and I was unlike the early adopter of every technology put it in front of me I'm probably going to try it. And I have been a still am an active driver as well. And as I got out of the military, I ended up moving to Pittsburgh to take a job in trading at doing currency trading at PNC. And after a little bit of time. At PNC I had left to start grid wise. So really what led me to start grip wise was that it really came down to that initial perspective I had from from driving myself. I drove I took a few rides as a passenger who After I sign up to drive, and very soon after I started driving, I started to experience the pain points that these workers go through on a daily basis. And it really, what I started to understand is it really came down to the key pain points related to fragmentation, and inaccessibility of, of data, key information that they need to make decisions, operational decisions on the road of when and where they should be driving based off what's happening in the city real time. What's happening ahead of time as well. And also just retrospectively, it's just okay, I did all these things as I was out on the road, but like, how, how did I perform like, what, what is my performance? And what are my What are analytics related to my driving that I can use to help inform my strategy moving forward, the big challenges these workers face is that over 70% of them are driving for at least two services, or more. And so they're constantly switching these apps on and off as they're out on the road. And as they're doing so they are their performance. And their activity is completely fragmented across the services. So that perspective led led me to really endeavor into starting grid wise and I, through that path, I came into Pittsburgh saw that there was this great ecosystem here for technology ended up being my co founder, who's the CTO of the company, who be the person who became the CTO and the co founder of the company, Brian Fenimore. And we we applied to an accelerator here in Pittsburgh and got it off the ground. And really, one thing I'll add to that, and I'll talk a little bit more about, like, where grid wise is now and what our focus is, but really, as soon after we started started grid wise, we went to we started to really entrench ourselves within the mobility industry in the mobility ecosystem. And we started to see that, okay, well, we, we've, we've come into, we've come into this really focus on empowering workers, this new wave of workforce called gig workers, and which was intrinsic, very intrinsically rewarding, and will continue to be. But in parallel, we also saw that there was an opportunity for us to leverage our platform, leverage our application to build a platform, more of a mobility platform that could empower other stakeholders, who are also facing similar challenges that the drivers are but just focused on different use cases. So that really came down to like tangentially extrapolating out the the fragmentation and accessibility of data and seeing how that applies to cities and Departments of Transportation and other mobility service providers, fleets, and shuttles and, and others out there. But also those who interface with mobility such as retail, or commercial real estate firms, really to all of them new, these new mobility services and the movement of people and goods across them. This is like a black box. Nobody understands how they're impacting our cities, how they're how people in goods are moving. And so really what since the earliest stages of our company, we've focused on building a platform and which leads us to where we are now building a platform that is focused on empowering these various stakeholders through analytics. And we offer this app to empower workers to help them be more operationally savvy and make more money. And then use the application to help us understand the supply and demand across all the major service providers aggregate, anonymize this shared mobility data, and provide access and license out the analytics, the anonymized analytics to the stakeholders to help them actually make changes in the world that are hopefully improving the way that people and goods move in cities. So really, that's our focus as a company is really improving the way that people and goods move in cities. Today, we've raised $5.6 million in venture capital, we have about 16 people on the team that are full time and are operating. We were operating in 41 different cities in the country, we just as of last week, just expanded nationwide, across the entire US are really excited about that, and are continuing to really grow our our presence as a mobility platform.

So let's let's wheel back, let's just reel back a little bit. You're You're a trader at PNC, and I mean, I'm not letting you off the hook here. So you're a trader at PMC. And you decide that you're going to drive some Uber right you know, do a little bit of gig work on the side. When do you say I'm done being trader I'm just gonna throw myself right in to being a company, you know, or starting a company and then what what's going on in your head? Like what was happening? Yeah,

it really came I think coming into the position, I knew that I wasn't going to make a career at PNC or that wasn't really my, my goal, I saw it as a great opportunity, a great experience and a chance to learn a lot there. But coming into that, as I had a list of about 20 different ideas for what my next venture would be, after I ended up shutting down my last company and failed, through many reasons and numerous mistakes that we made, and the fact that all my partners were around the world on ships and planes, and both sets made it operationally dysfunctional. But really, so I came in, and I had like a top three, but a little bit into starting my job. And I was just kind of working through validating, I was like I, but my goal was by year three, to have something fully validated, fully baked, and to be able to jump into that full time, that was my goal. And the valid, grid wise, the concept of grid wise ended up coming up to the top because I was I was an active driver, but I was also taking rides with Uber and Lyft. And drivers and hearing and interviewing them and hearing them complain about their pain points of what they were experiencing. And then I ran a series of experience experiments to really prove out what I thought what the concept of grid wise could be after hearing more and more feedback over time. And, and so it really, it went from that three year goal to I think within about four or five months, I had the concept of grid was really like, proved down, I saw that it was really on to something here. And the pace of that it just accelerated. And I was like well, there is an opportunity to really, either I jump into this now or I don't do it at all, and I miss out on on this wave. And so I decided to, to really take this wave and, and within a after a year of being at banking, I positioned everything and received initial funding from the startup accelerator called alpha lab here in Pittsburgh, to allow myself to in my partner to jump full time into this after about a year of being in Pittsburgh.

So you But yeah, I mean, so no one's gonna hold you down. That's what we're hearing. So you're a ton of ideas, a ton of ideas and analytical mind, and you want to get, you know, get stuff done. So what about COVID? What happened during COVID? I mean, I, we were talking earlier, I was an avid, you know, user of Uber actually thinking about, I probably don't even need my vehicle anymore. And now I don't move around. Right. And then on top of that, as Jonathan mentioned, there's a whole shift of what's happening in places like Uber in terms of employees versus gig workers. Can you shed some light on some of that stuff for for us?

Yeah, so really is as soon as

we reached was it around mid March, when COVID became fairly, fairly prominent, and establishment started closing down our coffee, to some extent, is a, that drastically had an impact on on rideshare on the rideshare market, you know, right? Uber and Lyft. Were, I think, called trip volumes decreased by about 80%. Pretty quickly after that. So for us, it was we saw a, we saw that impact. And we could see we're almost like, you know, we had direct visibility into that. And our platform was very focused on the rideshare space, more so than delivery. And, and so what we did is we had delivery, the features built into our roadmap that were to provide value to delivery drivers that were a little farther down the road, we took that as soon as this happened. We we audited the roadmap reassessed everything and just said, let's move all that delivery utility to the front and support the delivery segment, much sooner than as soon as possible. And so that's what we did, the team executed really well on that is within, I would say two weeks of everything. After mid March, going into April, as we had features rolled out for the delivery functionality supporting Jonathan, you were mentioning earlier, all the different services we're supporting and went from a key set of rideshare services to supporting drivers for driving for food delivery, food, grocery and parcel delivery services like Postmates, doordash, instacart, amazon flex, and so many more. So that doing that really positioned us well. As we saw it, we took a hit on user growth and revenue initially. But then in the mid summer, we're able to turn turn things around from a growth perspective and actually see month over month growth and in our user base over the past couple of months because of that shift that we made there. So that is from a from a product and platform perspective. That was really a big that was really the the approach that we took there and we're continue Doing too, as we build as we're doing, launching. So some of the most pivotal features and impactful features for drivers that that we've ever launched before is that everything is really encompassing of now both rideshare and delivery utility to today's workers.

So, essentially, it's the data that makes your company have have the most value. And we hear that a lot from startups. But my head is spinning, because I'm thinking of so many different ways that your data can be useful and valuable, not just

to the to the gig workers.

So are you thinking about all that as well? Are people coming and talking to you about that as well? Or am I just stepping in some stuff that you don't want me to step in?

Oh, I think you're right on track there, Andres. It's definitely a direction we're heading. And when I, when I mentioned, being able to empower these other stakeholders within the mobility ecosystem, and interfacing with mobility, it's really come down to the you know, what can we do to build, build an analytics component of our business to to empower these stakeholders and, and so really, where the value of our platform for both the workers and these other enterprise stakeholders is that grid wise is a service agnostic platform, we are supporting drivers across not just Uber, but across all 15 plus different services and the ecosystem. And when you think of from a data perspective, what we have insight into is, is in the most comprehensive picture of people in goods movement across this entire industry, right? Uber has mountains of data not to discredit the data, they would they have or possess regenerate at all. But really grid wises we have a view into the entire ecosystem, and all this supply and demand trends and movement. So as we see that, you know, we can speak to how rideshare is, is doing and being a leading indicator of those trends of what's happening, because we can see delivery services may be starting to change, have some changing dynamics, while rideshares having a change in their trends as well. And so really is for us, we are we'll have some announcements here soon related to the analytics component of what we're going to be standing up here within this this quarter, actually, and some of the entities or partners that we're going to be working with related to that.

So my suspicion was right, then there there are other applications for the kind of data. Can you give us some examples? If I'm, if Jonathan and I are Uber drivers, or Lyft, drivers tell us the kind of date the kind of data give us a sample?

Yeah, yes, a sample of the taste of the data here is really as you come in to the application as a, as a driver. you're presented with an data and information that's helping you from the start, either plan ahead and answer questions such as like, you know, should I drive today? Should I drive in the next hour? Is it worth my time to drive or when should I be driving this week. And what you're going to see there is information related to there's the right, more of the rideshare utilities been around airport traffic trends. So you can see over the next 24 hours, what the passenger demand is going to look like for departures and arrivals at the airport, you're going to be able to see what the supply is at the airport in real time to say like, Hey, here's how many Uber drivers are at the airport or so many Lyft drivers are there. Here's how many z trip drivers are there. And, and then also, there's event information and event calendars and things of that sort. So there's data related to events airport, and whether there's been a big driver of demand indications of demand for the rideshare drivers. And what we're putting out now is actually more geospatial features. That is supporting the delivery drivers as well as helping them understand is where basically based off of this time of day, and this day of week, driving for a food delivery service, where tends to be the places where people may see the longest trips or where people see the most earnings generated at this time or where there seems to be the most oversaturation and supply and then maybe more opportunity in other areas based off the balance of supply and demand. And so those are features that are also in data that's also encompassing of both the delivery and the rideshare side of things. When you get into the tracking components. As I mentioned, drivers turning their apps on and off and everything about their earnings tracking and analytics related to their driving is as if apps are turning on and off. gridway stays on. We're able to Capture now be able to capture their, the location that they the might their mileage, track their mileage for them, help them understand where they traveled that what what areas they spent the most time in and see kind of really the the entire path that they took as a driver, but also the in parallel, be able to track all their trips, their earnings across all the services are driving for. So when you mesh all that information up together, you now are able to see drivers are able to see something they can't see on Lyft, they can't see on Uber, they can't see these other services around what their dollars per hours or their dollars per mile, their their dollars per trip their trips per mile, like so many stats related to their driving, and also be able to compare that to the market that they're driving in. So they'll say, hey, my dollars per hour, it looks to be you know, $19 per hour today, how did that compare to the rest of drivers in Pittsburgh are the rest of drivers in LA. And that's a pretty powerful feature that helped them kind of benchmark themselves and understand where they kind of stand in the pack and what they can do to what's what they can continue to do this working or what they are. Maybe it helps them identify gaps in their their strategy to help them improve them.

How close are you to the drivers? Like the gig workers? Where's that in terms of your world? And how you manage all this?

Yeah, I would say in terms of our just to clarify, the question is in terms of like our relationship with them in terms of how we interface with them,

how you have done your your computer interface, how you've collected the data?

Yeah, I would say is we have a, we have a great relationship with with drivers. As you can imagine any, anyone that's helping, really working day in and day out to put more more dollars back into their pockets, is really going to be favorable to them. And, and so I would say for us as we've we've really grown and positioned our position now and industry is the the number one companion app for these workers. And we are the advocate that is empowering them that's helping them not only see data and information that's in the app, but we also have a just immense amount of resources. And from our content that we produce on a weekly basis, we're putting out a blog post to help them understand how things are changing in the industry and what they can do to like what this means for them if COVID-19 as COVID-19 became prominent is being able to there's so many resources that were out there. And what our focus was a big focus for us as well was translating that to the relevant to what's relevant for those workers and decipher what's what's opportune for them out there in a way and what they can utilize as gig workers as well. So we are really around the clock working to be a resource for them in a multitude of ways, whether it's related to helping them out on the road be more efficient and profitable, or helping them really just understand the changes in the industry and how that's impacting over time.

So with all this data that you have, and all this access, knowing everything that's happened with our economy and COVID and etc, you have a real pulse on things. Where do you think we're headed now for the next, let's just say next four months?

Yeah, I would say for the next, what's been interesting to see is, over the past three months, we've actually seen a continued uptick and ride share activity. And where that started at is at airports. And so when we look at, typically what you'll see is airports are going to be a leading indicator of inner city activity or urban activity. And so you'll see, as we started to see more trips, we've started to see more and more trips occurring and more and more drivers visiting and hanging out the airport to pick up people there. And that's that's, that's continued to grow. I and I would say that over the next four, four months is really going to be as much of a leading indicator we can be for the industry and what's happening. We there may be, I think what's even going to lead before that is really what happens to the COVID trends. And so if we do see, if we do see that things are maintained and under control over the next few months, and I would I would, I would say that rideshares would start to see a pretty strong, much stronger rebound. But if we start to see a as many are predicting a higher level of spikes through the winter, then we'll probably see it persisted, persisted trend will receive this stagnant, stagnant activity on the rideshare side and continued growth on the delivery front as probably even more people are going to go grocery shopping less and go out to restaurants, less as well during the winter. So however is in the next let's say two six to eight months is, I would see as it as we start to get back to warmer weather, what we expect to see is when there's going to be at some point when we get to this move towards more this new normal is there's going to be such a, as people start to, as doors open back up and people start to go to restaurants and people start to go to grocery stores is there's going to be a, a, quite a decrease in demand on the the delivery from across all delivery, delivery mode, modes of delivery, and an oversaturation of supply of gig workers who are working for those services. And so what a lot of that, I think, as soon as we start to see that happen, you're going to see a very rapid growth, uptick in in the rideshare front, because you're going to have a lot of those gig workers who have seen the benefit, like have really said, like, hey, I'd love the flexibility of working for these types of services, I want to maintain this type of a maintain my ability to to work for these services, whether part time or full time, allowing them are going to switch over to ride shares as quick as possible. As rideshare starts to, as we see, things start to open back up. So that's going to be an interesting seismic shift in the industry. And I think would happen fairly quickly, as we start to see things open back up over time.

So as as we think about this shift that you made from from working at PNC trading, and then in making this jump, what what would you say that is the big takeaway to that you know, yourself that you're an entrepreneur, and that the rest of us can say or indicators when we know we're an entrepreneur? Hmm.

Yeah, I would say is, I think it was, it was that Mike's barons through in hindsight, and looking back, as I mentioned, since sixth, sixth sixth grade of, of always having, I can't remember a time where I didn't have some kind of like side venture going on. And so I would say that it's, I've always been extremely curious to in as I identify problems in the world is I if, if there's not a solution for that you can find and it's trying to figure out a way to solve a problem or to fill a gap when you see a need from from people. And that's always been a trader behavior that I've I've had, what I would say is like, the transition from from PNC to grid wise, and leading up to that, is, I think some of the traits that I started to become more aware of, during my time working there is that I really, I really embodied or really cherished variability in my schedule, and the way I work and, but also variability and chaos. And I think that's like part of that came from, if I think about my time in the military, or even at the Naval Academy, it was like it was a very chaotic for years. And I think is like, I think it just really it was instilled into me and I, I start to get into kind of the same hours each day and the same set of tasks that I was having to do there. It just didn't really, really work with the kind of the way that my I'm structuring the My mind is my mind works. And so I think is having that autonomy and having the ability to say it put me out by myself. And if I if I have ownership over what I can do, I can make something happen. And that was really my mindset. And what was a big driver of me going into starting GroupWise when I when I did and not staying any longer at that position.

So it's so fascinating. As we wrap up, you think of someone who's been in the military is spent time at the Naval Academy, a lot of structure, even though there's chaos, a lot of hierarchy. And yet, you Ryan green, the man exhibit the opposite of that by building up. Which is cool, it's cool, you know, yourself, you know, that you can't, you can't have, you know, anything boring, anything too repetitive. And that's cool. And I think that if our listeners, you know, should take away from that is pay attention to that in ourselves. Because we're trying to, you know, listen to the things that you tell yourself for how you act. And I think that's what you've been able to do. Ryan, you've been pretty clear and knowing yourself. So Are you hiring? Are you hiring?

Not at the moment. We just were filling one. One, we just filled one position that we were hiring for and at least for the foreseeable future, we're, we're not going to for the next few months, at least we're not going to be hiring. But as we do, we Be sure to to let him know No,

that's great and then what what's one thing like tell us something? What's your favorite food to eat in Pittsburgh? that surprised you?

Favorite

food to eat in Pittsburgh? Yes, surprise me. Hmm. I have a I've have some like go to spots. I don't Oh, you know what? scratch that I have a place. It's a

it's a salines market and grill. Oh,

it's hands down my favorite place. I I think we built a culture of grid wise that involves us eating from there at least twice a week. If I ate the one thing I'll say about slings marketing grill, and I don't, I'm not a brand ambassador of them or have any referral codes but I promote them quite a bit is if you do go there and you go to their, to their grill and the the restaurant portion of the market, is you have to try the ground chicken burger. Something you'll never think to order at a Middle Eastern Market. And something you've probably never heard of any like there's no place that just serves ground chicken burgers, but it is every person I've ever turned on to it. It is there. It is one of the there. I don't eat burgers anywhere else. That's the only place I eat burgers and a lot of people ordered them after they've had for the first time.

Okay, well, you heard it here. You heard it from

Jonathan was a little quiet today. But look how awesome he looks today wearing that not slam tie all decked up. Guess he moderated a panel at think 30. And so as a result, he got dressed up for the occasion. Go to grid wise, check them out, watch them, because I think there's going to be some things that we'll see from them in the next six months to a year at least. And even leaked out that there might be some info or some release of some other interesting intersections in the next month or so. So thank you, Ryan green. Thank you for spending time with us today and sharing your story. Jonathan, what do we have

up for the rest of this week?

Yeah, Carnegie Mellon stopping by tomorrow to talk about the COVID project going on there. So that should be

Oh, that's cool.

Great. And then I know we have a we have a packed week next week as well. So I want to thank everyone for joining us check out grid wise, and stay safe and enjoy the amazing day to day.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai