ALUMNA PROFILE
for ROI, the MIT Sloan School alumni magazine and website

YOUR CAR OR MINE?

Robin Chase, SM ’86, enters the fast lane with Zipcar

For most city-dwellers, owning a car is often more trouble than it’s worth. Which is why, just in the past year, over 800 people in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline, Massachusetts, have joined Zipcar, brainchild of CEO Robin Chase, SM ’86, and cofounder Antje Danielson. Bucking the conventional wisdom that says Americans are wedded to car ownership, Robin and Antje began developing the car-sharing concept for greater Boston, but with a twist: They perched it atop the wave of Internet and wireless technologies. Robin calls Zipcar “the perfect web application-creating an online community to share a common resource.”

Zipcar gives its members proximity-card access to a fleet of over 40 cars stationed in reserved spots around the city. Members log on to the company’s web site to reserve a car any time of day or night, for as little or as long as they need. The service fits neatly into the niche of urban dwellers who don’t want to own a car but need access to one when public transportation, cab, or rental car won’t do.

Fueled by the Sloan connection

Robin recalls that when she showed her concept to Sloan’s Glen Urban, “He advised me to move at twice the speed I’d planned, saying, ‘This is much bigger than you realize.’” She and Antje incorporated in January 2000 and launched the service last June.

Robin received much early funding from Sloan and MIT contacts. Her very first investor was a Sloan classmate. While listening to NPR in his car, another classmate heard a feature about Zipcar. He picked up the phone, asked Robin to send him her business plan, and invested. In addition, almost 40 percent of the company’s seed round funding came from the Hub Angels, most members of which are MIT alums.

Over the past year, dozens of media outlets, such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the “Today Show,” have covered Zipcar. Membership continues to grow by 10 percent to 15 percent a month. Robin calls this early stage a “huge rollercoaster” on which the joys and anxieties of entrepreneurship coexist. The publicity is thrilling; serving intensely devoted members, gratifying. At the same time, she feels “an unbelievable responsibility to live up to the expectations of members, staff, and investors.”

Cruise control

Life was most difficult in the first few months of operation when the combination of high risk and zero margin for error became torturous. Robin thought, “This isn’t the company culture I want to build.” Now that the company is more robust and the margin for error wider, its culture has matured, reflecting Robin’s original vision in which “each individual at Zipcar has specific expertise and responsibility, but we’re still a team.”

Any discussion with an entrepreneur invariably works its way to the balance of work and personal life. Robin and her husband Roy Russell have three children aged 7, 10, and 13. Since she graduated from Sloan, Robin has tried all the work-family balancing options, from stay-at-home mom to part-time and full-time work. With each transition, she worried about timing, but today is satisfied that she picked the perfect time to start a company. Not only are the children older, but Roy also takes care of parenting duties half the time.

Reflecting on the lessons learned, Robin values the importance of being able to “describe failure” to potential entrepreneurs and “speculate with authority” when facing investors. She also discovered what happens when an idea begins to take on a life of its own: “Last summer, there were moments when I had serious second thoughts, but it was too late. I never expected there would be a point when there was no turning back.” Lucky for the 800-plus members who, thanks to Zipcar, now can grab a car almost as easily as they can buy a coffee and bagel to take along for the ride.