The Courier

58:33

From RV Rentals to Fleet Management to AV Insurance

The Courier ·

2026/10/01

Building the world’s biggest RV rental platform would be ambitious enough. But what if you also launched a suite of fleet-management tools, and then an entirely new division insuring autonomous vehicles, with rates that automatically drop whenever self-driving is engaged?That’s the story of The Ride Platform, the company once known as Outdoorsy, which has since launched brands like Wheelbase and Roamly FSD. Once I sat down with Jeff Cavins, the company’s founder and CEO, I realized his ambitions

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38:17

Today's Profitable Mobility Startups Have The "Luxury...

The Courier ·

2026/06/18

It’s been a rocky road for new mobility startups these past few years. Late 2020 until early 2022 saw rock bottom interest rates fuel massive funding for all sorts of new companies: many raised far more cash than their fundamentals ever justified. When rates shot up, many companies languished on the vine. They couldn’t raise new cash, but they had enough in the bank to make their deaths rather drawn out.While that played out, the stronger players clawed their way to profitability. From ridehailing

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48:02

How to Amortize an Ebike, With Wombi CEO Dan Carr

The Courier ·

2026/06/11

Far too many bike shops treat two-wheelers like they’re high-end sporting equipment: sleek and expensive pieces of hardware that are meant to be stored in the closet when not out bounding trails. As electric bicycling takes off, brands are finding they need new pathways to get consumers to treat these machines like something that can replace a car: take it to work, use it to run errands, and feel confident that when something goes wrong, it’ll be easy to fix.Dan Carr, Co-Founder and CEO of Wombi,

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47:08

The McKinsey Center for Future Mobility’s Bold Claims...

The Courier ·

2026/05/21

As the world transitions to autonomous mobility, consumer uptake rests on four core pillars: affordability, accessibility, safety and sustainability. In a bold new report, Ani Kelkar and Darius Scurtu, from our partners at the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, argue that AVs will perform so well, that they will in fact be deflationary, driving down the cost of transportation and disrupting car ownership.In today’s podcast, Jonah Bliss chats with Ani and Darius, as they get into why they think

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32:18

Could a New Mayor Transform LA’s Streets, Housing and...

The Courier ·

2026/05/07

Los Angeles has always been the city of the future, offering the world a vision of what’s to come, for both better and worse. Lately, while the region has still delivered on some audacious goals — building dozens of new transit stations, transitioning the nation’s largest municipally owned utility to green energy while maintaining reasonable rates — many feel local leaders have come up short when it comes to the day-to-day items that make a city feel livable. Streets, even when they have new bike

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43:28

Reverse Logistics: So Hot Right Now! Uber's Head of...

The Courier ·

2026/04/23

Third party delivery has gone on a wild ride over the last decade, going from an urban niche to a worldwide must-have. Along the way, the array of items that consumers can get at the push of a button has grown from restaurant meals, to grocery items, to just about any SKU you can dream of: hardware, toys, liquor, electronics, you name it.Beryl Sanders, Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships, has led that charge, scaling up Uber Eats into novel verticals with new merchant relationships. Jonah

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47:19

AVs' Impact on Cities, Mobility & Delivery

The Courier ·

2026/04/09

As AVs start to impact everything from traditional ridesharing, to mobility more broadly, to even delivery and city-scale systems, it's time to think about how public and private players can best prepare for this new autonomous future.In today's podcast episode, Jonah Bliss and Harry Campbell (founder of The Rideshare Guy and The Driverless Digest) tear into these heady trends, tease which of them will get center stage at Curbivore, and retrace how the industry has evolved since the pandemic.Also on

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37:04

This Fighter Pilot Knows Why Autonomous Machines...

The Courier ·

2026/03/26

There’s nothing worse than an almost perfect machine. If a machine misbehaves consistently, users will know not to trust it. But if it works right 99.9% of the time, by the time it fails, most humans will have given up on closely monitoring it. Professor Missy Cummings knows exactly how high those stakes can be — having famously served as one of the U.S. Navy’s first female fighter pilots, before moving on to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and now serving as Director of George

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43:01

How to Build a Winning Coalition for Complete Streets

The Courier ·

2026/03/12

Los Angeles is many things, but it’s definitely a town where diffuse power structures make it difficult to build political movements. That’s doubly true when you’re asking both local citizens and elected officials to buck the status quo, and reconsider how they get around the city. That’s why Streets for All’s success at building a coalition for safe streets and multi-modal transport systems is so inspiring, while ideally serving as a template for similar movements nationwide.In today’s podcast, I

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42:01

Can NYC Build a Sustainable Mobility Startup...

The Courier ·

2026/02/27

When it comes to sustainable mobility startups, New York City finds itself in a peculiar position. Blessed with a legacy of strong public transit infrastructure, local politicos have crafted an ecosystem that encourages all sorts of clean transport and logistics innovation: bikesharing and cargo bikes, waterborne freight and delivery lockers, to name a few.And while these urban conditions spawn all sorts of fascinating startups that work in the Tri-state, those same companies then struggle when they

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49:25

Are Rising Insurance Premiums Eating the Mobility...

The Courier ·

2026/02/12

Some days it feels like insurance is devouring the entire mobility economy, with rising premiums taking down transportation options new and old alike. Auto insurance premiums have jumped a whopping 64% in the past five years, driven partially by a labor shortage but even more by the fact that cars have become computers on wheels, and your average sensor + chip stack doesn’t take kindly to being in a fender bender. Re-calibration of driver assistance systems in late model cars has quickly climbed to

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41:56

A Fast Casual Restaurateur's "Love-Hate Relationship"...

The Courier ·

2026/01/29

Your favorite podcast — Zag Talk — is back for an all new season. Today we kick things off by chatting with Seth Cohen, Co-Founder of Sweetfin, a 15-unit fast casual restaurant chain focused on poké, raw fish and bowls. Oftentimes on the podcast we talk about delivery innovations — new robotics, product launches, policy changes, etc. — but Seth takes us through the nitty-gritty of making delivery actually work for a real business. And no surprise: it’s not easy! While “the economics used to be very

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37:52

Can Sustainable Delivery Be a Sustainable Business?...

The Courier ·

2025/11/27

Over the past few months we’ve had the distinct pleasure of digging deep in the world of sustainable delivery: we’ve kicked the tires on the new Honda Fastport, snuck in to Amazon’s NYC equad operations and studied how cities and third party delivery networks are working together to get couriers onto e-bikes.That’s all well and good… but those are huge companies that have big bucks to spend on pilots (or worse yet, PR stunts masquerading as pilots.) What about the every day businesses that want to

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31:46

Lyft’s Not Content With Second Place in the Robotaxi...

The Courier ·

2025/11/13

As robotaxis race towards becoming a regular part of our mobility landscape, it at first looked like Lyft had no interest in joining the competition, instead letting deep pocked competitors like Waymo and Uber push ahead (while wisely avoiding the costly mistakes that took down others like Cruise and Argo AI.) But in the past year, the pink mustache has emerged as a serious AV contender, striking up meaningful partnerships with the likes of May Mobility, Mobileye, Nexar, Tensor, Benteler, Baidu and

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37:29

Can Corporations Nudge Workers Towards Greener...

The Courier ·

2025/10/30

A city can spend all the money in the world on making its streets multi-modal, on transit investments and the like, but if all the jobs are still located out in the burbs, commuters will likely opt to stick with their cars. That’s why corporate mobility is so important — the interplay between governments and employers that can nudge workers onto greener mobility options.For this episode of Zag Talk, Jonah Bliss chats with Maria Angelica, an urban planner and consultant at Factual about the

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47:07

Senator Scott Wiener Discusses YIMBY's Big Win: SB79

The Courier ·

2025/10/16

Dense housing and public transit: two great tastes that taste better together. You’d think this classic combo would be a no-brainer, as building mid-rise housing helps with affordability and locating it near rail stations lets folks cut down on commuting costs, while putting more commuters near each metro stop leads to improved transit ridership. Talk about a virtuous cycle!And yet in California, and the nation as a whole, this has been an oddly hard sell. You’ll see rapid transit stations, some

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43:19

Can Portable Benefits Improve Gig Work? With...

The Courier ·

2025/10/02

Managing policy for DoorDash is no mean feat; the globe-spanning 3PD often finds itself interfacing with cities across all sorts of issues: traffic / road safety, merchant relationships, courier behavior and more (and as the company continues to push into new territory — like drones or its in-house delivery bot — the regulatory interactions will only grow.)That’s why we were delighted to sit down with Max Rettig, Vice President, Head of Global Public Policy at DoorDash, to understand how the company

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54:13

Getting Ebikes Into the Hands of Hard-Working Couriers

The Courier ·

2025/09/18

Delivery is tough work, especially in dense, urban environments. Couriers and policymakers often find themselves pulled between competing priorities: cash-strapped workers often don’t have the resources to invest in a good e-bike, driving them to cheaper alternatives that aren’t reliable enough to get the job done and are prone to dangerous battery fires.That’s where Whizz comes in, offering courier-oriented e-bike rentals, while bundling in tricky things like maintenance and charging. And while

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35:38

Is Hydrogen Finally the Fuel of the Future? MH2Fund...

The Courier ·

2025/07/31

Hydrogen is having its moment—not because of hype, but because the economics and demand finally line up. Heavy industry, shipping, and aviation are desperate for clean fuels, governments are throwing serious subsidies behind hydrogen production, and technologies that once seemed speculative are now commercially viable. For early-stage investors, this isn’t a science experiment—it’s a chance to back the picks and shovels of the next energy gold rush.On today’s episode of Zag Talk, Jonah Bliss joined

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51:47

You Want People That Found Something Secret - Steve...

The Courier ·

2025/07/17

On this week’s episode of Zag Talk, I’m joined by Steve Greenfield, General Partner at Automotive Ventures. Steve knows the mobility industry inside and out, having jumped from Manheim, Autotrader and TrueCar to investing in promising startups like Axion Ray, JOCO, Recurrent and SparkCharge.Steve shares his thoughts on where the industry is headed, but also what he’s found makes for a great entrepreneur, including honesty, integrity, EQ as well as IQ, and the feeling that “you want people that have,

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