"In the Studio" has a special segment this week, hosting a contractor of the Valley, who grew up on the coast, studied at the Ivy League school, was attracted to Wall Street and finally decided to leave clothing tailor begin to build his own startup, eventually find its co-founder via Facebook, moonlighting as a contractor after the closure of markets in New Yorket is now helping run a start-up backed by the business that makes a real difference in the world.
John Zimmer grew up in a suburb of Connecticut outside the city of New York, has worked hard and has made its way to Cornell in the State of New York. "At the College, he was a member of the storied University" Hotel Management School, "takes a particular interest in finance of real estate leads finally real estate group Finance to a large New York Investment Bank." Zimmer felt that the culture in some parts of the College and high school is the attractiveness of investment banking in its sights, but after some time, he developed an itch to try something new despite the chorus around him.
Finally, he was bound to his co-founder current, green Logan, on Facebook by a mutual friend, and they have pasted a love for transport and the desire to use technology to provide a more efficient way to move. While during the day on Wall Street, Zimmer retired in his apartment in Manhattan at night and from communicating with Green on what would become Zimride, start carpooling based in San Francisco who recently raised $6 m in series a funding and is growing very nicely, with more than 350 000 users and partnerships with companies like Zipcar.
Zimmer has decided to leave his employment, used Zimride driving cross-country to California and continued to work on the business, now full time. Today, Zimride has built a network of 125 universities and colleges across the country, as well as two lanes public (SF to LA, SF to Tahoe) where the public often asked why is high-speed rail already. Zimmer noted railway at great speed is several years off the coast, and in the meantime, Zimride provides as much need service with graphs social to help correct inefficiencies in open-seats along popular routes. The service also has interesting network effects, as some couples met by sharing rides and two people who met each other through sharing Zimride actually founded a company together - of course!
I invited Zimmer in the studio to talk about the Foundation and future of Zimride, as I have an interest in how social technologies can be leveraged to increase transportation options, that we have before us, but also because his experience to pursue a path in Wall Street of investment banks is that many young age College consider at a given time. This is not to say that there is nothing wrong to take this path, as its too easy to stack these days. For some, this is a great course. But for others, their choices are, in part, molded by what they see around them, either at the school or culturally from an early age. My hope in the recording and dissemination of this segment is that history of Zimmer will affect other universities of the country currently faced with this choice, or which are already in another industry, but want to try their hands at something more entrepreneurial. Transition of Zimmer was not quite smooth, but he did start noodling on his idea while keeping his day job, and when the time was right, he made his move.
