I’m obsessed with the ride-share revolution sweeping the nation.
My interest was piqued last year during a phone call with Nick Allen, a member of my CALinnovates Advisory Board. Nick told me that he was in the process of winding down his fund at Spring Ventures, which would allow him to focus his energy on a new business he founded with Sunil Paul. The new venture, called SideCar, launched in San Francisco last June. Four months later Allen and Paul raised a Series A round of $10 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Google Ventures, SV Angel, Mark Pincus, Lerer Ventures and a convoy of other prominent angels and VCs. The A round allowed SideCar to expand well beyond their launch city of San Francisco. SideCar now serves passengers in Seattle, Austin, DC, Philly and, now, thankfully, the City of Angels. Competition abounds, mostly in the form of Lyft, another Bay Area-based purveyor of ride-shares. You simply can’t miss Lyft’s cars driving around the city due to its clever marketing ploy of placing big, pink “carstaches” on the grill of each car in their fleet.