Launch Pad

A test drive that comes to you. A car loan you can close on your mobile device. Wouldn’t it be amazing if buying a car could be this easy? With Shift, it is.

Here’s founder George Arison’s elevator pitch: “Shift is a way to buy and sell cars. If you have a car to sell you come to our website, you submit your car quote, or you download our app and you scan your VIN. And based on that car information that you submit we give you a price quote on that car for how much we think we can sell the car for, and then how much money you would make on that sale. Virtually all of the time you make more than you would if you traded a car into a dealer, and in many cases a lot more than if you trade the car into a dealer. If you want to then work with us we will come out and pick up the car from you and take it away, and you’ll never see the car again, and we’ll do all of the work to get it sold.”

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Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for August is Flyr, founded by Alex Mans.

Elevator Pitch: “What we do at Flyr is we are really good at predicting what the price and availability of specifically airline tickets will be in the future, and we use that knowledge to either allow customers that are booking their travel have more flexibility in doing so on sites like Trip Advisor. Or on the other hand help airlines be better at pricing their airline tickets.”

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Elevator Pitch: “What we do at Flyr is we are really good at predicting what the price and availability of specifically airline tickets will be in the future, and we use that knowledge to either allow customers that are booking their travel have more flexibility in doing so on sites like Trip Advisor. Or on the other hand help airlines be better at pricing their airline tickets.”

Basically, you start to look for plane tickets for an upcoming trip. You find a good price, but you need finalize your plans, and you’re afraid that the price will spike if you wait too long. Here’s Flyr’s solution, in Alex’s words: “On sites like Trip Advisor we give consumers the ability to pay us a small fee, and in return we will guarantee today’s price. So even if the price spikes by the time you make your booking we will cover that price increase.” What kind of small fee? $4 to $20, on average $13. Basically, Flyr is selling insurance on the price of your ticket.

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Andy Rachleff, W'80 isn’t your ordinary VC.

After founding Benchmark, which has among the highest returns in the entire venture industry, he retired. Then he came out of retirement to found Wealthfront, which is bringing all the services of a high end financial advisors to people who could never afford the minimums—all on your mobile phone. Why did he come out of retirement to start a financial services company? “This is going to sound corny, but to do a social good.”

Listen to Andy and Karl Ulrich have an incredible conversation about how both Benchmark and Wealthfront came to be, plus get Andy’s best advice to his product-market fit class at Stanford.

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If you’re a cloud storage geek, then do we have a treat for you!

This interview with Wasabi founder David Friend goes deep into the weeds of how and why they’re offering, in David’s words “exactly the same as Amazon S3 cloud storage except it’s one fifth the price, and six times as fast.” Karl has many probing questions, including: “If I were to pick one of the most Quixotic endeavors ever it would be take on Amazon on price. So what possessed you to take on that goal?” L

isten to their fascinating conversation for a deep dive into how disruption and displacement have changed the history of technology—and why David thinks Wasabi is the next in this venerable line of winners.

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What’s in your tampon? Bet you don’t know—unless, of course, you already use Lola, in which case the answer is 100% organic cotton.

Lola founder Alex Friedman, WG’11 got fired up when she realized that the FDA doesn’t require brands to list the ingredients in their feminine hygiene products. As she explains, “We have developed these habits of looking at our food, looking at our face cream, looking at our shampoo knowing what goes on in our bodies.” She became determined that “We deserve product transparency, we deserve for it to be a relatable brand, a brand that has a service that gets you what you need when you need it”—and Lola was born.

Listen to Alex’s conversation with Karl Ulrich to hear her tremendous enthusiasm for tampons and more—you’ll soon understand why she’s had such good luck raising funds, and getting terrific advisors and investors like celebrity Lena Dunham and the Warby Parker founders (friends from their time at Wharton!) on board.

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