That investment round brought her shares down to around under 10 percent. By the time the company went public in , Chase owned around 3 percent of the company, these people said. It's unclear how many shares she sold after the offering, or how many shares were owned by other family members.
Paul Davis, a former Zipcar boardmember and early investor, said that while Chase may not have hit the jackpot with today's deal, she's done well over the years. But she's done fine. Another beneficiary is Robert Kagle, a board member of Zipcar and venture capitalist who invested in the company. Inside, Peter Aldrich, a member of Zipcar's board of directors, was waiting. Then Aldrich, standing at the door, shouted some last-minute advice. Go forth, he told Griffith, and turn this political movement into a company.
Griffith nodded and smiled, then sank into the Prius he had rented from Zipcar. Its vehicles were kept in parking lots and at gas stations. Customers--who became Zipcar members by paying an annual fee--could rent by the hour or the day and make all the arrangements online, without having to deal with rental counters and agency personnel. It had been founded, in , by two women who strongly believed in car-sharing as a way to help protect the environment, and its employees tended to be true believers as well.
When Zipcar's board first contacted Griffith two months earlier, at the beginning of , he was uncertain. Or was this something that could really go large scale? The Zipcar that had taken shape so far was a classic founder-run venture--long on passion but chronically short of cash.
She had come up with the name Zipcar and the memorable tag line "Wheels when you want them. By winter , the company had 6, renters--some of them so enthusiastic that they actually washed their cars before returning them. But Zipcar was losing money. Even after she came up with some last-minute financing, the board, composed of four outside investors and Chase , suggested that the CEO take her leave. That manager, the board decided, was Griffith.
He had stepped in at two other start-ups. And one had failed--Digital Goods, a software company that petered out in With an M. Zipcar's board found this appealing. Griffith's approach to Zipcar was systematic and highly aggressive--an approach that has generated its share of critics. The serious, mission-driven, and somewhat countercultural Zipcar created by Chase is gone.
Only one employee who worked with the founder remains; everyone else quit or was fired. Many ex-employees say Griffith is overly demanding and that Chase deserves more credit for Zipcar's success.
Still, it's hard to argue with results. Over the past five years, Griffith has transformed Zipcar from promising start-up into a real force. In November, the company acquired its largest rival, Flexcar.
How did he do it? Here is Griffith's game plan--a seven-point strategy for turning a great idea into a thriving company. Griffith's first goal was to break down Zipcar's problems into small bits. He immediately halted an expansion of the service and worked instead on getting things right in Boston, Washington, and New York.
Just getting these three cities on track would require from 18, to 24, members. Griffith began by assembling focus groups made up of people who knew of Zipcar but hadn't signed up. Consumers, he found, either perceived the service as inconvenient--the nearest car might be several blocks away--or were concerned that they couldn't depend on a nearby car being available when they needed one.
Griffith realized the company had to change the way it placed cars around town. He divided each city into zones--neighborhoods, more or less--filling one zone at a time with about a dozen cars and marketing heavily in the zone before moving to the next one. He created what he calls "pods" of Zipcars--clusters within a parking garage or lot, so if one nearby car was reserved, another one would be available.
He also assigned each zone a fleet crew, bicycle-riding guys who pedal out to handle minor problems. This was a big change for Zipcar.
In the past, the company had simply nabbed parking spots wherever it could. If a renter didn't return a car at the appointed time and someone else had a reservation, someone at the company would try to figure out where the next-closest available car was or would even drive another car over. It wasn't so much that this system wasn't working but that the process couldn't support many more new members.
The Boston overhaul, for example, began by dividing Zipcar into 12 zones. Curtin put different types of vehicles into the different zones. The zone strategy also helped Curtin figure out each neighborhood's use pattern: Harvard Square users, mostly students on a budget, tend to use Zipcars for quick errands, while Back Bay users might rent one for a weekend to drive to Cape Cod. Griffith rethought the company's approach in New York as well. Before he arrived, Zipcar had about 35 cars scattered around Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Griffith pulled most of them into one neighborhood, Manhattan's Chelsea, where the population is dense and youthful--the kind of people who often need a car for a few hours.
The New York team covered this small area with marketing, rather than getting lost in the chaos of approaching the city as a whole. This hyperlocal marketing also emphasized that, unlike other rental cars, Zipcars were in your neighborhood. Breaking down the system let Griffith first fix and then replicate what he was doing in individual neighborhoods.
Before Zipcar could handle more customers, Griffith knew, it had to have technology that could scale up without much human interaction. On the consumer end, Griffith decided he could live with the system created by Chase, her co-founder, Antje Danielson, and Roy Russell, Chase's husband and Zipcar's chief engineer.
Griffith was especially struck by how easy they had made things for renters. When it's time to reserve a car, you simply go to Zipcar. Select the car and the system alerts the vehicle that you and your RFID card will be showing up. Go to the car, wave your Zipcard in front of a reader on the window, and the car unlocks and the engine is enabled; the keys are inside.
Insurance and gas a prepaid gas card stays in the car are included. But Griffith was less satisfied with the company's back-end systems. He asked Russell to create a system that could generate better data on things like car usage rates. View job openings.
Values that fuel our mission Values that fuel our mission. Obsess about the member experience. Build a community of trust by delivering excellence in convenience, dependability, and service. Be the best we can be. Support personal growth, impact, and excellence. Deliver results. Create enduring value through growth. Keep it simple. Win through simplicity and continuous innovation. Have an impact. Change the world through urban and environmental transformation.
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Causes we support. Environmental impact Since , our mission has been to create better communities. Charity support Zipcar helps non-profits do more with affordable access to on-demand transportation. Championing diversity Providing access to transport - a key driver of economic opportunity and social equality - has always been our focus. All rights reserved.
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