Beba

Minute 8-16
Sobi: We’re identifying. We have interests from other cities around the world that we’re pursuing first while we decide what we want to do for New York.
Cang: In my opinion, it could be idea to launch because in New York City they use bikes a lot..
Sobi: It’s just hard when you’re competing against, the city awarded a contract to another vendor that uses the older generation ofsystems. So, it’s a question whether we want to compete with them, or go into other markets where there is nothing yet.
Cang: Would you rather compete and take the risk in such a metropolitan city?
Sobi: Right now, that’s not in our plan, I really want to do something in New York when the time comes and hopefully we will have that opportunity. We’re just watching what happens with the city contractfirst while we pile it smaller locations.
Cang: So do you have to contact the government?
Sobi: Yes. In most cities where there this has been done with a city contract and a public recurement process. Now our system is unique because we don’t take over public space, we work will regular bike racks. We can actually implement without going through that process, with using a simpler process. Soagain, we can operate that way. I just think that if the city is putting a lot of money and marketing effort into a system, it might not make sense for us to enter that market. On the other hand in another city, maybe they are not backing another solution, we can work together quickly to bring a system. And the other important thing is again; we’re not planning on operating these things for themost part. We focus on the technology and find local departments to do the operations.
Cang: I see. So about your team, with your partners and other members, how do you decide who’s in charge or what role everyone gets throughout this project?
Sobi: Its pretty flat. I lean on different people for their expertise, and their experience really defines the role that they have. It has been acollaborative process. When I feel that there is a gap, that we’re missing a piece, I’ll go and try to find someone else that can fill in that gap. For example, we needed a mechanical engineer to help with an element of lock and get some new ideas about the lock so we brought someone on the project for a few weeks and then we had our initial lock design but we needed to be able to mass produce that so webrought in an engineer to take our prototype design and turn it into something we could maybe manufacture very easily.
Cang: Were one of these people your friend, like your old friend?
Sobi: I feel like we are friends now but no, pretty much everybody working on the project, I’ve met them through the project. Prior to this my network was mostly in the planning world, not in the tech world. SoI’ve had to meet many new people, and a lot of new things.
Cang: So in terms of recruiting these people, what method of promotion do you use?
Sobi: A lot of it is just networking, you need some people in the space, and they will know other people doing this type of work. The first industrial designer we worked with opened up a lot of doors for us and made a lot of introductions. We also havegotten a lot of press and a lot of interest. For example our web designer and our software developers both found the Project and sent me an email, said, “this is really cool and this is something we’d want to work on.” So it is a combination of me networking and people just being interested in the Project and wanting to take part in it.
Cang: About the product itself, do you have a lot of trials ofthe prototype?
Sobi: Yes, we have done extensive prototyping in different versions. The product we have now is very different in any ways from where we started. It has been improved and has been made more cost effective in each step.
Cang: What was the most difficult part when designing the bike?
Sobi: I think we have done well with the bike design, the software design but the electronics of...