Ep. 235 - Ryan Green, Co-founder and CEO of Gridwise, on Gig Economy Trends, Ride Sharing, and Mobility Analytics

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Ryan Green, Co-founder and CEO of Gridwise. Ryan and I talk about the future trends of the gig economy, ride sharing, and mobility analytics. We also talk about his experiences helping to navigate his startup through the pandemic.

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Interview Transcript with Ryan Green, Gridwise

Brian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside outside innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today with me is Ryan Green. Ryan is the co-founder and CEO of Gridwise, which is a mobile app powered by gig mobility analytics to help rideshare and delivery drivers do more and do better and welcome to the show Ryan. 

Ryan Green: Thanks for having me, Brian. 

Brian Ardinger: Hey, Ryan, I'm glad to have you on the show. One of the things we wanted to do this year is to bring on more founders and tell their stories. As I was doing research and looking around, you've got interesting story, interesting space that you're working in. And so, I wanted to have you on the show to talk a little bit more about that. 

You used to work at the Naval Academy, then you did some foreign exchange trading at PNC, and now you've started a company called Gridwise. Why don't we talk a little bit about your background, how you got to become an entrepreneur and what Gridwise is all about. 

Ryan Green: When I was studying at the Naval Academy, I ended up starting my first company there. I was an economics major, Chinese minor. And then I really got into trading and keeping up with the stock markets and later the currency market. 

So, we started a company called FX Connection, that actually taught people how to understand the currency markets. And then our platform connected you with coaches who helped you actually apply that knowledge. And they were very, you know, vetted, very successful traders who traded for a living. 

I really learned how to stand that business that like, stand the business up. I didn't know how to buy a domain when that first started, when I started that company. And so, learning curve at that point, but grew the team out to a few people, started generating revenue, and made some big partnerships with brokerages, global brokerages, and things of that sort.

So, it was really great experience doing that in parallel school and then going into active-duty military. And I ended up shutting the company down as I was in active-duty military as all my partners and I were operating in different parts of the world. And it just became an operational mess. In addition to so many other mistakes we made in this company that gave us so many valuable learning lessons.

But ended up after I got out of the military, I ended up going into banking, doing FX trading, which was related to the company I started before currency trading. And that's what brought me to PNC and working there. And in between the midst of all of that, when I was in the military, I had a period of downtime where I was tinkering with a few ideas, but this new concept came to our city called Uber and I took a few rides and I was like, wow, this is interesting.

I'm definitely a part of the early adopter cohort of technology. So, I was really intrigued by the model. I ended up signing up to drive. And I became a driver for Uber later for Lyft. And it was like really interesting for me to just be able to like tap a button and be able to go out and make some extra money.

And I had experienced what it was like to be the driver. The pain points that really persisted as drivers at that time. And then you fast forward to the time I'm in banking, I'm still an active driver driving less, but taking a lot of rides with Uber and Lyft drivers and just hearing them complain about a lot of the same pain points that I'd experienced firsthand. 

From those rides and my perspective driving, during my time at PNC was like where the light bulb lit up. I knew I wanted to start another venture. At some point it was expected to be a little bit farther down the road, but I had a list of about 25 ideas and the concept of GridWise popped up to number one. And I had started working to validate that on my personal time, while I was at PNC. And then I ended up validating demand for the concept and ended up going to start Gridwise and became the co-founder and CEO of the company. 

Brian Ardinger: It's kind of an interesting concept and how I found you is you put out a report, The 2020 Ride Hailing Industry Report, that talks through a lot of the data that you've seen with GridWise on how drivers and Uber and all these things are shaping the world. And specifically, how it's changed in a pandemic environment. Let's talk a little bit about that report. And what have you learned? 

Ryan Green: I would say with us as Gridwise in operating in mobility spaces and focused on empowering drivers, drivers using our application and it gives us a glimpse into supply and demand across the different services, both on the ride hailing side, as well as the on-demand delivery side, whether that's food, grocery or parcel.

And so, I mean, in looking at this past year of 2020, I mean, it's what a year it has been. But, you know, in our industry instantly, as COVID really took off in mid-March, you just saw a drastic drop in the industry, just ride hailing activity. And I think the service providers reported seeing anywhere from a decline of 80%-90% of activity on their platforms. For us at Gridwise, we saw a direct decline of about 70% of drivers stopped driving for ride share services.

A good portion of them ended up continuing to drive but ended up moving over to delivery of services. And so, as we saw ride hail decline, we just saw a huge uptake in delivery demand as people started ordering food and in groceries from Instacart and Door Dash and platforms like that. 

It was really interesting we saw that there were drivers who would continue to drive for ride hail through this year. And you've seen from an emission standpoint, it's created a great picture where it's like these vehicles have been more utilized, because there has been some demand that's persistent in this, and has picked up over the coming months, but there hasn't been as much of a movement of drivers to go back to driving rideshare.

So, for the drivers who continue doing that, we've seen just, you know, more utilization and we're looking at that from the trips per hour increase that we've seen there for drivers and as well as for their hourly earnings, you'll see that hourly earnings did increase for ride hail drivers. Specifically, for a period of time, it started to decrease or normalize back towards closer to normal levels.

But overall, the drivers across all services did really spike in the summer, but it's really come down to, it was around $18 an hour, but now it's back to about $15.50 somewhere around there. 

Brian Ardinger: So, with that, obviously things have changed and we're probably not going to back to a quote u...