YouSaid · the spoken record

Sunil Paul

lines on the record: 110
first: 2018-08-06
most recent: 2018-08-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Either a big company or a little company. So, you know, there's a press today that rumors that scoot small company based in San Francisco that. He's done electric mopeds, hasn't raised very much money. Might get a permit in San Francisco.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they are all calling the representatives, what's going on with this thing? So politically very different thing. And then finally,”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're going to do part two, just so you know. Is regulation. So regulation changes the game tremendously. In the ride sharing wars, we created this gray area that allowed us to go out and deploy rapidly, and cities had a hard time kind of dealing with it. There's no gray area for scooters. You're using the public sidewalk and fundamentally people much more pissed off at you because. With a ride sharing world, who's pissed off? Taxi drivers. Okay, that's a problem, but politically not such a big problem. Scooters who's pissed off you, every pedestrian that walks downtown.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, for all those reasons, and by the way, there's one thing I didn't get into in the piece just because I didn't want to make it.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the back of your car, charge them at night. Next morning, you want to go give rides. Well, where do the scooters need to be? They need to be where people are. Wanting rights. Where do you need to be? You need to be where people need to get a ride.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so they use these things called chargers. They're people. That will go pick up the scooters, charge them overnight, and then redeploy them where they're needed. And they get paid per scooter to do this. How hard is it to get someone who's got a beater of a car or can walk? Go pick these things up, it's much easier to get those people than it is to get someone who's got a late model car. A clean driving record, no felonies, et Ride sharing person is much harder to get. And these companies are recruiting hundreds a day. So to get a small fraction of them to go also be chargers is not going to be that hard. And then finally, there's a tremendous synergy between the two. Imagine you're an Uber driver, you're done with your evening. Go, you pick up some scooters”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or take 10 rides and get it for free Whatever Because customer acquisition is so cheap. That's like a strategic value for ride-sharing companies to acquire customers. Then what about the logistics side? People say, well, look, logistics is so complicated, so different than the ride-sharing world. That's going to be a big barrier. Yeah, I mean, if you read some of the articles by investors and advocates of scooters, that's one of the cases they make. And I just don't buy that either because.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To me, that says, and by the way, this is not based on any kind of insider information. This is just based on logic. They're going to offer scooter rides either for free or very, very cheap, like as some sort of package.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they're paying 10, 30 bucks to acquire a customer. So if they could acquire a customer for free or close to free, and they use their hugely attractive.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“16% off. Uber just offered me so many coupons today when I was driving. I also found out the profile of my driver, which I was wildly uninterested in, but there it was. But go ahead. I'm not a very friendly person, but go ahead.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly People are going to be motivated by what's nearby and what's convenient for them to actually purchase. If it's in the app and it's close by. Going to be a no brainer. But I think the other interesting thing is that because customer acquisition is so cheap, it actually is very attractive for the ride-sharing companies. Customer acquisition for ride-sharing companies is fairly expensive, right? I mean, basically these promotions of 16% off. Uber just offered.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Old school company that doesn't know how to innovate. You're talking about two companies that have been able to innovate a lot in the past. And the two barriers people talk about, one is, oh, well, customer acquisition is so cheap and so fast. The economics of this business are great. And as a result, you can build raise a lot of money and land grab, et cetera, et cetera. Attractive economics are not a barrier to entry. Attractive economics are exactly opposite. Right, several times.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a lot of enthusiasm, euphoria around this category, and I think it's unwarranted, not just, I don't think it's like one of the biggest valuation bubbles I've ever seen. And it's because of this dynamic that I see that there is no fundamental barrier. And you've got competitors that will be able to enter the category very easily. Not like it's not like you're competing against some big...”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, both these companies called Bird and a company called Lime have both raised money. They've both raised hundreds of millions of dollars at Byrd, I think, is valued. I forgot the exact number, over a billion. I think it's $2 or $3 billion. And Lime, I don't think they disclose their valuation, but they raised, I want to say $300 something million dollars. A lot. And especially bird, I mean, these companies, some of them have been around for a while, but Bird in particular is a company that is, I believe, less than a year old.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two side of market. I mean, in some ways of any market, but in particular the mobility world has two-sided markets. You have to have supply. You have to have a driver or you have to have a scooter or you have to have a car available at the time when someone needs it. And you need to have the demand. You need to have people opening up your app. Looking for a way to get from A to B. And I think the fundamental difference with what's going on today is Uber in particular, but Uber and Lyft together both have a tremendous amount of demand side. In other words, there's a lot of people opening up their app. They're looking for a way to get from A to B. And that is, it's way easier to add supply than it is to add demand. Now, one of the points that defenders of the scooter valuations and scooter companies will say is, well,”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I basically said this is going to be a financial bloodbath because of sort of the fundamentals of a two-sided market.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've never looked specifically at the scooter category. I've looked a long time ago at bike sharing. And that was back still CO sidecar at the time.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spring Ventures is, I've been investing out of that as like a platform for my own investments For a long time now I mean, what have I been doing since then? To be honest, I've mostly been enjoying myself. Good, being able to comment on things.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or download the app. Once again, that's transferwise.com podcast. It's the wise way to send money. Here it was Senil Paul. He's the founding partner of Spring Ventures, and he's just recounted his long entrepreneurial history, including his foray into the ride-sharing business, which did not work out. And then you started, what did you start doing after? You did spring ventures or did you...”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at the same time, I have to say, one of the things that was really fun, despite all the pain, was team. I mean, you hear it from a lot of CEOs and leaders, but it really is true It was, I have to say, in a way that was different than previous efforts. And maybe because it was so hard. I really like the team really had to show their medal. And that was interesting. It was tough It was good”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, during it. Not just after, it's really tough. You know, especially as someone who'd been successful several times before, it's a little humiliating. Like, damn it, why can't we get this moment for us”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Halo focused primarily on taxis in New York. There's still New York's a big enough market. There's still other competitors.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. But they made those two. Yeah, thanks. You're a long time entrepreneur, but you were there, it was the three of you at the time. And there were some European ones. Halo and things like that.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never really understood it, to be honest. Right, right. But they made those chairs. I beat my head against the wall. Yeah.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These innovations, but it wasn't quite enough, and there was, yeah, we got run over. We ended up selling assets to General Motors in the end.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So all that happened, we weren't able to raise as much money. We tried to innovate our way out of not having as much money. And ultimately, we try and tell you back and forth about what we did. But a lot of the things we did are now deployed by Uber and Lyft. The interface and the experience that you have today of putting in the destination, getting a price up front, all of that is sharing your location with others. All those are things that we did first.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think the biggest why not is quickly being copied by a competitor that had a huge visibility advantage of the big mustache. And second, Being copied by Uber, which was willing to be super, super aggressive. In the way they competed, not just throwing a ton of money at it, but using what at minimum were unethical. Methods, and it remains to be seen whether or not they're illegal.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Uber black car service, I think, was created in. 10 So we launched our ride sharing service in the beginning of 12, I think it was February of 12. And it was very quickly copied by Lyft and then by Uber. And, you know, the big insight was simply. Anybody can give a ride and that that should be legal. And we figured out a way to get past the black and white laws that had been passed. To keep that kind of thing from happening to protect the text.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Another important concept was that the definition of profit was not per mile. It wasn't if I drive a mile and I get paid a dollar, I made a profit, it was more like, oh, well, I own this car and I have to depreciate over the course of a year. If I make some money, as long as I'm not making a huge amount of money, that's not a for-profit. So, I mean, these are kind of Tiny things, but they influenced ultimately the creation of ride sharing. Because ride sharing, so we created sidecar. In 2012 created in 11.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that was peer-to-peer car sharing, and that helped launch that whole thing. A couple of important concepts. One concept was just this idea that you could take your car and make money with it.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, what would you do? I'll get a law that says that the insurance company can't cancel your insurance. So ultimately that's what we did. We put forward legislation. It was passed. Schwarzenegger signed its law. It was the first peer-to-peer car sharing law.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And kind of along the way, kept thinking about innovations around mobility. And one of the ideas was, well, instead of having to own the fleet, why not just allow someone else to loan you their car and you get paid for it? So that led to the summer, I think it was 2009, Singularity University, Sam and Jesco were students of mine. Helped incubate what became get around. And one of the things that was a key obstacle there was insurance. I mean, if you think about most I guess most people don't know this, but your insurance policy will typically say that you can't use your car for Commercial purpose for hire. And the insurance company can kill your insurance. So I was trying to figure out a solution to this. I went to a member of the assembly in California and told him about this problem. He's like, well, one of you.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I had this initial idea inspiration, worked on it, filed a patent, and then kind of put it on a shelf for a long time. In the meantime, I met the founders of CityCarshare. Just because I was interested in transportation, I helped them get launched. They were kind of the first nonprofit. Car sharing organization in the U.S. was on their board for several years.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You really needed that combination of mapping. Mapping, GPS. An open platform where you didn't have to go beg, sprint, or another carrier to put you on their deck, as it was called.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we didn't decide to make it. I mean, this was the era of 99 cent gasoline. The consumer good demand wasn't really there. It was pre 9 11, pre climate change being a big concern.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And waiting for my wife at the time to pick me up and was waiting looking at my flip phone. And it occurred to me that there's got to be somebody else that's going the same direction I am. And the big problem was there just wasn't a way to coordinate. Information so that I could take a ride with that person instead of my wife having to come and pick me up. So that was the inspiration. I actually tried to create a company in 1999 around that idea. and ultimately decided not to because I didn't think”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About car sharing. Yeah. Well, honestly, well, first of all, as a kid, I was always fascinated by cars. I came to the US when I was four years old. And my mom tells me that was like the thing that I Commented on about What's so strange about this country is there's a lot of cars. But actually, in the time period between freeloader and bright mail, I kind of had the initial inspiration in 1997. I was outside a mission cliffs, you know, down in climbing.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People weren't thinking of it when you did this. I remember when you came to me, I remember where we were in some dumb ballroom. Was it maybe what a South by Southwest? And I was like, huh? And you were the first person who talked to me about car sharing.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, sidecar after many years. You know, in the meantime, I took some time off Invested, I did a bunch of clean tech stuff. I taught at the first year of Singularity University and helped incubate get around The peer-to-peer carcinogen com”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so it was a big sale. Yeah, that was a big sale. That was six years of profitability, filed an S1, ready to go public. Right.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I was convinced back then and am still convinced that email, it's like this fundamental backbone of communication. And I mean, now it's maybe common wisdom that we're always falling back on email. But I think there have been many times when people have thought, well, maybe it won't be. The foundational Medium because whatever. We're going to end up using instant messaging. We're going to end up using Snapchat, whatever, some other new medium. And I think I think it's kind of like the Kevin Kelly idea about. Technology never dies. I think in this communication world once you've established a big network, that network effect, it's really hard to screw it up. Right.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His fam was a big problem. I started it. I frankly started with an expectation that this would be a kind of small initial opportunity because ISPs were having a problem, but corporations weren't. The idea that eventually we'd be able to go build it into something bigger once we had a foothold inside the ecosystem.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Force and Natasha have been hanging out there for two years, and they're like, guess what? We have Boris and Natasha anyway. I'm sorry. I'm really irritated with them right now. So getting back. So email was a problem. It was a really big.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And spam went from being a minor little annoyance to somewhere like 50, 80% of email traffic. And we needed a solution. There were a lot of people talking about having significant government intervention in order to basically imposing all kind of content rules. I didn't want that. I thought if the government gets in the business of regulating content.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, understand. Yeah, Brightmill. I mean, basically, if you go back to the late 1990s, there was literally a conversation about we might not be able to use email in just a few years because spam was so bad”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Structure to deal where if they shut it down, we'd get fully paid out. Which that's not that a good lawyer will make sure you get that term in there. Yeah, so both of us were out of a job. We went and started thinking about new things. I actually, out of that, I created Brightmail. Which is the first commercial anti spam company. Mark created what became Support Soft. Which is this software to basically enable support services. Right. And then try.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you Well, we started and we sold it, and then we moved it to San Francisco, and the acquiring company shut it down. Months after, within a year, after we moved to San Francisco”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remembering the highway, so we were purchased by a public company called Individual that later got bought by someone else. But yeah, part of the acquisition deal was we want to move the company out to San Francisco. That was when Mark and I first met. At the end of the conversation, we were like, you know, we really should go do this in San Francisco. But the urgency of There's all this stuff happening. We need to get this product out there. Here's the developers, they're already in town. All those reasons we started the company in Washington, D.C., but had the ambition to move it out to San Francisco eventually. So after the acquisition, we moved, I don't know, 30, 40 people out here. It was the mid-1990s and South America was still kind of a only a few tech companies here or there. It was kind of unusual to be in San Francisco.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm afraid that didn't work either. But nonetheless, you were early, and then you guys both moved out here, right? The company that bought it was a mess. You guys got in big trouble with the market remembering the highlights.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was sort of early Facebook. The first social network based in New York was started, I think, the same year. Yeah, six degrees.”
2018-08-06 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Sidecar co-founder Sunil Paul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT