Will Coleman
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
At Alto, we're elevating rideshare for both drivers and passengers. We offer a really differentiated service through W2 employees and company-owned vehicles. So at Alto, you always know exactly what you're going to get, a safe, clean, high-quality ride every single time.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
That is essentially the case. Uber and Lyft, we think, are the contra of safe, clean, consistent. Our brand was always built to go head to head against the big names and to compete directly against them in every major city. Are you also, to some degree, a luxury product? We call it an accessible luxury.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
We want it to be something that feels luxurious, but that is, for most people, a couple dollars more. It might be because you really value your safety and the type of vehicle that you're in or the type of person that you're in the vehicle with or... that you just value the consistency, knowing exactly what you're going to get. So we see it a lot like a cup of Starbucks coffee.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
You can get a much cheaper cup of coffee, but most people choose that for that consistency and quality every single time.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Yeah, we're in six markets across the U.S., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Washington, D.C., I did not hear New York City there. Why not? That's a big market. New York is a very expensive market. It's a very competitive market. It's very big and it's a huge opportunity. But as efficient and maybe conservative allocators of capital, we want to perfect the product.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Yeah, we're not going to be running any premortems at all. Because why? I guess I disagree with Gary. I mean, if you're constantly focused on the downside, then I think you're probably not focused enough on the upside. I often tell my team, you know, the money-making machine hasn't been built yet.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
If you're in a company like Google or Apple or Amazon, the money-making machine has been built and you're just there to make it better. Here, you're really building something from scratch. Honestly, the proposition of failure is almost... Startups fail every day, probably 99% of them. You're already going into this with an understanding that Failure is the most likely outcome.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
So we could sit around and talk about that for hours, days, but we'll never make any progress. It's paralyzing. Instead, what we talk about and what I focus on is, you know, how do we just get to the next decision point? How do we just get to tomorrow? How do we just make this incrementally better now?
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
It would be devastating. Yeah, I mean, because we've been on the brink of that before. In COVID, I mean, I'm not kidding. We lost 95% of our revenue in a day. We were more agile during that period of time than we had ever been.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
And the impact of that was that many of those products that we built that were the ones that succeeded, which was maybe a 10th of them, but the ones that did are now 20, 30% of our revenue. Incremental things that we didn't have before the pandemic have made our business more robust, more resilient.