FlightCar lets people parking at the airport rent their vehicles out to other approved traveling members. In this episode we hear about the Flightcar journey with Cory Jones, VP of Marketing at Flightcar.
For more information on Flightcar: www.flightcar.com
FlightCar lets people parking at the airport rent their vehicles out to other approved traveling members. In this episode we hear about the Flightcar journey with Cory Jones, VP of Marketing at Flightcar.
For more information on Flightcar: www.flightcar.com
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Kevin: Hi. Welcome to The Crowd, a Podcast by Near Me. We’re talking about peer-to-peer marketplaces. We’re talking about the collaborative economy and we’re talking about thought leadership. We’re talking about all these things, any and all of them with some of the best minds in the field. And of course, I’m your host, Kevin Cohen.
Today, we’re going to talk about renting cars, that fun experience that you get to do when you’re travelling. You get off a long flight. You wait at the stop for the bus to pick you up. You go to the outside lot. You stand in line for 45 minutes. You walk up. Some kid walks you through 40 upsell attempts before you finally get your car which is really an uneventful experience. Well, we’re going to talk about a new alternative in town. Today, we’re going to talk to Cory Jones, the VP of Marketing for Flightcar. Flightcar is car sharing for travelers. What is it? Well, in a nutshell, when you come in to a Flightcar location, they’ll pick you up in a town car. They’ll take you to their site and they’ll give you a car that is owned by someone else who is travelling right then. The initial benefit is yes, it’s definitely cheaper but also it’s just a totally new experience in car renting. Okay. So let’s jump in to the interview.
Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Cory Jones, VP of Marketing and Product from Flightcar. Cory, how are you?
Cory: I’m doing well. Thanks for having me on.
Kevin: Of course, it’s our pleasure. We love having great people like you here. Tell us a little bit – give us the 30-second picture. What is Flightcar?
Cory: Yeah. I’m always excited talking about Flightcar of course. Flightcar is a really unique model in the sharing economy. Very much like what Airbnb does to your home, Flightcar enables you to travel out and save a tremendous amount of money and even make money while you’re gone by leaving your car with us. When you travel out, we give you from our location a short ride to the airport. We rent your car out while you’re away. We have a million dollar insurance policy. We do driving history checks to make sure that things go well and we can pick you up when you get back. You have free airport parking for as long as you’re away. Your car is washed and vacuumed after the rental. And even if the car was not rented, it’s still washed and vacuumed. You come back to a spotless car and you come back to a check. You get paid on the miles that your car is driven while it’s being rented.
On the other side of the equation, of course, we have a growing car rental industry where the big guys are buying new cars and then renting them out at pretty significant rates. And this model is a way to kind of help people save money in renting a car by renting from one of their peers. So we generally save people from anywhere from 30% to 70% off of a traditional rental car rate. In fact, we’re offering the guaranteed lowest rates. So we’re always beating the competition. We’re able to deliver better service experience with no lines, no waiting. You sign off on an iPad and you’re driving off.
Kevin: Wow. It sounds like you’re radically changing the rental car experience.
Cory: It’s a significant change. What I’m really excited about is I think you rarely have an opportunity to compete in a business where you can win on both price and different shared service experience. We have the ability to do that with valeting your car for you, picking you up with a town car at your terminal at the airport. The whole transaction is paperless and queueless. It’s really kind of a thrill. And then for those people who are renting, they have an opportunity to provide income to a peer. So it’s a win-win from all angles.
Kevin: It sounds like a great product and service. Quick question. What is your primary method of customer acquisition?
Cory: Yeah. That’s a big one. And we have – like a lot of folks you’re likely talking to, we have a model where we have to acquire consumers on both the supply and demand side of the equation. And what we find is that those two sides are very much different. The types of people and the way that we acquire them are much more different from what we might’ve expected. And so, we use very different channels to do that. On the supply side, we have a tremendous success finding people who are interested in parking with us while they travel out via just kind of local press push, word of mouth of course is a huge channel for us, and just driving awareness and education.
Most people kind of are out searching for an understanding of the concept of making money in my car while I’m away. So we have to bring that awareness out and so we’re doing a lot of things to do that. On the rental side, it’s a very different thing. There’s of course tremendous demand for car rentals and specifically for the least expensive car rental. And so it’s all about kind of being there when people are searching for that to book that rental. So obviously, things like search and other channels where we can get in front of them at the right time work well for us.
Kevin: Right. And I notice you have an affiliate channel as well. Has that channel been rolled out pretty extensively? Or is it a new program?
Cory: We do. That’s another great example of what works well on the rental side. Again, the affiliates from travels to coupon sites do really well getting people who are kind of looking for a really good deal and particularly when it’s kind of a simple e-commerce or a really kind of basic product that people have a good awareness of. They do well. Versus on the supply side, it’s a little harder. It’s a new concept. So we’re kind of getting affiliates up to speed and getting headway there have been less fruitful.
Kevin: Sounds good. Let’s step back a little bit. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your journey to Flightcar. It looks like you’ve had a pretty awesome journey up until then. You’ve had a lot of cool experiences. Tell us about it.
Cory: Yeah. Flightcar ended up being a really interesting fit for me with my experience and even more specifically with my recent experience. I got a 15-year career in total spanning quite a few industries. I did a lot of consulting with some big firms and little firms. I worked for Accenture. I led marketing for a telecom and then landed for about four and a half years with La Quinta Hotel where I led marketing strategy and analytics and of course just amazing travel experience with a very quickly growing brand. I moved on to do some consulting work. And over the course of just under two years, I was able to work with quite a few really interesting startups. And a few of those were by chance supply-demand models. And one of those early on was working with Lyft. And in fact, it was the time that they were kind of transitioning from Zimride to Lyft.
So I think a lot of the insights that came from those projects and specifically with Lyft in conjunction with the travel experience with La Quinta made Flightcar a really nice fit for me. And so I’ve been in Flightcar now for just I think over the Thanksgiving holiday past one year. So I came at an interesting time about 10 months in to the company. And Flightcar launched their third market and I was really able to just come in and start. You have kind of a tremendous ground floor opportunity to start growing this community on both the local supply side as well as nationally and even internationally on the rental side. And since then, we’ve grown so tremendously. We had a year where we were focusing on the three markets and building out the service model and the business model and really found that we got to a good place and accomplished what we wanted to accomplish. And we’re able to raise a round recently in September which enabled us now to add four more markets with more to come even this year. So it’s an exciting time.
Kevin: Very exciting. So on a personal basis, what are the different marketplaces that you use?
Cory: Yeah. I’m obviously just a huge marketplace fan. I think my first exposure was I would say before Zimride and Lyft was probably Airbnb and just continue to be. In fact, I almost never travel and stay at anything other than Airbnb. So I’m a tremendous fan, of course a fan. I love the guys over at Lyft. I spent a lot of time with them. It’s just a really great team starting right from the top and so I’m a fan of what they’re doing on a personal and on a budget and kind of logistic perspectives. There’s just so many I think that are making so much sense now and I think Sidecar and Uber of course. Everyone is trying to find their place. And so, I think they’re all really interesting and I watch them all pretty closely.
Kevin: Very cool. So in terms of marketplaces in general, what are kind of the big trends that you’re following right now? What do you see is kind of being the big themes in the different marketplaces that you use and also at Flightcar?
Cory: Yeah. There’s a lot of interesting trends. I mean like any early growth industry, one of the most interesting things I think for all of us to watch is how these companies move at least in business, how these companies move beyond the early adaptor kind of demographic and psychographic and where do these things go. And Airbnb is certainly getting to a growth point where a large percent of their base is much more the broad population and no longer just the San Francisco Tech folks.
Kevin: Right.
Cory: They’ve gone well beyond that now and so have left Uber and others. We’re definitely kind of crossing that path as well. And so I think as that happens you see really interesting shift in the type of folks that are using your product. And I think being aware that that’s coming and kind of being proactive to think about what that means and how you can continually shape the brand and your messages adds tremendous value.
Kevin: Totally. So tell us, what’s going really well at Flightcar? What are some of the internal campaigns that you’re particularly proud of?
Cory: Yeah. I mean the critical thing for Flightcar as a whole is really expansion. What’s critical for us is to get in to a lot of markets where folks who rent with us are able to rent with us in more locations. We have tremendous success on the supply side. So folks that are parking with us as they travel out are using us time and time again. In fact, our repeat rate is shocking even to me because obviously folks can use us anytime they travel out. Versus when they’re renting, they’re limited to the markets we have available. So strategically, that’s really critical.
Delivering on the service experience is the second thing. We set a high standard and a high expectation and we want to deliver on that in terms of getting people to the airport quickly and delivering a better experience at a better price. And all of that translates of course into constant growth, constant learning on the marketing side. And of course, our focus has been much more heavily on awareness and education and driving new folks into the community. And as we go, of course, we’ll put more emphasis on kind of communicating and building those relationships and deepening those relationships through CRM and retention efforts.
But we’re seeing a tremendous success with some of the things we talked about earlier on press and of course just word of mouth. We had tremendous success before we launched a referral incentive program. And now since we’ve done that, of course, we’ve just seen that much more. And so that’s always a huge part of what we’re going to do. I think it is for a lot of folks on early startups and certainly in the sharing space where certainly if you can’t get people in your community to share word about you, they’re probably not going to share their assets either. So that’s a big part of what’s working for us.
Kevin: In terms of the flip side of the coin, what have been some of the challenges that you guys have faced? Obviously, when you grow as quickly as you guys have, you certainly got pains. So what does that look like?
Cory: Yeah. I think we have them as much as anyone and we have – in the sharing space, what makes Flightcar unique is it’s both an advantage and a challenge. We facilitate the transaction between the person leveraging their asset or letting someone use their asset and the person who’s using it. So what that enables us to do is it enables us to control the service experience and to make sure they’re –when the car doesn’t start or they’d forgotten where the button is on the Prius whether it’s 2 a.m., we’re the ones that get that phonecall. So we have all that experience and we facilitate making it a good experience.
The challenge with that is always of course we owe that experience. It’s very much the onus is on us as an organization to nail that service experience particularly when you’re talking about turning someone’s car around and getting them off to a flight and making sure that we get the car back in time before they arrive back from their trip and then we have it cleaned and repaired. So certainly, the operational side and the logistics and making that connection between having the right car available at the right time for the right person are some of the biggest challenges for the business overall.
Kevin: What percentage of vehicles that you receive do you have to reject because you can’t use them for your customers? The vetting process is probably pretty important.
Cory: It is, it is. On both sides of the equation. The supply side is actually much easier. We’re pretty clear on what our guidelines are. We have 2001 and up vehicles, less than 150,000 miles, obviously no major dents. Car has to be in good working order. No lights on. So it has to be good, functional and safe. We drive every car. At a minimum, we drive to get it washed and we move it around and we check lights. So that piece, I think is actually kind of the easier piece.
The more challenging piece, of course is just getting renters, making sure we’re vetting renters. And we do a background, driving history check. We send emails to owners to let them know that someone has rented their car and just a little bit of information about that person. We make sure that we have kind of strong policies that we enforce around looking after the car like no smoking policy and miles policy. So we’re doing a lot of things to try to build like I think everyone else in the marketplace industry, it’s really about building trust. So we are doing everything we can to build that trust.
Kevin: Right. In terms of like looking back on this year which is coming to a close rather fast, what was the big kind of aha thing that you learned this last year?
Cory: Yeah. That is an interesting question. This last year of course has been really critical for Flightcar in the sense that the first I’d say 8-10 months of the company was expanding into the initial three markets over the next year up until September and was focused on building out those markets and really nailing the service and kind of nailing our growth approach. So this last year has been heavily about that. The last two months, two and half months had been a very different story. That’s been really driving growth and taking the learnings that we’ve had in the prior year and applying it to these new markets that we’re expanding into. We expect to be in 10 by end of this year. Understanding what’s working and what’s not working in the markets that we’re in, learning some things.
I mean one interesting point is just kind of the seasonality factor. We really focus on a travel marketplace where there’s kind of a trading in essence that’s happening where we have to balance supply and demand and people coming in and out of the market. We found Boston out of the three markets that we’re in for the first year and a half was challenged a lot with seasonality. In the winter, we had a tremendous supply of cars but we didn’t have a lot of people coming in to rent cars. Versus in San Francisco and LA, that’s much more balanced throughout the year. So that was an interesting learning as we think about our markets and how we grow. We have to be aware of those kinds of things and be proactive at managing our utilization and balancing the growth on either side of the equation.
Kevin: Right. Well also Boston and Logan Airport specifically are tough areas to drive in. I spent some time in Boston and Boston is a very confusing and complicated city to drive in. Whereas a lot of the cities out west, there is a lot more land and so they can be easier to navigate though San Francisco for an outsider can be confusing. But where the airport is in San Francisco is not as crowded in the sense of being a complicated area to drive in.
Cory: Very true.
Kevin: Yup. So in terms of 2015, what’s the big thing on the horizon for Flightcar in this next year?
Cory: Yeah. It’s all about market expansion and continuing to improve the service and continuing to find some interesting ways that we can really bring the community to life as we talked about. For us being the third party managing this transaction, we have to do the kind of things that we can do to make people feel comfortable in both sides of this equation and so building the community aspect and making more of a connection between people on both sides of the transaction, doing that in a really interesting, social and fun way, bringing out some attributes that I think the brand has intrinsically, which is the trust, the value.
But layering on top of that, the character and the culture that comes with sharing and particularly sharing someone’s car which has your life, has your fuzzy dice in the mirror and the little Hawaiian hula girl on the dash. So bringing some of those things to life and telling the story that makes that – just like Airbnb, I think it’s done a good job with it. It’s telling that story in a way that makes this a more compelling experience which adds an additional value onto the savings. So I think we’re thinking about all three of those things. And that expansion piece of course is really critical to our growth from all angles. So we are excited to continue to get a lot of traction on that front.
Kevin: Very good. Quick question. You are going up against some really large companies. I mean Hertz Enterprise, these are big entrenched companies that spend millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars on replenishing their fleets on an annual basis. Have you had to deal with any lobbying or political pressure from those organizations and then trying to keep you out of certain markets or try to restrict your growth?
Cory: I think we’ve not seen that nearly as much as what some other folks have seen in their space. We’ve kind of managed to be in place. We have a couple of constituents and that is the traditional rental companies and the airports. So we’re working to form the right relationships that make sense with the airports. And of course the airports, the relationships that they have with the big rental brands are really critical to them. So we’re working to find our place there and we’re working hard to really form a good relationship with these entities and make sure that we’re demonstrating to the airport that we can bring it. I think a lot of the airports particularly Dallas Love Field, that’s one we launched in recently, has been really interested in helping us because they see the innovative approach that we’re bringing to the airport and what we’re bringing to the people who travel in and out of the airport.
Kevin: Right.
Cory: So forming those relationships is really critical. As far as the big players, I think they’re certainly nervous about our model that is so competitive from a price perspective that we’re able to beat the price every single time, every car category, every location. And this being such a value-oriented space, they do seem to be pretty nervous about that. So we’ll see how things continue to go. I think of course as those things come out typically it drives some discussion which typically ends up being a good thing.
Kevin: Well, I can see that your service would make them nervous. I mean they’re huge revenue companies. You can provide a higher quality experience at a lower cost and that would certainly be challenging to them. I’m sure of that. Any other stories or fun experiences you can tell us about? Give us one funny story. Give us – what are your experiences that give you guys a chuckle?
Cory: There’s probably so many if I sit back and thought about it. But what I think is kind of one of the funniest things that I always try to reflect on and so many startups I think probably have a similar story not just the transition from being – when I started, it’s a six-person corporate office, six people. There are folks at the lot and 24/7 support staff. But being a small organization, everyone at some point does everything. So I just think about a couple of evenings within the last year where myself and the two founders and the CEO and kind of everyone on the team were moving cars. We moved location here in San Francisco recently and we’re all out kind of driving cars around and moving them to the new location. And when I think back to the early days knowing that those initial phonecalls came right to the CEO and that the cars were picked up and delivered and the experience then being on paper and cutting a physical track and just where we’ve gone from there to today I think is kind of surreal and really funny as you kind of imagine how those things have played out.
Kevin: Yeah. But it’s kind of fun at the same time. In my past, my wife and I started a gourmet pizza chain and we did every job in the restaurants as we were growing our business. What you learn is you learn how everything works. You understand what it is like to do everything from clean toilets to wash windows, to do everything. And that makes a difference. It really makes a difference.
Cory: There’s a tremendous value in that I think in being a leader going forward and I think we definitely see that here.
Kevin: Wonderful. Well, Cory, I really appreciate your time. I cannot wait to try Flightcar. I have not used the service yet but I promise I will be using it in the first quarter of this year because my experience in parking and renting cars had been in general very frustrating. So I’m excited to try something new. So thank you.
Cory: Well, I appreciate it, Kevin. Thanks so much.
Kevin: So that’s it for today’s show everybody. I want to thank Cory Jones from Flightcar for taking the time to chat with us. He’s doing an exceptional job at reinventing the rental car experience. If you want to learn more about Cory and Flightcar, go to our show notes at www.near-me.com. Click on the blog and click on the podcast links. Also if you really liked today’s show, we’d appreciate it if you can go to iTunes and leave us a five-star review and a comment. That really helps us out. Also, make sure to subscribe to the podcast while you’re there.
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