AVL's Reimagine Mobility Podcast

Revolutionizing Gig Mobility with Gridwise and Ryan Green

• AVL, North America

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Join us in this enlightening interview with Ryan Green, co-founder of Gridwise, as we dive deep into how the gig economy is reshaping mobility. Ryan discusses the pivotal role of gig workers in today's rapidly evolving transportation landscape, Gridwise's impact on their earnings, and future mobility trends. Discover how data-driven insights from Gridwise are not just empowering gig workers but are also shaping the strategies of major players in the automotive and transportation industry. Don't miss Ryan's insights on the integration of autonomous vehicles and the future of vehicle utilization.

 Ryan Green is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gridwise, an app for gig economy drivers to maximize their earnings and track all of their gig work in one place. Since launching in 2017, Gridwise has raised $20.4M in funding, with their latest Series A raising $12.7M led by Crosslink Capital, Autotech Ventures, and others. With 200k+ active drivers nationwide, Gridwise empowers those in the gig economy through demand insights, activity and finance tracking, and a marketplace of gig worker benefits. Before Gridwise, Ryan served as an active-duty Naval Officer after graduating from the United States Naval Academy. Following his time in the military, he worked the FX trading desk at PNC, executing multi-million trades for clients.

If you would like to be a guest on the show contact: namarketing@avl.com

Welcome to the reimagined Mobility podcast series. I'm here with Ryan Green from Gridwise, and many of you may ask, what is Gridwise and what does Gridwise has to do with mobility? And most importantly, as we reimagine mobility, well, that's why Ryan is here. Thank you for joining, Ryan. you've been in the space for quite a while now. I've been following you. I believe greatly in what you guys are doing, but for everybody else that's new here. Explain yourself where you're from. And what are you guys doing? What the heck is Gridwise? And then let's jump in together on how do we re-imagine mobility? Yeah. Of course. Well, I appreciate you, having me on the show today, and, I think it's starting out. You brought up the question is just, you know, what does Gridwise have to do with mobility? And, you know, what I'd like to do is first take a step back and just kind of understand the space that we are operating in, as I would define is and really more broadly, the gig economy as a whole. And as we look at the gig economy, we know it's a I think we can all be aware, to this point and say that this is a very rapidly growing space. It is growing towards becoming a key component of the not only the US workforce, but the global workforce. over time. And as we think about all these different types of services within the gig economy, you have Uber, you have Lyft, you have Airbnb, Upwork, and all types of different marketplace pieces that have really made it to be what it is now, where Gridwise is operating is actually where about 60% of the $450 billion, market, of the value that's being generated in that market size is being created. And so really, that is what we would define as gig mobility. So gig mobility is the way that we see that the movement of people and goods in a on demand fashion or supply, that's really facilitated these days by a driver who's working for any of the rideshare delivery services, such as an Uber, Lyft, a DoorDash and Instacart, Grubhub and many others out there. And so, Gridwise, the way that we participate in this space is we are, the leading business app for all of the gig economy workers who are out there. So our app is actually helping them maximize their earnings and increase their earnings by an average of about 30% within the first month of using our mobile app. by helping them just really do provide all these different types of analytics that help them better manage and operate their part time or full time gig work. So the way that works is a user comes into, the application, once they download bird, they're able to actually, link their accounts to all the platforms they work for, and we're helping them track all of their trips, all of their earnings, all their, their, their gigs that they're completing their tax deductions, really the entirety of their PNL. But then we, as we have hundreds of thousands of these drivers who are using our application, we're able to actually, ingest, you know, tons and tons of data that's helping us become more and more aware of supply and demand across all these different platforms, which in turn we, which then we're able to actually bring that data back into the application by product types that provide an analytics back to the user to provide and, visibility into what is happening in the market that I am working in today, to see a time of day trends, earnings opportunities in different areas. you know what, which type of worker job is going to give me the best types of tips for the morning, working in this particular area that I'm going to start working in all kinds of different analytics to really just help them become smarter about how they work. So really, at our at our core, that is our, our, offering for the, the worker themselves, as I mentioned, the, but on the back end, part of this is we do have a, an enterprise business that kind of broadens our ability to actually impact the ecosystem as a whole. so what we have is a, really this understanding of all of the mobility patterns that are happening across Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and others. It's enabled us to really possess today what I would call the most comprehensive, gig mobility data set in the US today. we have a very comprehensive view to over 140 different services that these workers are working for. And we're able to package productize and anonymize that data into a set of analytics that we can then license to a multitude of mobility stakeholders, whether it's automotive OEMs and helping them really think through and better understand the, how to adapt and accommodate their types of, vehicles based off of how demand responsive transportation is training, changing? We work with a lot of autonomous vehicle companies to help do the same through a commercialized for a ride, hail and delivery purposes as well as, many other types of, constituents within real estate and retail and other, other types of platforms. So really that's, that's, how we're serving a multitude of different stakeholders across the ecosystem. Nice. Fantastic. Great introduction. And let's jump right in, Ryan. I mean, you just mentioned it, right? This data is not just for the gig worker to improve his or her earnings potential, but it's also for you mentioned it all seems to potentially use this data to say what new products do we need to come out with? What new features do we may or may not need to come out with? If, because of that industry growing and vehicles are playing a key enabler in this industry as a as a means to an end, we'll speak right to vehicle to drive again. You mentioned food deliveries, moving people around, moving goods around, etc.. So as we as we reimagine mobility, what do you personally see now what the OEMs are saying? I know you can't share this here, but what do you personally see? It's going to change with future vehicles coming out from OEM. So actually look at this data. Can you give us some examples of what potentially in the next five plus years comes out based on the data, your organization or through your services that's been generated and is now used by the OEMs and in product development. Yeah, yeah, of course, I would say that I think the, really from my perspective is I see that mobility and like transportation as a whole, I think a lot more people can see this. Now is when we started Gridwise, this was not clear to everyone is that the, movement of people or goods through these types of, what we see, marketplaces, fulfilled. But with the the movement fulfilled by gig workers is actually, becoming the standard for how we are all moving. And I would say that car like, as we think about like the utilization of the vehicle, I think what OEMs have to consider now is just that, hey, we see that these vehicles are spending a lot of their time on lots. They're spending a lot of time in the their driveways. You've heard Tesla really be more vocal about this consideration around how do we actually leverage these vehicles to actually move people on in an on demand fashion when they're just sitting around themselves? so if I'm a, a car owner, my car's in the driveway. I can let it. I can farm it out, and allow it to leverage its, autonomous capabilities to actually go out and pick up people and go work for me and make money for me while I'm sitting at home, which is a crazy concept to think about. And I think for what we are helping today, a lot of these, OEMs really understand is, is helping them better understand utilization of these vehicles. how are they being like, what are the, VMT like, what are the miles traveled by these vehicles when they're being utilized for ride hail purpose for this, for delivery purposes? How do we help them retrofit their vehicles to accommodate those types of use cases more? I think what you start to see is more of a, gravitation towards a kind of the pulling of, of users through more types of apps, like micro shuttles, that are pulling users in a more and on demand responsive type of nature, which we've seen a lot of companies try to tackle that early on, like the chariots of the world through Ford. but I think you're seeing that come back or rebound more with, through the likes of, you see, like a Volkswagen in Austin and some of the autonomous vehicle testing that they're doing there, as well as a Zoox and, and some of the West Coast markets that they're, socializing to be operating in some at some point. Interesting is as you, as you look forward, Ryan, I mean, you've been in this now for many years. You've come to a place where I would say it's working well with what you're doing. And certainly do I get to kick space, if I may call it that way, has certainly now been established. And is not only the, the thing to go to for young kids or people familiar with iPhones and, and doing all this stuff online, ordering things. But anybody from whatever, 18 years old to 77, 89 years old using these services. Now, as you look into the future, what do you see happening in the gig space to in a specific yes, it relates to mobility. So you do see new services happening. You see, I don't know, a shift maybe more into not just people and, and food deliveries, but maybe also, I don't know, you're going to take over from Fedex and past the U.S. Postal Service, I don't know. What do you see as you look forward? Yeah, I would I would say that. as we think about some of the types of like, future services that come into play, I think the the first, the first topic that I always get asked about a lot is just like, okay, well, Gridwise is an application for gig workers. How how does autonomous that isn't autonomous vehicles are aren't they a threat to your business. And you know, they should be. And there's been expectations. you know, they're commercializing to really take over the market and and everyone's only using those vehicles, and those modes of drivers in the near future. And so I think on that point, I think we have a hybrid market, between both human and autonomous vehicles. operator for rideshare and delivery purposes. Over the next, I would say, over the next ten years at least. if not, longer. I think there's a lot for the autonomous vehicle to figure out in, in driving, in scenarios that are moving people, in, like, high liability types of scenarios that a human driver's going to be well suited to, accommodate for quite some time now, I think, as you think about, think about the two of those, those types of services, like really where we're focused in on a lot is in helping them actually work together. More like as autonomous vehicle companies become, start to commercialize more and more, we actually we have an understanding of how the market is operating, how it what supply looks like in real time, and where's the basic ways that you or areas that you could be staging, and how do these types of modes of drivers work together with that? So and so for us is we're working to facilitate that future. But we do think that it's, it's it's quite some time away before you'll see a mass adoption of those vehicles out on the road. I think also from like the as you think about the categories of the vehicle, like where they're focused on is between is you think, rideshare or delivery. You see a lot of the vehicles are actually, autonomous vehicle makers are focused on commercializing for rideshare purposes over delivery. at first, why is because the economics are just more lucrative from a rideshare standpoint, the prices are going to be much higher. The volume or frequency of rides is is shown to be much higher. And the as you look at delivery, there's a much higher margin compression that exists. And if they if you look at the cost of the vehicles and the hard costs or fixed costs that these companies have, it's there's still a lot to figure out for from a batching standpoint is like, how do I batch multiple deliveries into one order to make this profitable? And I don't think that's a really been figured out. Well. And so anybody who is participating, most of these companies who are participating in, in, any, any deliveries that go, travel over a mile today outside of the sidewalk, robots that you may see going around, they're going to be a lot of them are focusing on rideshare for that reason. Outside of that, I think from a good standpoint, they're starting to see, drone delivery become, more of a mode that's picking up, picking up as well. And so I think in terms of, in terms of how you think about, like, what's the future of Fedex or UPS or any of the these last mile logistics companies? like, what are they how do they evolve over time? I think they're they're going to be disrupt. They're becoming disrupted more so by drone delivery, but also how humans are actually using their personal vehicles to deliver or deliver as well. And so I think to get ahead of that, you see them making investments in in this space where you look at UPS, who is acquired roadie and roadie has been a, really a general delivery company that's focused on kind of retail delivery, same day retail delivery and other types of last mile deliveries. But it's really everyday drivers, gig workers who are using their vehicles to deliver different types of goods. And so UPS has actually started to invest more aggressively in that space. Because of that, I'm seeing kind of the trend, and there and you see that some of those investments in drone delivery as well. Oh, yeah. You just took that next question of mine away, which is exactly was drones. And let's call them any tolls as well. But that I guess the next question then for me would be as, as you look at, again, all these different vehicles, right, that you just mentioned behind it is always to one degree or another, potentially a gig worker that can use your app. The as you look to future transportation modes were again gig worker could be what are other things that that you potentially could see besides again an automobile, a drone, I mean, bicycles, right? People in inner cities deliver pizzas and other things on bicycles. what other modes of transportation as we talk here? Mainly mobility that we don't really see, being used to, you see, in your industry or have companies approached you with to say, hey, I think your app for my gig workers using whatever means for transportation would also be, well, can you make adjustments, can you use it, etc.? What else do you see around in this space? Yeah, I, I would say you brought up the EV tolls. If you told us in the last statement, I would say it is. We've we've actually worked with a lot of the, companies who are working towards building air taxis as well to help them think through how they commercialize, commercialize for, for air taxi purposes, really focused around like, where do I put where do I put my, the landing pads, and, and and so a lot some of them are looking at leveraging existing infrastructure to like existing helipads that they can leverage, and others are looking to kind of build their own infrastructure based off of that. And so we've actually been a key component to informing the sites of, of, and helping them think through that a little bit further with a ground truth source of weather, where they're trying to actually replace long distance rideshare trips, essentially, in terms of other types of, of gig worker gig work, that we've as we've been really deeply entrenched in the mobility side, we have broad relevancy out into other types of categories of gig work that don't have always like, cater themselves as much to mobility, but they may be using their vehicle as a means to facilitate a portion or a component of their work. And so when I think of those examples of those types of companies would be more of like, like you could even think of as the dog walking services, like a Rover or a WAG, where in most cases, what we've seen is the worker is driving to the house, or residents of where they need to pick up the actual pets from, the task rabbits and other household service where people are using their vehicle for, for that mode as well. And so I think the the vehicle is here to stay on it. It's interesting to see the, the vehicle usage across gig work and how that's playing out to facilitate movement of another individual who wants to go from point A to point B for their own personal reasons, but also the individuals who are going from point A to point B for their own work purposes to facilitate or complete a job. And and it's necessary to do so. And so I think that's like another key component or use case that those focus on the autonomous side, those focus on demand responsive shuttles also are having and need to consider if they're not already considering the different types of use cases and how much gig gig work is, is actually impacting mobility. Well, very good. If and we think if we take for a moment a slightly different point of view that you have with your experience, for sure. I assuming he's right. what what amazes you the most? What has excited you the most? If you look back five years ago to how it was in the grid, in the, in the, gig working space. Sorry to today. What has amazed you the most? Is it the growth? Is it the adoption? Is it maybe the slowness of adoption? Is it that Covid slowed it down? Covid helped you because less people want to go to the store still and then just used to ordering things, and that's where gig workers come in. But share a little bit. Again, not not necessarily directly related to mobility, but obviously it is. What if you look over the last five years, if you look back five years, what are you seeing? Wow. What a that was amazing. Wow. That is amazing. And be that is surprising to me. I did not expect that. Are we at great wise did not expect. yeah I would say is I would say was been a very surprising and was expected for, for all of us to see the see the way that this all played out was just the explosive level of growth and adoption that delivered, that took place on delivery, particularly on food and grocery. parcel has kind of been a facilitation of e-commerce as well. But I think that was a if you look at e-commerce, last mile delivery, you look at food, you look at grocery. The unexpected event that none of us saw coming was the pandemic. And, and, and that that taking place really just accelerated the level of of habitualality that exists in these services today is if I think back to, 2017, when we first launched, Gridwise, we were, as a company, very rideshare focused. And if you looked at the, gig mobility space, most of the adoption was around rideshare. Most of the expansiveness and coverage and accessibility was was were related to rideshare services across the US. And so that's where we had focused early on and, and had really built our wedges in supporting those types of workers. And our app experience really catered to them much more. which, going into the pandemic, we were actually timing up, a, a direction into where we start to expand our relevancy to different types of workers, starting with delivery. That timeline accelerated quickly when the pandemic hit. We're like, okay, well, rideshare has completely tanked, and and we need to actually figure out, we need to make some changes really quickly, and, and accelerate the plans that we had to get into this space. And so doing so and making that move helped us really combat the initial decline that had taken place in our business, from just being focused on rideshare. But I think just to the just seeing the rapid growth of that is really just was something that we thought was going to take a lot, a lot longer to play out. And I think as even as we would raise money or talk to different, players in the space, I, I don't think anyone really realized the really value to how important the gig workers were to make all of this work and how critical, like it, how critical it was to mass this network of gig workers like the Ubers and lifts on this seesaw that they're operating in the marketplaces. But a lot of people from the outside couldn't see that as like, wow, whoever amasses this, the largest, this large, a large network of gig workers is positioned to actually operate a multitude of different types of services. That becomes a very powerful wedge that you have in the market. And so for us as a company, being that really service layer, over 140 different companies we see these workers working for is really positioned us to, positions us to really open up a lot of different types of services to these workers in a unique way that a lot of other stand. Look at two more questions. First, one, the exact opposite of what I just asked. So not looking back, but looking forward five years, what do you see change and what do you see as the most exciting part about at Gridwise or in this space? Do you see happening or expecting to happen over the next five years? What are you most excited about? Yeah, I'm most excited from our perspective, most excited around tackling the the challenge tied to utilization of not only the vehicle but the workers themselves. We see that these workers are spending majority of their time, about 57% of their their time and miles on the road with no no goods or no passengers in their vehicle. And and so that's a large part of time of where we were just, you know, someone just driving around aimlessly, with with. No, no, like just losing money as they're doing so and accruing expenses to their vehicle. And so for us, I think it ties back to what I was speaking to, of being this service layer over the industry. What we get excited about are a lot of the initiatives that we have in place to actually increase that utilization and get that from 30, take it for 57% of the time that they're not utilized and shrink that down to 40, 30, 20%. And the way that we do so is and is in building this massive network of gig workers and being able to actually allow other types of companies to access that, access accesses workers directly through a Gridwise and, and actually have their, different types of flex, flexible type of shift jobs that they can actually that can be facilitated through our application. And so I think for us like that is, exciting endeavor that we are looking forward to over the coming years, that I think really changes the way that people work and enables them more and makes, the gig economy more of a sustainable type of, of, work work option for, for many in the US that. Well, interesting. Okay. Last question. Totally different. What's going to be the next car you by Ryan and why. The next. Car I would say that, you know, the last one I bought was, Volvo. Xc60. Actually, and I've really, I've really grown accustomed to, to liking the Volvo. So I get to see the next generation of that, as being one where where I'd probably stick stick within that brand. I like changing it up, but I, I also like this car, so. I consider it I get it. Very good. Thank you so much, Ryan. Very interesting, very insightful for me. I learned a lot. I mean, following you guys, like I said, since your inception, almost, I believe. And but this was very insightful and very helpful. Thank you so much.