IAM Stories > Jeffrey Brown, Founder of RideBuzz

Purpose and Its Origins

In the pioneer valley alone in this region there are 550,000 registered vehicles and the population is 660, 000. If we look at the number of empty seats and number of miles collectively with those seats travelled, we are looking at 45 million daily empty seat miles. And that’s equivalent of sending an empty seat to the sun every 2 days.

Jeff defines his purpose as, “first and foremost looking at reducing emissions and getting around with less transportation infrastructure. And its expanded to look at what communities can do together to help each other get around.” One of the things that Jeff is learning through his work is the “increasing need amongst elders, low income, physically disabled, and economically disadvantaged populations” for “transportation and even though in our society we have too many cars there are still a lot of people that cant get around. I am looking at increasing ride sharing and how can we get more people into our cars that need rides.”

Jeff looks at “the proliferation of cheap products, inspired by low energy pricing” as contributing to “social alienation taking place in our society.” He explains, “instead of sharing rides we go ourselves, we demand this instantaneous convenience that really leaves us in a place over time that we are less happy. The tradeoff of this momentary pleasure for long-term sustainability and social connectivity is essential and social community efficiency is essential to long term sustainability.” 

Jeff attributes his concern for the environment to his being a “nature lover” who grew up “canoeing, climbing, and traveling around the country.”  While he travelled a lot, he was also concerned because he was always driving and “a bit guilty” about his use of transportation. He started canvassing on environmental issues when he was 17, one of the youngest canvassers in Cambridge, Boston.  Later, in his travels in Germany, he was inspired by their national system for ride sharing. Jeff explains, “it worked quite well, could get around the country, and it was pretty cost effective and I thought well I’d like to see something like that here which was coupled with the idea of the new GPS technology, and we are building towards a dynamic model of ride sharing.”  In response to older environmentalists who speak of ride sharing as a dated concept, Jeff highlights “the new twist in Ridebuzz that utilizes social networking and net-based technology to help connect people, which is definitely a new paradigm.”

Part of Jeff’s early “programming of what the right thing is” was influenced by his mother who was working on “innovative pilot programs reducing energy usage.”  He says, “As a member of this society, a member of this planet, we are part of a vibrant network of organism and so I am looking at the interconnection, as not being a distinct entity but as dependent on this whole system.”

Challenges and Solutions

“One of the challenges is energy pricing generally. The greatest change in behavior comes form market pricing. And the way we consume transportation is ultimately a product of how it’s priced.” Jeff works hard “to match the benefits and the costs of shared resources but there’s sort of a cost threshold that depends upon socio economic backgrounds.”

Jeff also speaks to “the transaction cost to sharing rides and to connecting with people.   Americans tend to work long workweeks. We are driven so hard and so many competing priorities not enough time to sometimes arrange.” Related challenges include not liking the people we connect with or lack of trust in strangers.  “Germans post phone numbers and it is all publicly available, but here it is a different culture. The level of comfort with sharing information and our perceptions of strangers is much different here than in Germany.”

“I think when one is faced with adversity if we believe the adversity too much with emotion it can take away from our motivation to address it. Looking at it objectively like oh this is a challenge, simply aha, and the emotion needs to be on resilience side working on solutions, for progressing optimistically versus buying into the assumption that this is a fixed reality.”

Jeff also describes his challenge as “just myself.” He explains, “Often great limitations lie within our selves. There is so much room to improve the way in which I approach the situations, the assumptions that I make about what can change and what cant change. If I make an assumption that that won’t happen and I had bought into it that this is difficult then it may keep my ability to address the problem. I may believe that that there is a challenge in a certain area and let that take away from my power to solve it. I think when one is faced with adversity if we believe the adversity too much with emotion it can take away from our motivation to address it. So there is this level of looking at it objectively like oh this is a challenge, simply aha, and the emotion needs to be on resilience side working on solutions, for progressing optimistically versus buying into the assumption that this is a fixed reality. It’s easy for people to look at a challenge as an unbudging component of reality. Like this cannot change and I think in social change movements, whether it be business or non profit, that one has to pick a point that they have to arrive at, something that they believe in strong enough that they are willing to continue to work against the challenge the adversity. I think of aligning oneself to an idea or notion that we can create a better world and we let that notion like a North Star guide us. And for me at a fundamental level it’s saying hey we can create a better world. I see this, I feel this, I know this, I know so many good people, and I know that people will come in to do good and to know and hold that notion of creating a better world. Believing we will solve the problems instead of saying it’s impossible because if they say impossible then they have bought into it systemically. The idea kind of takes over their nervous system and it shuts down instead of getting out of bed and doing something about it.” 

What inspires people to take risks – looking at how many people are willing to take risks for business so they can make it big, make lots of money and I have been wondering to myself why is it that fewer people are willing to take these risks for really meaningful outcomes like improving the world. Why can’t we as a culture see this as a higher purpose? Economics has taken the front seat so many putting everything on the line to make it rich. I want to see more people put everything on line to make it a better world.

Jeff gives an example of a situation in which he presents a solution to an organization but it wasn’t quite ready in its current form and so they had to go back to the drawing board and improve it. They had to go through several reiterations before it finally got approved but Jeff maintained “patience and belief” that he is going to find a way to make this happen. Jeff believes “that there’s always a way to make it happen – it just may not be an easy pathway and what might have seemed obvious and easy at first, that might not be the right road. And it might be a dead-end and if one only looked straight at the dead-end, and buy into the dead-end that’s all we see and if we believe there’s got to be another way, look left look right, there are ways through this network. The final product is addressing some concerns in the real world and the reason it was not possible for a certain person – they were dealing with certain kind of reality and in its first iteration the solution didn’t include both parties’ agreement in a sense so it required a refinement to make it a better product.” Jeff feels that it was a “great situation for feedback – how can I use this to improve.”

The New Paradigm in Socially collaborative Transportation

Jeff describes the new paradigm as, “Using web tools to increase the ease of use and connection.” Once a critical mass of people are willing to use the dynamic ride share technology people can use their phones to connect into the network to immediately connect. In the long run people need to make good decisions to sustain civilization and this may require that people get incentivized to share and see each other with new eyes.

People spend 25% of household expenditure on transportation. People don’t know this. If we share rides we can cut that down and that’s a lot.

Jeff also sees a role for business in this new paradigm.  He gives the example of working with local businesses like Deans Beans, one of the early fair trade coffee companies in Orange, which has created a special product called RideBuzz coffee and they donate profits from sale of this coffee to them. He also describes the role of Isenberg business school students in getting the coffee to local businesses. In addition, local businesses have a lot to gain when people save money on transportation – “it stimulates the economy.”

Meaning of Innovation in Business

Innovation to Jeff means “finding new pathways and new solutions to old problems, for example, rideshare for elders.” It includes “a willingness to find new ways and being open to new solutions; Taking risks and using those tools of thinking, believing in positive outcome and feeling it within; using beliefs as tools.”

Meaning of Authenticity

Jeff describes authenticity as, “Speaking about what you believe in.” He questions whether “it is something the company believes in or is it a marketing gimmick.” Marketing conjures many questions for Jeff, like “when an oil company says ‘saving the environment’ what does it mean? Are they willing to look back and take ownership of the impact they have had and will they walk forward with a clear consciousness?” He even speaks to “our responsibility as a population for having bought those products and enjoyed them – even as people what is our authenticity – how do we look back at our lives and say I have a lot of making up to do. I would ask people to look at themselves really critically it’s ok and it’s really good to get an honest glimpse of ourselves.”  

What do you understand by mindfulness?

“Being present, making good decisions in every moment. Knowing our impacts our interconnections and how we fit into it all. For me I think of meditation – the idea of cultivating presence – it’s an ongoing process.”

When asked if he has a practice, Jeff says, “Part of it is going out in nature. It is a network that I readily enjoy plugging into” He says that it reminds him of his “inner connections” and “that is mindfulness - it is being alert to how I exist.” He sees himself as an “interdependent creature” as “part of a system.” Jeff speaks to the “different types of awareness.” By being conscious in the moment he says that he is “capable” of making “volitional” decisions and “there is this potentiality for new behaviors, new patterns that would emerge by being mindful.” 

Jeff’s advice to readers: “Go to Ridebuzz.org, register, offer rides, event groups, activity groups, get the word out, and don’t be afraid to incorporate your belief systems into your business.”