139: Zipcar - Robin Chase & Antje Danielson - Two Moms with no business experience to starting a multi-million dollar car-sharing empire.

**Vijay Peduru** (0:02)
Hello, friends and zoomers, Vijay Keduru here and welcome to episode 139 of How They Made Their Millions from ideasu.com. Today's multi-millionaire founder story supports ZipCar founders Robin Chase and Antje Danielson, two moms with no business experience starting a multi-million dollar car-sharing empire.
My goal for this podcast for digital creative entrepreneurs like you is to provide deep soul-stirring inspiration and actionable million-dollar insights from the world's top millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs to help you succeed wildly in your business. Three things you could learn are what made them choose this business idea or other idea, how she handled the criticism that her idea would fail, how did she validate her business idea with less money. Robin Chase was a stay-at-home mom and Antje Danielson was a mom and academic researcher. They never had any prior experience starting a business, but they had deep passion to make the world a better place. They started ZipCar and even though they faced several problems and came close to shutting it down, they survived. Finally, they sold it for 500 million dollars. Let's check out their interesting story. Robin Chase was born in America, but was raised in the Middle East. Her father was an American diplomat working in the Middle East, so she spent most of her childhood in the Middle East.
She later got her MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. At the same time, across the Atlantic, Antje, who was raised in Germany, was doing something similar. However, Danielson's heart was not set on business. Instead, she studied to become a scientist. She got her Bachelor of Science degree in Germany at the Free Universität in Berlin. Her ambition also brought her to the United States, as she had a dream to become a biochemist, and she joined Harvard. After completing their degrees, both women settled down and worked in academia. Writing articles, completing fellowships, and attending conferences became the daily routine. As fulfilling as it was, both women secretly felt that they could be doing more. However, neither one was ready to branch out and take risk just yet. Instead, they got married and eventually had kids. Since their kids were of the same age, they, unknown to their mothers, attended the same kindergarten school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Occasionally, they used to bump into each other at their kids' school. During this time, Danielson was working at Harvard as a geochemist, while Chase put her career on pause to take care of her son and became a stay-at-home mom. Danielson's son, Max, and Chase's daughter, Lina, often played together on a tire swing in the nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dunna Park. Since they already met at school, at first, they just exchanged friendly small talk, and it was all tied to the children and experiences as mothers. Danielson and Chase slowly started sharing many business ideas. They bounced off each other perfectly. Chase was a business and management savvy, while Danielson understood the way the market and economy worked. They kept looking for ideas. Danielson looked for ideas somewhere familiar, academic journals. It was during her research that a study involving Switzerland's Mobility Co-operative caught her eye. The European car-sharing company was different from those already operating in the US., like FlexCar. Mobility was already a large company with 17,000 customers and over 700 vehicles. But its biggest asset was technology. The company had developed systems that allowed members to access cars without having to swap keys every time. Danielson and Chase thought the same thing could succeed in the US. After all, no other company was doing it yet, and people usually complained about having to meet up with strangers just to get the keys when they needed the car. After talking about it, the duo were convinced that this idea could work, so they started to work on a business plan. Still, the two women couldn't dedicate themselves to the business equally. Danielson was the only one in her family with a full-time and stable job. Thus, she needed to keep her job at Harvard and she could only work on the business in the evenings and on weekends. On the other hand, Chase had the freedom to tackle their idea fully as her husband was employed at that time. So she was able to work full-time on the new business and drew herself into the company. Chase began networking. Her list of whom to talk to was long and included policy makers in the cities of Boston and Cambridge, owners of parking lots, owners of land upon which parking lots sat, car manufacturers, car rental companies, the US. Environmental Protection Agency, engineers, academics, entrepreneurs and investors. She says at one time, she began to feel like a blind mole rat running in different directions. I was learning how to become an entrepreneur, she says. On her networking and learning tour, Chase heard words of criticism and doubt about the car sharing concept. It was no secret that profitability had eluded many car sharing companies in the past. The high cost of overhead cars, insurance and parking spots made it impractical. She heard that many car sharing companies had been synonymous with bathing in red ink. She studied all these failures and realized that they were not set up properly and they didn't leverage technology. Others doubted if there was a viable market. One vice president of a Somerville based car rental company told the Wall Street Journal that Chase's idea was awful. I don't think it will work. Some others said that the car rental companies would get into the car sharing business if it works and ZipCar would die. Chase was able to tune out the critics and naysayers, firmly believing there was market demand and that wireless technology would help put the concept of car sharing in the black. She was also clear that she would be able to launch a car sharing business with few employees by leveraging technology. Now they needed to raise some money. Shopping for investors was of course not an easy feat. Not many investors believed that a company run by two women with no prayer experience had any potential. However, Chase and Danielson didn't give up. They showed that potential investors how successful similar companies in Europe were and how they could be successful in America too. Many of the investors that they talked to turned them down. Finally, one angel investor, Jean Temond, was convinced and she gave Chase a $50,000 convertible loan in February 2000 That was enough to get the company off the ground and buy their first vehicle. ZipCar was incorporated in January 2000, but they started operations in June 2000 At first, they only operated with one single car. So, this first car that was their little beta car, it was a Volkswagen Beetle. She named it Betsy and all their cars later on were named also. She was paying $300 a month for it and she was paying that out of her pocket. I had decided to use a green Volkswagen Beetle because Volkswagen had just relaunched this model. It was my favorite car and I just knew we had to use that one, Chase says, of their vehicle of choice. Initially, they just had 22 members and one car for their car sharing service. The initial process for collecting the car was very simple. After arriving at Chase's house, customers would walk down the driveway to the rear of the property and on to the back porch where they would retrieve Betsy's key from under a chair cushion. To keep track of individual usage, Chase had them complete a paper form inside the car. It was a scanned operation, but one that was designed just to get the business up and running and proving itself as quickly as possible. Each member would log in to the website and make a reservation. When they were done, they would leave the key beneath the slider on the porch. Thus, the customer didn't interact with one another at all. For a while, that one car was the whole company. Chase was the CEO and Danielson the vice president. Although it was a small step, the two women were elated that the dream was finally becoming a reality.