April 8, 2024 • 48 mins
Tech companies today are building bigger and bigger campuses. Think about Google's sprawling complex in Mountain View, Facebook's expansive headquarters in Menlo Park, and Amazon's new HQ2 in Arlington, VA. These are not just workplaces; they are mini-cities, pulsating with thousands of employees every day. Just trying to get around campus becomes a rather daunting task and that’s a problem that Jeral Poskey, founder of Swyft Cities, thinks about a lot:
Swyft Cities was founded in 2019 by some Google Alums, behind the real estate and transportation programs for Google Campuses! The problem they were trying to solve? How do you move massive amounts of people in an increasingly growing campus?
Jeral envisions a future where getting around tech campuses and cityscapes is as seamless as hopping on a ski lift, but with the urban flair of downtown gondola rides.
Swift Cities isn't just about easing commutes; it's about transforming how we interact with our urban environments, making them more accessible, sustainable, and enjoyable. As Jeral puts it, it's about creating a 'Goldilocks density' of urban living, where communities thrive without the clutter and pollution of cars.
Helpful links:
- Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-35-why-swim-when-you-can-fly/id1687567073?i=1000645351345
- TechCrunch Win & Pitch
- https://www.holmessolutions.com/whoosh/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/america-parking-lot-spaces-addiction-economy-housing-costs-inflation-2023-4
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:17):
Tech companies today arebuilding bigger and bigger
campuses.
Think about Google's sprawlingcomplex in mountain view.
Facebook's expansiveheadquarters in Menlo park.
And Amazon's new HQ, two inArlington, Virginia.
These are not just workplaces.
There are many cities pulsatingwith thousands of employees
(00:38):
every day.
Just trying to get around campusbecomes a rather daunting task.
And that's a problem that GeraldPolski, founder of swift cities.
Thinks about.
A lot.
Jeral Poskey (00:51):
We're swift cities, we're creating these
places, we're creating anexperience for people.
And the whoosh transportationsystem is.
the mechanism to get that movingand get that started
Swift cities was founded in 2019by some Google looms.
Including Jerell.
The were behind the real estateand transportation programs for
Google campuses.
(01:12):
The problem they were trying tosolve.
How do you move massive amountsof people in an increasingly
growing campus?
we've got to solve a transportation problem that's
bigger than one we at Google hadever faced before
Jerell envisions a future wheregetting around tech campuses and
city scapes is as seamless ashopping on a ski lift, but with
(01:34):
the urban flair of downtowngondola rides.
a swift city is a place you can get where you want
to go, when you want to go,anywhere in the area, on demand.
And it's just a good place tobe.
Swift cities.
Isn't just about easingcommutes.
It's about transforming how weinteract with our urban
environments.
(01:54):
Making them more accessible,sustainable, and enjoyable.
So join us on things havechanged podcast.
As we dive into how swift citiesis revolutionizing urban
mobility.
Shikher Bhandary (02:44):
Our listeners at THC might know this.
Jed and I used to live inPhoenix, Arizona.
And while I was there, I workedat Intel in their semiconductor
fabs.
And anyone who's.
aware of it, or even knows howthey look, they're basically
massive pieces of land where youhave four to five factories and
(03:07):
that's your campus.
And each fab is as big as a citysquare.
And close to 10, 000 people workdaily.
So it was interesting that, myshift on a daily basis used to
be 6am to 3pm.
And so for me to actually get towork.
I had to actually reach there at5 30.
(03:29):
The biggest reason why I had todo that was because I could not
find any parking because therewere just cars everywhere.
So you have 10, 000 peopleworking in this fab and everyone
drives their own car, parkinglot is humongous, goes on for a
mile, right?
(03:50):
So that's just one issue.
There's another one where oftenyou have to move from one fab to
another multiple times in a day,because maybe your work is in a
different factory, but in thesame campus.
So again, you either walk for 30minutes you drive your own car
(04:11):
or you take the buggy and thereare very few buggies.
So this was a pain point and itis literally searching for an
easier, faster way of solution.
To move people within a densesetting the fab or the factories
that, you know a lot of themanufacturing plants face
(04:32):
similar issues.
So today on things have changed.
We are super excited to hostGerald Poskey, CEO of swift
cities, a company with a reallynovel mobility solution where
they offer a modular andscalable gondola system.
For a sustainable way ofconnecting our cities at the
(04:55):
fraction of the cost.
So think ski gondola lifts, butin the city downtown, right?
So it's just a novel idea.
It's getting a lot of traction.
So it's super interesting,Gerald.
And, thanks for being on ThingsHave Changed.
Jeral Poskey (05:13):
You're welcome.
A really cool concept you havebecause everywhere around my
world transportation, mobility,real estate, the world is
changing.
And it's an area that has been alittle slow to change and a
little slow to embrace change.
And now it's about to happen ina big way that tidal wave of
change is coming from multipledirection and we're about to see
(05:36):
just a quantum shift in the waywe think about transportation
and the way we think about landuse and real estate.
I think your example is one ofmany that are out there where
people are scratching theirheads because they don't know.
What worked in the past is notworking now and is not going to
work in the future.
There's a lot of change comingand not all of it was in the
right direction.
And so I think we have asolution that is going to be,
(06:00):
fill a need that is a gapinghole among everything that's out
there.
Shikher Bhandary (06:04):
absolutely.
And everyone's searching formore walkable, denser settings
where you don't have as manycars.
And I think one thing thatchanged with COVID is, suddenly
I remember, Jed lives in NewYork right now, I used to live
there and they just shut carsoff from certain streets because
you wanted open settings, openrestaurants.
(06:24):
And then people really loved nothaving the cars on streets.
It added to.
The area it added to theBrooklyn neighborhood.
So before jumping into theapplications there, I'd love to
understand how this idea wasbrewing in your past experience
within Google and how that kindof came about.
Jeral Poskey (06:45):
Yes, it starts with a problem.
Now, this wasn't just an ideafor ideas sake.
I've been in transportation avery long time, but when I moved
into Google's real estatedivision, that was the first
time I was on the customer sideof the table.
And so many light bulbs went offseeing it from that perspective.
And then you bring it to apoint, and this was pre COVID
where Google had realized thatthe, Infamous history of Google
(07:08):
would be many people live in SanFrancisco and they take one of
the many frequent buses down forthose not from the area.
That's a 45 minute ride, aminimum on the perfect
conditions, but can easily pushtwo hours on a bad day.
And it was clear that employeeswere not enjoying that commute
(07:28):
anymore.
I think there was a time whenpeople said, wow, these buses
are great.
Glad it's so glad I'm notdriving.
And then as more and moreoptions became open to more
walkable parts in San Franciscois going through some.
Pretty fun times of more techstartups moving to up there,
people said, Yeah, why am Ispending this much time on a
commute?
And Google's campuses, Googlehad moved into just typical
(07:51):
suburban office parks.
That wasn't intentional.
It's just how life had been.
You had to have a small officeand then you had to have a
medium office and then a biggeroffice.
And as they were getting biggerand bigger, Google had realized
the trend is not toward more bigoffice parks.
It doesn't matter how many cafesand gyms and ball pits and all
the wonderful Google things youput in there.
Nobody wants that kind of lifeanymore, where you have, you
(08:13):
live in one place and you worksomewhere else and there's this
big separation.
We at Google were on a path tosay, The new campuses are going
to be different and they'regoing to be what you said people
are looking for.
They're going to be walkable,you're going to be able to live
nearby, you don't have to livein your office, but it's
convenient, it's close, it'sconnected, and there's open
(08:33):
space, and there's restaurants,and there's entertainment, and
all of the things you can live alife very comfortably.
The biggest problem when you dosomething at that scale is
transportation.
So the answer became, we've gotto solve a transportation
problem that's bigger than onewe at Google had ever faced
before.
(08:55):
Originally, Project Swift wasout there to find what's that
new technology that exists orthat is in development that will
solve our problems.
And there's autonomous vehicles,there's things in tunnels, all
sorts of things were comingalong.
And we thought the answer wasgoing to be one of those.
We looked at, I believe, 200different options there, and it
(09:17):
turns out none of them aresolving the one to five mile
transportation problem for denseareas in a way that makes sense.
Many of them are focused onthese sort of Almost mythical 20
mile commute, commutes.
It's 1%, 2 percent of the peopleare actually making those
commutes and yet we're designinghigh speed corridors and flying
(09:37):
cars and things to solve that.
When really 60 percent of peopleare making their trips that are
6 miles, 5 miles or less.
And so we're looking at thatsaying none of that self driving
cars are tied up in traffic.
The stations you need for a lotof these other solutions don't
make sense for a short trip.
By the time you build those andget in, the effort to get in and
(09:58):
out of a station.
And we knew we needed somethingthat would lower costs, but also
make sense.
The development better for thepeople who are there.
So yes, you've described it aslooking like a ski gondola.
And at the first glance, that'sabsolutely right.
But there's a few things thatare different that make all the
difference in how it works, bothfor the urban setting as well,
(10:20):
just for the rider themselves.
So number one, a ski resortgondola is a giant rope or cable
that moves constantly.
The vehicles are very dumb.
They just clamp on, they followthe same path between two
points.
The number one change is withWoosh, the transportation
system, the name for the system.
With Woosh, the cable's notmoving.
(10:42):
So now the vehicles are drivingthemselves along the cable.
And they're autonomous.
And because there is a switchingsystem within Woosh, now they
don't have to follow the samepath.
Each vehicle can go origin todestination in whatever path
makes sense.
So now that you're notrestricted to that straight line
up a mountain, You can have aninterconnected network, so you
(11:05):
can go between not just twostations, five, ten, fifty,
whatever the network requires.
You can cover that area with anetwork of cables that are low
cost and add capacity above theground.
From the user's perspective,it's like the perfect Uber.
(11:26):
You walk up, vehicles are keptwaiting for you, you get in, you
tell it where to go, it's goingto take you to that destination
that you picked.
There's no stoplights.
There's no stop signs.
As you pass stations along theway, those are off on sightings.
So you're not stopping atanything until you get to your
destination.
Your vehicle pulls off to theside, you leave the vehicle, and
now it's free to be reroutedanywhere else in the network
(11:48):
it's needed.
So you've got this userperspective.
It's the perfect Uber with anincredible view.
From the customer's perspective,it's the cheapest way to add
capacity in a dense environment.
From a city perspective, itadds.
The right kind of density.
It creates these districts orneighborhoods that are bustling
(12:10):
with activity and places to be.
And then from a globalperspective, it's just the most
efficient way to move.
And it is the most efficient wayto build out our cities is with
this level of density that wecan enable.
Jed Tabernero (12:24):
There's super long lead times for these
massive traditionalinfrastructure projects.
I think what I love about thissolution is that you assume that
the other pieces oftransportation are still part of
that mix.
And so the modularity allows forit to be, super customizable to
where you're going to build it.
Jeral Poskey (12:44):
We had built our first prototype here at a Google
warehouse in Mountain View.
And in February, 2020, wedisassembled it and moving it to
a bigger site in San Jose formore testing and to do more with
it.
In March, 2020, COVID broke out.
Everything shut down.
And a few times during Covid Iwould go over to the warehouse
and see all the parts that hadbeen moved over.
(13:06):
And it was like a giant set fromikea.
You felt like you could, I evenone time was like, can I pick
these things up myself?
Because it's, here are thepolls.
Here's the bases.
Here's the top.
Here's the cable.
Here's the trolley.
All the pieces are there.
The tops can vary depending onthe angle of a turn.
But the pole and the pole'sheights may vary a little, but
(13:29):
it's primarily, it's a kit.
It's something that you feellike you can take out of a box.
And put together with just minorcustomization along the way.
So it's exactly that.
And then the speed ofimplementation, because you're
keeping things lighter, as weknow, in the Silicon Valley
electronics world, these thingstend to success builds on exit
(13:49):
on success.
So because it's
Shikher Bhandary (13:51):
Momentum is
Jeral Poskey (13:52):
are smaller.
Yeah.
And Now you have moreflexibility of where you put the
post.
So you don't have to move someunderground utility or do
something else.
You can just move the post andyou make the cable a little bit
longer to avoid that thing.
Now your installation time isfaster.
And because it's faster, it cankeep up with, say, the pace of
real estate development aroundhere.
(14:12):
It can be based on data thatexists today in the near future
instead of having to be builtfor some hypothetical 20 to 30
year future forecast thattraditional systems always had
to go.
It in the transportation world,you had to do it.
You had to make your besteffort.
But you always knew that it wasgoing to be horribly wrong in
the end because it was so farout.
And now we can do things in atwo to three year cycle based on
(14:35):
activity that you know ishappening and you can get there
in time to make a difference.
So yeah just speed, smallness,modularity gives you flexibility
that leads to speed.
And it's just this really selfsupporting cycle.
Jed Tabernero (14:50):
You know what also I learned from listening to
the podcast that you werealready on and some of the
materials read the best insiderarticle, by the way, a great
information on parking there.
So we'll link that in thecomments here.
But one thing I learned aboutthis as well, beyond the
modularity is that, man, it isreally expensive to build
parking lots.
And now thinking back, cause Iwas mentioning that I worked in
(15:12):
finance before this, and one ofmy spaces was a CapEx.
And we had an infrastructureproject in HQ2, Amazon had one
in DC.
And I remember there were aboutsix buildings that we were
building in HQ2, the verybeginning.
And, they all had their variedcosts associated with those
buildings to build thesebuildings.
(15:32):
One of them was little smallerthan the rest, but it was still
above 75 million.
Okay.
And what I found out about thatone piece was that it was this
massive parking structure thatwe were building.
And in my head I was justthinking, that's an insane
amount of cost for some placethat people are going to go
drive their cars into and leaveit for the rest of the day.
(15:53):
You know what I mean?
Because we have a train systemin D.
C.
And it was just interesting forme to think like the solution
that we could think about forour next HQ, our next
headquarters, where we're goingto put, I don't know, 60, 70,
000 corporate workers, it'sgoing to be a big parking lot.
So little bit on the cost of aparking lot there.
That's insane.
That's a lot of money.
Jeral Poskey (16:14):
Yes.
And it, my audience oftendoesn't know that.
And I forget that fact.
And so I'll get asked maybe Aninvestor or someone, how much
does a system cost?
And we'll say, one for acorporate campus, 25 to$50
million, and their eyes get bigof how expensive this is and who
would ever pay that?
I've spent$300 million on aparking structure before.
(16:36):
This is a drop
Jed Tabernero (16:37):
Oh my gosh.
Jeral Poskey (16:38):
And.
Yeah, and then also, when youthink about, if you think about
the placemaking and trying tomake that campus really
effective, more space went intoparking than it did for the
people.
Your typical desk space in acorporate environment is going
to be 250 square feet peremployee.
Parking surface parking, 400square feet a person.
(17:00):
Garage parking, a little denser,is around 300 to 330.
More space gets spent on thecars than on the people who are
actually doing the work.
It's a system that the dollarsand cents are aligned, the
motivation is aligned.
But it's a constraint when youhave to have all of that space
and half of your space is goingto cars, your ability to build a
(17:20):
wonderful walkable environmentgoes away.
And if you think about theplaces that you probably enjoy
in Washington, D.
C.
I think of here in my area inCalifornia, you've got Palo
Alto, Mountain View, thesewonderful downtowns.
Those wouldn't be wonderfuldowntowns if each one of those
buildings had to be surroundedby its own parking lot.
And yet density is key.
(17:41):
And we've been talking abouttransportation with hints on
real estate.
I'm going to turn ourconversation to real estate
because the two are sointerlinked and very few people
know that, cities, thesewalkable areas, Mountain View,
Palo Alto, other places, Theywouldn't exist and couldn't
exist if everybody was coming bycar.
So they typically have a trainstation nearby or something that
(18:05):
brings in people that gives thatability to say, here's how big I
would have been if everybodydrove.
And now if I can get a few morepeople, now I get a few more
people in my shop.
And even if I cut back onparking, now my shop is closer
to the next shop and the nextshop and the next shop.
And now you've created thisneighborhood that just wasn't
possible when it was all builtaround cars.
(18:26):
And these are the places peoplelike, and it's this trend that
we saw pre, even pre COVID fromGoogle to say, people want to be
in these wonderful connectedplaces.
And now the rest of the realestate world has woken up very
suddenly to say, these boominglarge mixed use developments are
happening everywhere.
Massive growth across the Southand Southwest of the U S and
(18:48):
even to the world.
That is the trend.
And people have woken up that'sthe, where the demand is and
that's where the economics are.
The biggest problem to makethose happens is often
transportation.
Shikher Bhandary (18:58):
Yeah.
On that point, it's so tightlylinked.
If it's a bit more densesetting, this multi land use
projects and these initiativesthat we are seeing more often
now that is encouraging acertain restaurant.
To get some business or a bakeryor a shop flower shop, you're in
(19:19):
that vicinity So it becomes partof the culture which kind of
then, flourishes Way better thanjust concrete, parking lot,
building, car, go back homeafter work.
So there's nothing that reallymakes you want to stay in that
area.
So
Jeral Poskey (19:36):
One of the things I learned at Google, let's say
you were building a small officebuilding and it was going to
have some ground floor retailand you have a VP of retail
whose job it is to go fill thatspace.
He's going to go out and get aMcDonald's, a Taco Bell, a
subway these entities that canmaximize the dollars per square
foot.
Of that real estate.
That's what you do.
You squeeze those in and that'syour maximum revenue.
(19:59):
Now let's say you're building 4million square feet of real
estate and 3000 housing unitsand all of these wonderful
things going on.
You hire a VP of retail andshe's going to go out and get
the little fuss shop, the littleneighborhood sandwich shop, the
yoga studio, the bike store, andmaybe he goes to the CEO and he
says, what are you doing?
You're getting, 30 percent lessrevenue of retail than this
(20:22):
other guy over here.
What are you thinking?
And then she looks back andsays, yeah, but did you see the
office?
The vacancy rates are lower.
The rental rates are higher.
Those apartments are flying offthe shelf.
We've had to raise the renttwice, just to satisfy the
demand for these units becausethere you're not maximizing.
For the retail per se, you'remaximizing for the overall
(20:43):
entity, and this place makingtruly has value, and we then
take that one more level thatwas from a building to a
development.
Now, if you look at a district,a subsection of the city that
can be all interconnected, we dothe same and what a swift city
is.
I should cover that separately.
A swift city, it's going to bevery visible.
(21:06):
You see the gondolas, you can'tavoid seeing who's around the
terrain, but you also will knowseeing it that a swift city is a
place you can get where you wantto go, when you want to go,
anywhere in the area, on demand.
Easily, more easily than in acar.
And it's just a good place tobe.
(21:27):
And when we apply that, we say,yeah, the accountant might not
put a stop at the museum ormight say, boy, there's not
enough writers at the park tojustify a station.
You go back to that exampleabout.
Which businesses do you bringin?
You want to create anenvironment where people just
know I can get where I want togo.
It's a great place to be.
And I've got that density.
(21:48):
That's not scary density, butsometimes called the Goldilocks
density.
It just feels right.
That's the swift city that weare building.
Shikher Bhandary (21:58):
That's awesome.
And can you break down theproduct aspect of your company?
You mentioned the Woosh.
It's not hardware that yourcompany builds, but you partner
up with teams and.
It's not just the hardware side.
It's a software side, as well asthe operation side.
Running infrastructure requireshaving an operation know how.
(22:18):
Yeah.
Jeral Poskey (22:19):
You're right.
It is a full value chain, a fullindustry that we've lined up to
be supportive.
And number one, the hardwarethat we described and what and
you picture is Woosh.
And it was developed underProject Swift, but it was
developed by Home Solutions downin New Zealand.
And having a Large engineeringpartner to do design and
(22:41):
manufacturing.
At first, I, my first instinctwould have been to have that in
house, but it turns out havingsomebody with massive resources
and lots of experience workingwith a third party has been
tremendous.
And then from there, now there'sa value chain to go through.
The next most important piece,which is our piece is the
autonomy.
How do you move?
(23:02):
Dozens to hundreds topotentially thousands of
vehicles simultaneously across anetwork at good speed at close
headways where you're movinglots of people.
The reason that trains are bigis because they can't happen
very often.
So you better get a lot ofpeople into them.
The problem is reverse for us.
Vehicles are smaller.
You better move them veryfrequently, very close together.
(23:23):
So that's the autonomy piecethat we do.
And then it moves intoimplementation.
We've been working withconstruction companies, design
and engineering companies, someof the names you may recognize,
AECOM, Flatiron Construction,and then the finance piece and
operations.
You're right, the key, andoftentimes the literal customer
might actually be the financegroup, not the developer
(23:46):
themselves, but they may becontracting with the finance
group who's going to take theresponsibility.
For building it out making surethat the money flows in all
directions.
And so the operations plenaryAmericas is a group that we've
been working with on a number ofprojects.
And then that takes you tooperations.
And so we're not there to cleanthe vehicles.
We're not there to wipe thefloors on the stations, but we
(24:06):
are there for the overall systemcontrol and system management
and system operations.
From a business modelperspective it's pretty, pretty
great because even during thepreliminary phase, during your
sales cycle, you do get paid forstudies, but then primarily you
get the hardware sale at thebeginning.
So you get revenue in a bigchunk as the system comes
(24:28):
online.
And then through the software,through the autonomy, now
there's recurring revenue.
And that tends to have anincrease that's exponential as
systems get bigger, you get morewriters.
Your costs are only linear inexpansion, but your ridership is
above linear.
It's exponential and it'sgrowth.
And so that's where you want tobe as some upfront revenue, even
(24:50):
during the sales cycle, then abig chunk early in the project
life and then recurring revenuealong the way.
Shikher Bhandary (24:58):
Gotcha.
Yep.
We are like I'm a supply chain.
Person, Mr.
Jed here is finance operations,infrastructure, CapEx, that's
his lingo and day to day.
So when we see suchinfrastructure projects, the
first thing we go is, wait, howis it happening?
What is, take aside the hardwareand the software, but what is
(25:19):
happening?
How do you make this work?
So I think that's just themindset that we have, because
what we've noticed in our,different experiences.
Are that's where the pain pointsare, you have a great system,
like automated driving, you havea great software, but how are
you going to make it work whatare the operation steps you need
(25:42):
to make sure that it's adoptedby the public, so those are key
steps.
Yeah,
Jeral Poskey (25:50):
surprises me some of the questions I get from,
especially the investmentcommunity in Silicon Valley, I
guess they've been exposed to alot of startups who have neat
ideas and don't understand howto put things into practice
because they ask questions thatto me were obvious and no
brainers.
And so number one, it's broadlyto build out the team within the
company that can deliver fullprojects.
(26:12):
It's not just about thetechnology.
So for us, it starts withRegulations.
Did you design according toregulations that exist, or are
you just designing fortheoretical and you're going to
figure out the regulationslater?
We've designed for regulationsthat exist today.
Thankfully, some regulationswere changed in 2021 and
everything we do.
Matches U.
(26:33):
S.
And is aligned withinternational standards.
Then you say, as you said, howdo you get permission to do
this?
We fit under the same structurethat cable TV companies and
phone companies did to put post.
And cables in public right awaydown the street, put them in and
service them.
(26:54):
So you're following thatpattern.
And then I recruited one of thepeople who I've worked with for
10 years.
Now, Katrine is one of our cofounders.
I call her the city whisper.
She knows how to get cities tosay yes.
And often if you have,
Shikher Bhandary (27:07):
that's the hardest part.
Jeral Poskey (27:09):
And so there's a magic to that and bringing in
sort of our support and also alot of local involvement to make
sure you've got that support.
And then once you're approved togo forward, the clay is another
co founder.
He is a, I say, project managerextraordinaire, but.
What it is he's, we've workedwith a ton of great project
managers, but he like projectmanagers, project management,
(27:33):
and understands how to put aprocess around project
management so that the nextproject is better than this one.
And the one after that is betterthan that one.
And so you see that, havingenough exposure in my career to
say, okay, these are the peoplewho stand out and these are the
people who can get things done.
Shikher Bhandary (27:49):
What you said is so accurate.
I was watching like a video andreading some articles about how
the most important person inthese big telecom companies, big
infrastructure companies are notlike the CEO, but the person
that interacts with theregulators.
On a side note, how has it beenworking with that sort of
(28:12):
challenge, right?
The regulatory challenge whereit's not zero one where for a
customer on SAS platform thatthey are like, Oh, this is a
better product.
I'm going to jump into this.
It's not that it's more, youhave to follow certain standards
and get the approvals.
(28:32):
from, city council, stategovernments to actually gain
traction.
So how does that play out?
Jeral Poskey (28:40):
Yes, and so far it has been going far better than I
had expected.
I've been in this industry along time.
I would have expected moreresistance 20 years ago, cities
really were and agencies reallywere focused just on buses and
trains, and now they have wokenup that the world is changing
underneath their feet and theybetter.
(29:00):
and move forward.
So I think they're very openminded toward new solutions,
especially solutions thatsupport the existing transit
networks that are already inplace.
And then at the city level,number one, we don't go where
there's not a problem and wedon't go where we're not wanted.
So we would take a map and ifyou, there's single family homes
and people living alone, justput a bigger edX, you're not
(29:20):
going there.
Don't even try.
And then you say, where is theproblem?
And.
Cities and residents anddevelopers are actually
surprisingly aligned on thingsthey want.
The individual resident wantsless traffic and they want lower
taxes, but they want a greatcity.
And so the city staff knows theyneed to bring in generally new
(29:41):
development and new activity tomake that happen and developers
are saying, hey, if you canimprove that, I'm happy to do
it.
At least if you're in busygrowing areas.
So there's a surprising amountof alignment between the
interests If you can, workthrough a few things.
And I think the not in mybackyard, which, it's a literal,
we often use that just as ageneral pejorative term, if it's
(30:02):
your backyard and there's agondola going overhead, I
totally agree.
You can speak up and say, youdon't want that to happen.
We don't go there.
Going back to your question isjust, I have been surprised at
how open minded and willing toconsider new things people are.
And again, as long as you're notgoing over next to people's
houses, they tend to really likethe idea.
Yeah.
Jed Tabernero (30:21):
When an institution.
Or a company is stuck thinkingabout transportation solutions.
All of a sudden they become opento this, new idea that, maybe
it's not so traditional.
Something I think about a lot,because my wife's European is
that she always complains abouthow much we don't have public
infrastructure here for trains,for things like that, things we
(30:43):
aren't super very popular aboutin the United States.
And the one thing that shealways mentions is, look, we
don't have Y'all love cars.
Americans love cars.
And I want to ask you how youthink about cars being in the
picture for this space.
I understand that, you're notgoing into certain communities
that are single family homes andwhatnot.
(31:03):
But Americans they love cars.
Are we really only looking atthe population that's backed up
to a corner that doesn't haveany other choice?
How do you convince thispopulation to be okay with that
being as a form of transport inurban cities and very dense
scenarios as well?
Jeral Poskey (31:17):
One thing that's oddly unique about our company
and the people here is that weface reality, I think, in the
planning world, transportationplanning and urban planning,
there's a lot of people who planaround how people ought to
behave and people ought to bewilling to ride a bike.
People ought to be willing towalk a half mile to the train
(31:38):
station.
And these are true conversationswe have.
That, Oh, we don't want tostation too close because they
ought to get more exercise.
People ought to get moreexercise.
They ought to want that.
And it just boggles my mind howyou can do so much planning
specifically.
You're choosing to avoid thereality of what people want.
Maybe on one hand, they saythat, but when they actually get
(32:00):
going in the day, they pick uptheir keys.
Even if they say my new year'sresolution was to bike to work
or do all these things, theypick up their keys and they get
in their car.
That's the reality.
They're only going to not dothat.
Yeah.
If the alternative is better andalternative that is better has
to truly be better on themetrics they value and not well,
(32:21):
it matches some goals.
We said over here.
We said we were going to be moresustainable or we said we were.
No, that's not their goals.
Their goals and their metricsare I'm in a hurry.
I need to get there.
And this is my fastest, best wayto get there.
To the extent that parking isplentiful on both ends and it's
right by the door, it's probablygoing to continue to be the
case, but as you've seen moreand more developers and cities
(32:42):
around the country in the U Sand around the world really are
removing certain requirementsfor parking.
So parking gets a little harderon each end.
The economics of not putting inparking are very strong for
developers when they do that.
And so now you have an incentiveto say.
Maybe I'll consider somethingnew.
And we're not expecting to get100 percent of the people.
We're not expecting to get 50percent of the people.
(33:03):
But you're looking for, there'sa normal distribution here.
And right now the people whodon't take their car is a really
small piece on the end.
But as you move up that scale,each incremental step, you get
more and more yield.
Off each incremental step.
And so we're looking like we canmove that thing about a third of
the way up the chart where youget really high and increasing
(33:23):
yields on each piece ofinvestment.
So yeah, we're not trying totake away anyone's car, but we
want to give them a betteroption.
Shikher Bhandary (33:31):
that's a great point, understanding the reality
that this country loves theirfreedom and loves their cars and
loves their trucks, but there isa window here.
There is a niche where in densesettings.
Yes, absolutely.
They would love a way to commutefast.
Generally you've got sometraction out in New Zealand.
I would love to understand howthat came by and what's the
(33:54):
progress.
What's the plans out there?
Was it more a private initiativeor was it more a public
initiative?
Jeral Poskey (34:00):
Definitely private to start.
And now the transition ishappening.
Real estate developer with whatyou're talking about.
It's a little more sprawling,but 300 acre trying to convert
that to hectares for yourinternational audience, I'm slow
on that.
The For the large film,
Shikher Bhandary (34:15):
Even we have no idea.
We'll add it in the, we'll addit in the bio.
Jeral Poskey (34:19):
sounds good.
Shikher Bhandary (34:20):
Hectares.
Jeral Poskey (34:20):
yeah, the site has apartments, it has hotels, it
has office, it hasentertainment, and right now he
has to build You know, fiveparking spaces, a little bit
less than that, but we call itfive parking spaces for visitor.
They're going to rent a car.
They're gonna park at the hotel.
When they want to go out to eat,they're gonna have to drive and
it's just spread out enough.
Some people might walk it, but alot of people are gonna drive
that distance.
(34:41):
And then when you want to go tothe next place, you're gonna
drive.
And he sees, wait, I could justconnect it to where people park
once, as you said, and now I'vecut my cost tremendously.
Okay, that's great.
That solves a near term problem.
Also, he's adjacent to theairport.
What if the next phase connectsto the airport and now people
don't even have to rent a car.
(35:01):
They can go straight from theairport to the properties, to
the hotels, everything he has.
And then as you said, themodularity, there's developers
on each side of him who havesaid, Oh we'd want to be
connected too.
And he already has his firstpermits from the city.
And the city's only feedback wasyeah, you show downtown
connection as phase 10 of afuture idea.
(35:23):
Can we bump that up a bit?
Why wouldn't you come todowntown sooner?
And so now it's becoming more ofa public sector project down
there.
Very exciting.
And I think it's the roadmap.
I think it's the roadmap.
Initially, I thought thismodularity and this expansion
was our little secret.
And aha, we'll get it goingthen.
And then, aha, we can start toexpand.
No, everybody sees it.
There's no secret to it.
The beauty of starting small,getting it going, and then
(35:47):
expanding is just universallythe customer reaction.
They get there.
Yeah,
Jed Tabernero (35:54):
You know what I love about this?
It's the fact that this entiretime that you've been talking
about the product, you'rementioning a lot about the user
and the user experience.
When I think of the folks whodesigned the bus system here in
Jersey, or the guys who designedthe path system, right?
I don't think they consideredthe user experience at all in
(36:17):
that.
And you know what?
I got to give them kudos.
It's getting a little bitbetter.
It's getting a little bitbetter, but the amount of times.
That kind of this publicinfrastructure.
I, by the way, I appreciate itso much because I'm from the
West Coast, spent a lot of timein California and the Bay area.
And so coming out here with thisis great.
I have all this infrastructurethat I have to do.
I don't need my car, but I haveone.
I'm very American in thatrespect, but the public
(36:40):
transportation is quite good.
It's just a.
The government or the folks thatare running these programs,
right?
They don't really think aboutthe user experience aspect of
this.
I'll tell you what, there aretimes that I've decided to take
Ubers to the Hoboken pathstation, which was about, it's
about a 20, 30 minute walk,which is not terrible, but
(37:00):
there's also a bus system thatgoes from my place to this
terminal, right?
That takes me into the city.
And how many times have I justchosen to take the Uber just
because, I don't know if the busis going to be there on time.
I don't know if it's going to belate.
You know what I mean?
I don't think they, they caredabout that aspect a lot.
And so this kind of mix betweenpublic and private startup build
(37:24):
is just really exciting to mebecause then you start
considering user experience,right?
I liken this a lot to when,Privatization of my space had
occurred in the space industry,where it was all government
stuff.
So it was like really difficultto get things going.
There was a lot of things goingon.
Things were so expensive.
And then you privatize it.
And some things had to figureout for themselves like a
(37:44):
reusable rocket, right?
Made a lot cheaper.
So I see that very much similarto that shift where we're
talking now abouttransportation, urban planning
solutions.
That are going to be led by astartup did want to ask you the
user experience of somebodyusing this product, right?
Maybe it's going to come indifferent shapes and forms.
As you said, you work with a lotof partners, but I've heard it
(38:07):
described a lot like an Uber,like an autonomous Uber in the
sky.
And I've also read a lot ofdocumentation that says, maybe
it's in the form of an app.
Somebody has a request it'llwait for you, all of these, et
cetera, details.
Wanted to hear more a little bitabout that piece and how you're
connecting actually to thecustomer.
Jeral Poskey (38:28):
the good point to dive into a little bit more and
I'm going to take it back to thecompany.
Your premise is right.
That our DNA is a bit different.
If we were a swifttransportation company, my job
would probably be to maximizethe number of poles and miles of
cable I get in the ground.
But we're not, we're bigger thanthat.
We're swift cities, we'recreating these places, we're
(38:48):
creating an experience forpeople.
And the transportation, thewhoosh transportation system is.
the mechanism to get that movingand get that started.
But there's, it's beyond that.
It's not just a device.
And then but to the specificuser experience, what we're
seeing is that in most of ourearly cases, it's a feature
added to an existing site.
(39:09):
So if you show up at a skiresort or an airport or this
site down in New Zealand nobodywants to say yeah, but before
you can go anywhere, now youhave to download an app.
And sign up for an account no,they're definitely picturing it.
That you get on, there's a touchscreen.
You just get on, tell it whereyou're going, press the button
and you're off.
Then as you get to somethingthat's more, whether there's a
(39:29):
cost sharing element or, it's apublic system that has paid
rides, now you're talking to theapp and or it gets just big
enough that, the touchscreenbecomes.
Complicated.
Now you're looking at the appand there may be a time when
it's even optional and there maybe two ways of doing it, but
yeah, it depends on thesituation whether there's a,
often get asked whether there'sgoing to be a fair or not,
that's not our decision.
(39:50):
In the end, it's going to bewhat's right for that site.
There's no blanket answer.
Is it free?
Is it priced the same as a bus?
Is it priced the same as anUber?
Is it better than an Uber?
That's not our decision andit'll be very case by case.
Shikher Bhandary (40:04):
cover so many founders and it's all that
sustainability angle.
It's so interesting.
This specific use case is notjust sustainability, it's
transportation, it's urbanplanning, it's RE, real estate
it's private, it's public.
So there are so many differentspheres that it touched that we
(40:26):
actually didn't get to thesustainability part.
Jeral Poskey (40:29):
First of all, I want to remove the focus on just
the transportation.
It's the transportation and realestate together.
And unfortunately, there'sseveral, unfortunately it's
here, transportation and realestate, the built environment,
whatever you call it, are two ofthe highest sources of carbon
emissions and both of them arenot getting better.
(40:50):
They are at best steady orgetting worse over time.
And those are trends that haveto reverse.
And what's even worse beyondthat, when you look at the new
forms of transportation thatpeople are very excited about,
underground tunnels and flyingcars and things, even autonomous
vehicles, those are, All thesigns point toward those are
(41:11):
leading us to make it easier tolive farther away, easier to
live a spread out lifestyle,breaking emissions down to an
individual person level, half ofour emissions come from how we
move around and half come fromhow we live.
So even if you were to make theremarkable, awesome, one of
those systems I just said thathad, wonderful, positive impacts
(41:33):
on energy use, which I don'tthink any of those will Now
you're moving people into anarea where their lifestyle is
more spread out and they're notwalking and their houses are
bigger and they're harder toheat.
And so that's a negative.
We're looking at a situationwhere we're, the things are
trending negative, bothtransportation, real estate,
land use are all trendingnegative.
(41:53):
How do you fix that?
You fix that by giving them away to move.
Electric.
You move shorter distances.
It's not just, distance matters.
Even if it's electric, it's howfar you're moving and creating
that land use that works.
These are 50 year decisions.
We've got two and a half billionpeople who are moving to cities
from, or from rural areasworldwide over the next 25
(42:16):
years.
Each one of those people needshundreds of square feet.
Probably 500 square feet onaverage.
That's something like 50 billionsquare feet of real estate has
to get created Each and everyyear for the next 25 years to
support this migration.
And if we do that wrong, thoseare 50 year commitments in
poorly formed buildings.
And I picked on sprawl there.
(42:36):
I think people have longestablished that sprawl, that's
individual houses have to beheated and cooled.
Okay.
That's clearly going to use moreenergy and create more
emissions.
And.
skyscrapers, those types ofliving.
Oh yeah, heats and cools as muchas, there's very much less
energy used to do that.
So that's the right answer.
And now it has turned out to sayactually no, because the energy
(42:59):
that you factor in of creatingsuper tall buildings.
obliterates that advantage thatyou gained on the operational.
And especially right now, we'rea tipping point here of climate
change, putting in tons ofupfront carbon in order to gain
a long term carbon benefit mightnot be the best decision.
And just, it doesn't work outlife cycle wise.
(43:20):
The man Lloyd Alter says, Causeit Goldilocks density from a
sustainable point of view whereyou want to be in this 4 to 6 to
8 story, maybe 12 story range.
That's the most sustainabledensity and building style and
conveniently, it's the stylewe've already established is the
style that people like.
(43:42):
It's just something thatawkwardly.
The transportation networkdoesn't support, you really
can't support that level ofdensity with just cars or even
cars and buses can help a bitand yet that's not dense enough
for trains to really work.
Trains need more density thanthat to be highly effective.
So it's this middle ground andwe've got some interesting
charts that we haven't releasedto show.
(44:02):
It's just a bimodal distributionthat there's a lot of
development around the densitythat cars work at.
There's a lot of developmentthat there's the density that
trains work at.
Neither of those are where weneed to be for sustainability
and we're filling in that gapfor this Goldilocks area that's
both sustainable, but also whatpeople want what cities want,
what developers wanna build.
It's just a great place to beand amazing that no one ever
(44:25):
really focus on that as atransportation problem.
Before.
Shikher Bhandary (44:29):
This was awesome.
We genuinely love anythinginfrastructure, anything
capital, anything physical.
Before we leave, we always handthe virtual mic.
To our guest to give a shout outto your team as well as maybe
sending a message as to howpeople could reach out to you.
Maybe it's a hiring thing, maybeit's funding and stage is yours
(44:51):
to provide that
Jeral Poskey (44:51):
Yeah.
Before we're done, I do want usto shout out to all the team
I've mentioned a few by name andfor those who I didn't get to
thank you for what you're doing.
I do think we have the puzzle.
Built at least for the stagewe're at, and now we're at this
point where we have a leadinvestor for our next round
looking forward to closing that,looking forward to building a
(45:11):
bigger puzzle, adding a wholenew section to a puzzle, making
a modular puzzle.
At the same time, I'vereferenced some of our industry
partners.
And so as we go, as we moveforward, I see that expanding
among planning, design,construction, so many of these
are local, you can't just haveone partner for the whole world.
And so we look forward to seeingthat, and especially the real
(45:32):
estate side.
One thing I didn't mentionbefore was that real estate
partner here really understandthe land acquisition ahead of
our system expansion and thenthe entitlement phase.
And so finding the right partnerin the real estate space to help
plan out how the growth happensand how to take advantage of
that really to make it betterfor.
For everyone to have better,larger, more profitable sites,
(45:53):
but also just getting this levelof density out there, the bigger
it is, the more places you haveto go, the better the
experiences.
Yeah, love the team.
We have a look forward toexpanding it.
Look forward to closing thisnext funding round and then
getting more partners in boardhere in the coming months and
on,
Shikher Bhandary (46:11):
That's awesome.
Thanks a lot, Gerald.
We can't wait to jet.
What say we fly out to NewZealand when this.
Jed Tabernero (46:18):
that'd be great.
Jeral Poskey (46:19):
that's a very hospitable country.
They're going to make sure youenjoy your trip down there.
Jed Tabernero (46:23):
Great news.
Shikher Bhandary (46:25):
great..
Just to close out a big shoutout to Gerald Polsky and swift
cities for a fresh take onbeating urban gridlock.
From a mountain view warehouseto broader horizons, they're
crafting a solution.
Uh, straightforward as a snaptogether kit in Ikea.
(46:45):
Keep an eye out swift citiesmight just change the daily
commute game.
The information and opinionsexpressed in this episode are
for informational purposes only.
And are not intended asfinancial investment or
professional advice.
Always consult with a qualifiedprofessional before making any
decisions based on the conceptprovided.
(47:08):
Neither the podcast, nor iscreators are responsible for any
actions taken as a result oflistening to this episode.
Tech companies today arebuilding bigger and bigger
campuses.
Think about Google's sprawlingcomplex in mountain view.
Facebook's expansiveheadquarters in Menlo park.
And Amazon's new HQ, two inArlington, Virginia.
These are not just workplaces.
There are many cities pulsatingwith thousands of employees
(00:38):
every day.
Just trying to get around campusbecomes a rather daunting task.
And that's a problem that GeraldPolski, founder of swift cities.
Thinks about.
A lot.
Jeral Poskey (00:51):
We're swift cities, we're creating these
places, we're creating anexperience for people.
And the whoosh transportationsystem is.
the mechanism to get that movingand get that started
Swift cities was founded in 2019by some Google looms.
Including Jerell.
The were behind the real estateand transportation programs for
Google campuses.
(01:12):
The problem they were trying tosolve.
How do you move massive amountsof people in an increasingly
growing campus?
we've got to solve a transportation problem that's
bigger than one we at Google hadever faced before
Jerell envisions a future wheregetting around tech campuses and
city scapes is as seamless ashopping on a ski lift, but with
(01:34):
the urban flair of downtowngondola rides.
a swift city is a place you can get where you want
to go, when you want to go,anywhere in the area, on demand.
And it's just a good place tobe.
Swift cities.
Isn't just about easingcommutes.
It's about transforming how weinteract with our urban
environments.
(01:54):
Making them more accessible,sustainable, and enjoyable.
So join us on things havechanged podcast.
As we dive into how swift citiesis revolutionizing urban
mobility.
Shikher Bhandary (02:44):
Our listeners at THC might know this.
Jed and I used to live inPhoenix, Arizona.
And while I was there, I workedat Intel in their semiconductor
fabs.
And anyone who's.
aware of it, or even knows howthey look, they're basically
massive pieces of land where youhave four to five factories and
(03:07):
that's your campus.
And each fab is as big as a citysquare.
And close to 10, 000 people workdaily.
So it was interesting that, myshift on a daily basis used to
be 6am to 3pm.
And so for me to actually get towork.
I had to actually reach there at5 30.
(03:29):
The biggest reason why I had todo that was because I could not
find any parking because therewere just cars everywhere.
So you have 10, 000 peopleworking in this fab and everyone
drives their own car, parkinglot is humongous, goes on for a
mile, right?
(03:50):
So that's just one issue.
There's another one where oftenyou have to move from one fab to
another multiple times in a day,because maybe your work is in a
different factory, but in thesame campus.
So again, you either walk for 30minutes you drive your own car
(04:11):
or you take the buggy and thereare very few buggies.
So this was a pain point and itis literally searching for an
easier, faster way of solution.
To move people within a densesetting the fab or the factories
that, you know a lot of themanufacturing plants face
(04:32):
similar issues.
So today on things have changed.
We are super excited to hostGerald Poskey, CEO of swift
cities, a company with a reallynovel mobility solution where
they offer a modular andscalable gondola system.
For a sustainable way ofconnecting our cities at the
(04:55):
fraction of the cost.
So think ski gondola lifts, butin the city downtown, right?
So it's just a novel idea.
It's getting a lot of traction.
So it's super interesting,Gerald.
And, thanks for being on ThingsHave Changed.
Jeral Poskey (05:13):
You're welcome.
A really cool concept you havebecause everywhere around my
world transportation, mobility,real estate, the world is
changing.
And it's an area that has been alittle slow to change and a
little slow to embrace change.
And now it's about to happen ina big way that tidal wave of
change is coming from multipledirection and we're about to see
(05:36):
just a quantum shift in the waywe think about transportation
and the way we think about landuse and real estate.
I think your example is one ofmany that are out there where
people are scratching theirheads because they don't know.
What worked in the past is notworking now and is not going to
work in the future.
There's a lot of change comingand not all of it was in the
right direction.
And so I think we have asolution that is going to be,
(06:00):
fill a need that is a gapinghole among everything that's out
there.
Shikher Bhandary (06:04):
absolutely.
And everyone's searching formore walkable, denser settings
where you don't have as manycars.
And I think one thing thatchanged with COVID is, suddenly
I remember, Jed lives in NewYork right now, I used to live
there and they just shut carsoff from certain streets because
you wanted open settings, openrestaurants.
(06:24):
And then people really loved nothaving the cars on streets.
It added to.
The area it added to theBrooklyn neighborhood.
So before jumping into theapplications there, I'd love to
understand how this idea wasbrewing in your past experience
within Google and how that kindof came about.
Jeral Poskey (06:45):
Yes, it starts with a problem.
Now, this wasn't just an ideafor ideas sake.
I've been in transportation avery long time, but when I moved
into Google's real estatedivision, that was the first
time I was on the customer sideof the table.
And so many light bulbs went offseeing it from that perspective.
And then you bring it to apoint, and this was pre COVID
where Google had realized thatthe, Infamous history of Google
(07:08):
would be many people live in SanFrancisco and they take one of
the many frequent buses down forthose not from the area.
That's a 45 minute ride, aminimum on the perfect
conditions, but can easily pushtwo hours on a bad day.
And it was clear that employeeswere not enjoying that commute
(07:28):
anymore.
I think there was a time whenpeople said, wow, these buses
are great.
Glad it's so glad I'm notdriving.
And then as more and moreoptions became open to more
walkable parts in San Franciscois going through some.
Pretty fun times of more techstartups moving to up there,
people said, Yeah, why am Ispending this much time on a
commute?
And Google's campuses, Googlehad moved into just typical
(07:51):
suburban office parks.
That wasn't intentional.
It's just how life had been.
You had to have a small officeand then you had to have a
medium office and then a biggeroffice.
And as they were getting biggerand bigger, Google had realized
the trend is not toward more bigoffice parks.
It doesn't matter how many cafesand gyms and ball pits and all
the wonderful Google things youput in there.
Nobody wants that kind of lifeanymore, where you have, you
(08:13):
live in one place and you worksomewhere else and there's this
big separation.
We at Google were on a path tosay, The new campuses are going
to be different and they'regoing to be what you said people
are looking for.
They're going to be walkable,you're going to be able to live
nearby, you don't have to livein your office, but it's
convenient, it's close, it'sconnected, and there's open
(08:33):
space, and there's restaurants,and there's entertainment, and
all of the things you can live alife very comfortably.
The biggest problem when you dosomething at that scale is
transportation.
So the answer became, we've gotto solve a transportation
problem that's bigger than onewe at Google had ever faced
before.
(08:55):
Originally, Project Swift wasout there to find what's that
new technology that exists orthat is in development that will
solve our problems.
And there's autonomous vehicles,there's things in tunnels, all
sorts of things were comingalong.
And we thought the answer wasgoing to be one of those.
We looked at, I believe, 200different options there, and it
(09:17):
turns out none of them aresolving the one to five mile
transportation problem for denseareas in a way that makes sense.
Many of them are focused onthese sort of Almost mythical 20
mile commute, commutes.
It's 1%, 2 percent of the peopleare actually making those
commutes and yet we're designinghigh speed corridors and flying
(09:37):
cars and things to solve that.
When really 60 percent of peopleare making their trips that are
6 miles, 5 miles or less.
And so we're looking at thatsaying none of that self driving
cars are tied up in traffic.
The stations you need for a lotof these other solutions don't
make sense for a short trip.
By the time you build those andget in, the effort to get in and
(09:58):
out of a station.
And we knew we needed somethingthat would lower costs, but also
make sense.
The development better for thepeople who are there.
So yes, you've described it aslooking like a ski gondola.
And at the first glance, that'sabsolutely right.
But there's a few things thatare different that make all the
difference in how it works, bothfor the urban setting as well,
(10:20):
just for the rider themselves.
So number one, a ski resortgondola is a giant rope or cable
that moves constantly.
The vehicles are very dumb.
They just clamp on, they followthe same path between two
points.
The number one change is withWoosh, the transportation
system, the name for the system.
With Woosh, the cable's notmoving.
(10:42):
So now the vehicles are drivingthemselves along the cable.
And they're autonomous.
And because there is a switchingsystem within Woosh, now they
don't have to follow the samepath.
Each vehicle can go origin todestination in whatever path
makes sense.
So now that you're notrestricted to that straight line
up a mountain, You can have aninterconnected network, so you
(11:05):
can go between not just twostations, five, ten, fifty,
whatever the network requires.
You can cover that area with anetwork of cables that are low
cost and add capacity above theground.
From the user's perspective,it's like the perfect Uber.
(11:26):
You walk up, vehicles are keptwaiting for you, you get in, you
tell it where to go, it's goingto take you to that destination
that you picked.
There's no stoplights.
There's no stop signs.
As you pass stations along theway, those are off on sightings.
So you're not stopping atanything until you get to your
destination.
Your vehicle pulls off to theside, you leave the vehicle, and
now it's free to be reroutedanywhere else in the network
(11:48):
it's needed.
So you've got this userperspective.
It's the perfect Uber with anincredible view.
From the customer's perspective,it's the cheapest way to add
capacity in a dense environment.
From a city perspective, itadds.
The right kind of density.
It creates these districts orneighborhoods that are bustling
(12:10):
with activity and places to be.
And then from a globalperspective, it's just the most
efficient way to move.
And it is the most efficient wayto build out our cities is with
this level of density that wecan enable.
Jed Tabernero (12:24):
There's super long lead times for these
massive traditionalinfrastructure projects.
I think what I love about thissolution is that you assume that
the other pieces oftransportation are still part of
that mix.
And so the modularity allows forit to be, super customizable to
where you're going to build it.
Jeral Poskey (12:44):
We had built our first prototype here at a Google
warehouse in Mountain View.
And in February, 2020, wedisassembled it and moving it to
a bigger site in San Jose formore testing and to do more with
it.
In March, 2020, COVID broke out.
Everything shut down.
And a few times during Covid Iwould go over to the warehouse
and see all the parts that hadbeen moved over.
(13:06):
And it was like a giant set fromikea.
You felt like you could, I evenone time was like, can I pick
these things up myself?
Because it's, here are thepolls.
Here's the bases.
Here's the top.
Here's the cable.
Here's the trolley.
All the pieces are there.
The tops can vary depending onthe angle of a turn.
But the pole and the pole'sheights may vary a little, but
(13:29):
it's primarily, it's a kit.
It's something that you feellike you can take out of a box.
And put together with just minorcustomization along the way.
So it's exactly that.
And then the speed ofimplementation, because you're
keeping things lighter, as weknow, in the Silicon Valley
electronics world, these thingstend to success builds on exit
(13:49):
on success.
So because it's
Shikher Bhandary (13:51):
Momentum is
Jeral Poskey (13:52):
are smaller.
Yeah.
And Now you have moreflexibility of where you put the
post.
So you don't have to move someunderground utility or do
something else.
You can just move the post andyou make the cable a little bit
longer to avoid that thing.
Now your installation time isfaster.
And because it's faster, it cankeep up with, say, the pace of
real estate development aroundhere.
(14:12):
It can be based on data thatexists today in the near future
instead of having to be builtfor some hypothetical 20 to 30
year future forecast thattraditional systems always had
to go.
It in the transportation world,you had to do it.
You had to make your besteffort.
But you always knew that it wasgoing to be horribly wrong in
the end because it was so farout.
And now we can do things in atwo to three year cycle based on
(14:35):
activity that you know ishappening and you can get there
in time to make a difference.
So yeah just speed, smallness,modularity gives you flexibility
that leads to speed.
And it's just this really selfsupporting cycle.
Jed Tabernero (14:50):
You know what also I learned from listening to
the podcast that you werealready on and some of the
materials read the best insiderarticle, by the way, a great
information on parking there.
So we'll link that in thecomments here.
But one thing I learned aboutthis as well, beyond the
modularity is that, man, it isreally expensive to build
parking lots.
And now thinking back, cause Iwas mentioning that I worked in
(15:12):
finance before this, and one ofmy spaces was a CapEx.
And we had an infrastructureproject in HQ2, Amazon had one
in DC.
And I remember there were aboutsix buildings that we were
building in HQ2, the verybeginning.
And, they all had their variedcosts associated with those
buildings to build thesebuildings.
(15:32):
One of them was little smallerthan the rest, but it was still
above 75 million.
Okay.
And what I found out about thatone piece was that it was this
massive parking structure thatwe were building.
And in my head I was justthinking, that's an insane
amount of cost for some placethat people are going to go
drive their cars into and leaveit for the rest of the day.
(15:53):
You know what I mean?
Because we have a train systemin D.
C.
And it was just interesting forme to think like the solution
that we could think about forour next HQ, our next
headquarters, where we're goingto put, I don't know, 60, 70,
000 corporate workers, it'sgoing to be a big parking lot.
So little bit on the cost of aparking lot there.
That's insane.
That's a lot of money.
Jeral Poskey (16:14):
Yes.
And it, my audience oftendoesn't know that.
And I forget that fact.
And so I'll get asked maybe Aninvestor or someone, how much
does a system cost?
And we'll say, one for acorporate campus, 25 to$50
million, and their eyes get bigof how expensive this is and who
would ever pay that?
I've spent$300 million on aparking structure before.
(16:36):
This is a drop
Jed Tabernero (16:37):
Oh my gosh.
Jeral Poskey (16:38):
And.
Yeah, and then also, when youthink about, if you think about
the placemaking and trying tomake that campus really
effective, more space went intoparking than it did for the
people.
Your typical desk space in acorporate environment is going
to be 250 square feet peremployee.
Parking surface parking, 400square feet a person.
(17:00):
Garage parking, a little denser,is around 300 to 330.
More space gets spent on thecars than on the people who are
actually doing the work.
It's a system that the dollarsand cents are aligned, the
motivation is aligned.
But it's a constraint when youhave to have all of that space
and half of your space is goingto cars, your ability to build a
(17:20):
wonderful walkable environmentgoes away.
And if you think about theplaces that you probably enjoy
in Washington, D.
C.
I think of here in my area inCalifornia, you've got Palo
Alto, Mountain View, thesewonderful downtowns.
Those wouldn't be wonderfuldowntowns if each one of those
buildings had to be surroundedby its own parking lot.
And yet density is key.
(17:41):
And we've been talking abouttransportation with hints on
real estate.
I'm going to turn ourconversation to real estate
because the two are sointerlinked and very few people
know that, cities, thesewalkable areas, Mountain View,
Palo Alto, other places, Theywouldn't exist and couldn't
exist if everybody was coming bycar.
So they typically have a trainstation nearby or something that
(18:05):
brings in people that gives thatability to say, here's how big I
would have been if everybodydrove.
And now if I can get a few morepeople, now I get a few more
people in my shop.
And even if I cut back onparking, now my shop is closer
to the next shop and the nextshop and the next shop.
And now you've created thisneighborhood that just wasn't
possible when it was all builtaround cars.
(18:26):
And these are the places peoplelike, and it's this trend that
we saw pre, even pre COVID fromGoogle to say, people want to be
in these wonderful connectedplaces.
And now the rest of the realestate world has woken up very
suddenly to say, these boominglarge mixed use developments are
happening everywhere.
Massive growth across the Southand Southwest of the U S and
(18:48):
even to the world.
That is the trend.
And people have woken up that'sthe, where the demand is and
that's where the economics are.
The biggest problem to makethose happens is often
transportation.
Shikher Bhandary (18:58):
Yeah.
On that point, it's so tightlylinked.
If it's a bit more densesetting, this multi land use
projects and these initiativesthat we are seeing more often
now that is encouraging acertain restaurant.
To get some business or a bakeryor a shop flower shop, you're in
(19:19):
that vicinity So it becomes partof the culture which kind of
then, flourishes Way better thanjust concrete, parking lot,
building, car, go back homeafter work.
So there's nothing that reallymakes you want to stay in that
area.
So
Jeral Poskey (19:36):
One of the things I learned at Google, let's say
you were building a small officebuilding and it was going to
have some ground floor retailand you have a VP of retail
whose job it is to go fill thatspace.
He's going to go out and get aMcDonald's, a Taco Bell, a
subway these entities that canmaximize the dollars per square
foot.
Of that real estate.
That's what you do.
You squeeze those in and that'syour maximum revenue.
(19:59):
Now let's say you're building 4million square feet of real
estate and 3000 housing unitsand all of these wonderful
things going on.
You hire a VP of retail andshe's going to go out and get
the little fuss shop, the littleneighborhood sandwich shop, the
yoga studio, the bike store, andmaybe he goes to the CEO and he
says, what are you doing?
You're getting, 30 percent lessrevenue of retail than this
(20:22):
other guy over here.
What are you thinking?
And then she looks back andsays, yeah, but did you see the
office?
The vacancy rates are lower.
The rental rates are higher.
Those apartments are flying offthe shelf.
We've had to raise the renttwice, just to satisfy the
demand for these units becausethere you're not maximizing.
For the retail per se, you'remaximizing for the overall
(20:43):
entity, and this place makingtruly has value, and we then
take that one more level thatwas from a building to a
development.
Now, if you look at a district,a subsection of the city that
can be all interconnected, we dothe same and what a swift city
is.
I should cover that separately.
A swift city, it's going to bevery visible.
(21:06):
You see the gondolas, you can'tavoid seeing who's around the
terrain, but you also will knowseeing it that a swift city is a
place you can get where you wantto go, when you want to go,
anywhere in the area, on demand.
Easily, more easily than in acar.
And it's just a good place tobe.
(21:27):
And when we apply that, we say,yeah, the accountant might not
put a stop at the museum ormight say, boy, there's not
enough writers at the park tojustify a station.
You go back to that exampleabout.
Which businesses do you bringin?
You want to create anenvironment where people just
know I can get where I want togo.
It's a great place to be.
And I've got that density.
(21:48):
That's not scary density, butsometimes called the Goldilocks
density.
It just feels right.
That's the swift city that weare building.
Shikher Bhandary (21:58):
That's awesome.
And can you break down theproduct aspect of your company?
You mentioned the Woosh.
It's not hardware that yourcompany builds, but you partner
up with teams and.
It's not just the hardware side.
It's a software side, as well asthe operation side.
Running infrastructure requireshaving an operation know how.
(22:18):
Yeah.
Jeral Poskey (22:19):
You're right.
It is a full value chain, a fullindustry that we've lined up to
be supportive.
And number one, the hardwarethat we described and what and
you picture is Woosh.
And it was developed underProject Swift, but it was
developed by Home Solutions downin New Zealand.
And having a Large engineeringpartner to do design and
(22:41):
manufacturing.
At first, I, my first instinctwould have been to have that in
house, but it turns out havingsomebody with massive resources
and lots of experience workingwith a third party has been
tremendous.
And then from there, now there'sa value chain to go through.
The next most important piece,which is our piece is the
autonomy.
How do you move?
(23:02):
Dozens to hundreds topotentially thousands of
vehicles simultaneously across anetwork at good speed at close
headways where you're movinglots of people.
The reason that trains are bigis because they can't happen
very often.
So you better get a lot ofpeople into them.
The problem is reverse for us.
Vehicles are smaller.
You better move them veryfrequently, very close together.
(23:23):
So that's the autonomy piecethat we do.
And then it moves intoimplementation.
We've been working withconstruction companies, design
and engineering companies, someof the names you may recognize,
AECOM, Flatiron Construction,and then the finance piece and
operations.
You're right, the key, andoftentimes the literal customer
might actually be the financegroup, not the developer
(23:46):
themselves, but they may becontracting with the finance
group who's going to take theresponsibility.
For building it out making surethat the money flows in all
directions.
And so the operations plenaryAmericas is a group that we've
been working with on a number ofprojects.
And then that takes you tooperations.
And so we're not there to cleanthe vehicles.
We're not there to wipe thefloors on the stations, but we
(24:06):
are there for the overall systemcontrol and system management
and system operations.
From a business modelperspective it's pretty, pretty
great because even during thepreliminary phase, during your
sales cycle, you do get paid forstudies, but then primarily you
get the hardware sale at thebeginning.
So you get revenue in a bigchunk as the system comes
(24:28):
online.
And then through the software,through the autonomy, now
there's recurring revenue.
And that tends to have anincrease that's exponential as
systems get bigger, you get morewriters.
Your costs are only linear inexpansion, but your ridership is
above linear.
It's exponential and it'sgrowth.
And so that's where you want tobe as some upfront revenue, even
(24:50):
during the sales cycle, then abig chunk early in the project
life and then recurring revenuealong the way.
Shikher Bhandary (24:58):
Gotcha.
Yep.
We are like I'm a supply chain.
Person, Mr.
Jed here is finance operations,infrastructure, CapEx, that's
his lingo and day to day.
So when we see suchinfrastructure projects, the
first thing we go is, wait, howis it happening?
What is, take aside the hardwareand the software, but what is
(25:19):
happening?
How do you make this work?
So I think that's just themindset that we have, because
what we've noticed in our,different experiences.
Are that's where the pain pointsare, you have a great system,
like automated driving, you havea great software, but how are
you going to make it work whatare the operation steps you need
(25:42):
to make sure that it's adoptedby the public, so those are key
steps.
Yeah,
Jeral Poskey (25:50):
surprises me some of the questions I get from,
especially the investmentcommunity in Silicon Valley, I
guess they've been exposed to alot of startups who have neat
ideas and don't understand howto put things into practice
because they ask questions thatto me were obvious and no
brainers.
And so number one, it's broadlyto build out the team within the
company that can deliver fullprojects.
(26:12):
It's not just about thetechnology.
So for us, it starts withRegulations.
Did you design according toregulations that exist, or are
you just designing fortheoretical and you're going to
figure out the regulationslater?
We've designed for regulationsthat exist today.
Thankfully, some regulationswere changed in 2021 and
everything we do.
Matches U.
(26:33):
S.
And is aligned withinternational standards.
Then you say, as you said, howdo you get permission to do
this?
We fit under the same structurethat cable TV companies and
phone companies did to put post.
And cables in public right awaydown the street, put them in and
service them.
(26:54):
So you're following thatpattern.
And then I recruited one of thepeople who I've worked with for
10 years.
Now, Katrine is one of our cofounders.
I call her the city whisper.
She knows how to get cities tosay yes.
And often if you have,
Shikher Bhandary (27:07):
that's the hardest part.
Jeral Poskey (27:09):
And so there's a magic to that and bringing in
sort of our support and also alot of local involvement to make
sure you've got that support.
And then once you're approved togo forward, the clay is another
co founder.
He is a, I say, project managerextraordinaire, but.
What it is he's, we've workedwith a ton of great project
managers, but he like projectmanagers, project management,
(27:33):
and understands how to put aprocess around project
management so that the nextproject is better than this one.
And the one after that is betterthan that one.
And so you see that, havingenough exposure in my career to
say, okay, these are the peoplewho stand out and these are the
people who can get things done.
Shikher Bhandary (27:49):
What you said is so accurate.
I was watching like a video andreading some articles about how
the most important person inthese big telecom companies, big
infrastructure companies are notlike the CEO, but the person
that interacts with theregulators.
On a side note, how has it beenworking with that sort of
(28:12):
challenge, right?
The regulatory challenge whereit's not zero one where for a
customer on SAS platform thatthey are like, Oh, this is a
better product.
I'm going to jump into this.
It's not that it's more, youhave to follow certain standards
and get the approvals.
(28:32):
from, city council, stategovernments to actually gain
traction.
So how does that play out?
Jeral Poskey (28:40):
Yes, and so far it has been going far better than I
had expected.
I've been in this industry along time.
I would have expected moreresistance 20 years ago, cities
really were and agencies reallywere focused just on buses and
trains, and now they have wokenup that the world is changing
underneath their feet and theybetter.
(29:00):
and move forward.
So I think they're very openminded toward new solutions,
especially solutions thatsupport the existing transit
networks that are already inplace.
And then at the city level,number one, we don't go where
there's not a problem and wedon't go where we're not wanted.
So we would take a map and ifyou, there's single family homes
and people living alone, justput a bigger edX, you're not
(29:20):
going there.
Don't even try.
And then you say, where is theproblem?
And.
Cities and residents anddevelopers are actually
surprisingly aligned on thingsthey want.
The individual resident wantsless traffic and they want lower
taxes, but they want a greatcity.
And so the city staff knows theyneed to bring in generally new
(29:41):
development and new activity tomake that happen and developers
are saying, hey, if you canimprove that, I'm happy to do
it.
At least if you're in busygrowing areas.
So there's a surprising amountof alignment between the
interests If you can, workthrough a few things.
And I think the not in mybackyard, which, it's a literal,
we often use that just as ageneral pejorative term, if it's
(30:02):
your backyard and there's agondola going overhead, I
totally agree.
You can speak up and say, youdon't want that to happen.
We don't go there.
Going back to your question isjust, I have been surprised at
how open minded and willing toconsider new things people are.
And again, as long as you're notgoing over next to people's
houses, they tend to really likethe idea.
Yeah.
Jed Tabernero (30:21):
When an institution.
Or a company is stuck thinkingabout transportation solutions.
All of a sudden they become opento this, new idea that, maybe
it's not so traditional.
Something I think about a lot,because my wife's European is
that she always complains abouthow much we don't have public
infrastructure here for trains,for things like that, things we
(30:43):
aren't super very popular aboutin the United States.
And the one thing that shealways mentions is, look, we
don't have Y'all love cars.
Americans love cars.
And I want to ask you how youthink about cars being in the
picture for this space.
I understand that, you're notgoing into certain communities
that are single family homes andwhatnot.
(31:03):
But Americans they love cars.
Are we really only looking atthe population that's backed up
to a corner that doesn't haveany other choice?
How do you convince thispopulation to be okay with that
being as a form of transport inurban cities and very dense
scenarios as well?
Jeral Poskey (31:17):
One thing that's oddly unique about our company
and the people here is that weface reality, I think, in the
planning world, transportationplanning and urban planning,
there's a lot of people who planaround how people ought to
behave and people ought to bewilling to ride a bike.
People ought to be willing towalk a half mile to the train
(31:38):
station.
And these are true conversationswe have.
That, Oh, we don't want tostation too close because they
ought to get more exercise.
People ought to get moreexercise.
They ought to want that.
And it just boggles my mind howyou can do so much planning
specifically.
You're choosing to avoid thereality of what people want.
Maybe on one hand, they saythat, but when they actually get
(32:00):
going in the day, they pick uptheir keys.
Even if they say my new year'sresolution was to bike to work
or do all these things, theypick up their keys and they get
in their car.
That's the reality.
They're only going to not dothat.
Yeah.
If the alternative is better andalternative that is better has
to truly be better on themetrics they value and not well,
(32:21):
it matches some goals.
We said over here.
We said we were going to be moresustainable or we said we were.
No, that's not their goals.
Their goals and their metricsare I'm in a hurry.
I need to get there.
And this is my fastest, best wayto get there.
To the extent that parking isplentiful on both ends and it's
right by the door, it's probablygoing to continue to be the
case, but as you've seen moreand more developers and cities
(32:42):
around the country in the U Sand around the world really are
removing certain requirementsfor parking.
So parking gets a little harderon each end.
The economics of not putting inparking are very strong for
developers when they do that.
And so now you have an incentiveto say.
Maybe I'll consider somethingnew.
And we're not expecting to get100 percent of the people.
We're not expecting to get 50percent of the people.
(33:03):
But you're looking for, there'sa normal distribution here.
And right now the people whodon't take their car is a really
small piece on the end.
But as you move up that scale,each incremental step, you get
more and more yield.
Off each incremental step.
And so we're looking like we canmove that thing about a third of
the way up the chart where youget really high and increasing
(33:23):
yields on each piece ofinvestment.
So yeah, we're not trying totake away anyone's car, but we
want to give them a betteroption.
Shikher Bhandary (33:31):
that's a great point, understanding the reality
that this country loves theirfreedom and loves their cars and
loves their trucks, but there isa window here.
There is a niche where in densesettings.
Yes, absolutely.
They would love a way to commutefast.
Generally you've got sometraction out in New Zealand.
I would love to understand howthat came by and what's the
(33:54):
progress.
What's the plans out there?
Was it more a private initiativeor was it more a public
initiative?
Jeral Poskey (34:00):
Definitely private to start.
And now the transition ishappening.
Real estate developer with whatyou're talking about.
It's a little more sprawling,but 300 acre trying to convert
that to hectares for yourinternational audience, I'm slow
on that.
The For the large film,
Shikher Bhandary (34:15):
Even we have no idea.
We'll add it in the, we'll addit in the bio.
Jeral Poskey (34:19):
sounds good.
Shikher Bhandary (34:20):
Hectares.
Jeral Poskey (34:20):
yeah, the site has apartments, it has hotels, it
has office, it hasentertainment, and right now he
has to build You know, fiveparking spaces, a little bit
less than that, but we call itfive parking spaces for visitor.
They're going to rent a car.
They're gonna park at the hotel.
When they want to go out to eat,they're gonna have to drive and
it's just spread out enough.
Some people might walk it, but alot of people are gonna drive
that distance.
(34:41):
And then when you want to go tothe next place, you're gonna
drive.
And he sees, wait, I could justconnect it to where people park
once, as you said, and now I'vecut my cost tremendously.
Okay, that's great.
That solves a near term problem.
Also, he's adjacent to theairport.
What if the next phase connectsto the airport and now people
don't even have to rent a car.
(35:01):
They can go straight from theairport to the properties, to
the hotels, everything he has.
And then as you said, themodularity, there's developers
on each side of him who havesaid, Oh we'd want to be
connected too.
And he already has his firstpermits from the city.
And the city's only feedback wasyeah, you show downtown
connection as phase 10 of afuture idea.
(35:23):
Can we bump that up a bit?
Why wouldn't you come todowntown sooner?
And so now it's becoming more ofa public sector project down
there.
Very exciting.
And I think it's the roadmap.
I think it's the roadmap.
Initially, I thought thismodularity and this expansion
was our little secret.
And aha, we'll get it goingthen.
And then, aha, we can start toexpand.
No, everybody sees it.
There's no secret to it.
The beauty of starting small,getting it going, and then
(35:47):
expanding is just universallythe customer reaction.
They get there.
Yeah,
Jed Tabernero (35:54):
You know what I love about this?
It's the fact that this entiretime that you've been talking
about the product, you'rementioning a lot about the user
and the user experience.
When I think of the folks whodesigned the bus system here in
Jersey, or the guys who designedthe path system, right?
I don't think they consideredthe user experience at all in
(36:17):
that.
And you know what?
I got to give them kudos.
It's getting a little bitbetter.
It's getting a little bitbetter, but the amount of times.
That kind of this publicinfrastructure.
I, by the way, I appreciate itso much because I'm from the
West Coast, spent a lot of timein California and the Bay area.
And so coming out here with thisis great.
I have all this infrastructurethat I have to do.
I don't need my car, but I haveone.
I'm very American in thatrespect, but the public
(36:40):
transportation is quite good.
It's just a.
The government or the folks thatare running these programs,
right?
They don't really think aboutthe user experience aspect of
this.
I'll tell you what, there aretimes that I've decided to take
Ubers to the Hoboken pathstation, which was about, it's
about a 20, 30 minute walk,which is not terrible, but
(37:00):
there's also a bus system thatgoes from my place to this
terminal, right?
That takes me into the city.
And how many times have I justchosen to take the Uber just
because, I don't know if the busis going to be there on time.
I don't know if it's going to belate.
You know what I mean?
I don't think they, they caredabout that aspect a lot.
And so this kind of mix betweenpublic and private startup build
(37:24):
is just really exciting to mebecause then you start
considering user experience,right?
I liken this a lot to when,Privatization of my space had
occurred in the space industry,where it was all government
stuff.
So it was like really difficultto get things going.
There was a lot of things goingon.
Things were so expensive.
And then you privatize it.
And some things had to figureout for themselves like a
(37:44):
reusable rocket, right?
Made a lot cheaper.
So I see that very much similarto that shift where we're
talking now abouttransportation, urban planning
solutions.
That are going to be led by astartup did want to ask you the
user experience of somebodyusing this product, right?
Maybe it's going to come indifferent shapes and forms.
As you said, you work with a lotof partners, but I've heard it
(38:07):
described a lot like an Uber,like an autonomous Uber in the
sky.
And I've also read a lot ofdocumentation that says, maybe
it's in the form of an app.
Somebody has a request it'llwait for you, all of these, et
cetera, details.
Wanted to hear more a little bitabout that piece and how you're
connecting actually to thecustomer.
Jeral Poskey (38:28):
the good point to dive into a little bit more and
I'm going to take it back to thecompany.
Your premise is right.
That our DNA is a bit different.
If we were a swifttransportation company, my job
would probably be to maximizethe number of poles and miles of
cable I get in the ground.
But we're not, we're bigger thanthat.
We're swift cities, we'recreating these places, we're
(38:48):
creating an experience forpeople.
And the transportation, thewhoosh transportation system is.
the mechanism to get that movingand get that started.
But there's, it's beyond that.
It's not just a device.
And then but to the specificuser experience, what we're
seeing is that in most of ourearly cases, it's a feature
added to an existing site.
(39:09):
So if you show up at a skiresort or an airport or this
site down in New Zealand nobodywants to say yeah, but before
you can go anywhere, now youhave to download an app.
And sign up for an account no,they're definitely picturing it.
That you get on, there's a touchscreen.
You just get on, tell it whereyou're going, press the button
and you're off.
Then as you get to somethingthat's more, whether there's a
(39:29):
cost sharing element or, it's apublic system that has paid
rides, now you're talking to theapp and or it gets just big
enough that, the touchscreenbecomes.
Complicated.
Now you're looking at the appand there may be a time when
it's even optional and there maybe two ways of doing it, but
yeah, it depends on thesituation whether there's a,
often get asked whether there'sgoing to be a fair or not,
that's not our decision.
(39:50):
In the end, it's going to bewhat's right for that site.
There's no blanket answer.
Is it free?
Is it priced the same as a bus?
Is it priced the same as anUber?
Is it better than an Uber?
That's not our decision andit'll be very case by case.
Shikher Bhandary (40:04):
cover so many founders and it's all that
sustainability angle.
It's so interesting.
This specific use case is notjust sustainability, it's
transportation, it's urbanplanning, it's RE, real estate
it's private, it's public.
So there are so many differentspheres that it touched that we
(40:26):
actually didn't get to thesustainability part.
Jeral Poskey (40:29):
First of all, I want to remove the focus on just
the transportation.
It's the transportation and realestate together.
And unfortunately, there'sseveral, unfortunately it's
here, transportation and realestate, the built environment,
whatever you call it, are two ofthe highest sources of carbon
emissions and both of them arenot getting better.
(40:50):
They are at best steady orgetting worse over time.
And those are trends that haveto reverse.
And what's even worse beyondthat, when you look at the new
forms of transportation thatpeople are very excited about,
underground tunnels and flyingcars and things, even autonomous
vehicles, those are, All thesigns point toward those are
(41:11):
leading us to make it easier tolive farther away, easier to
live a spread out lifestyle,breaking emissions down to an
individual person level, half ofour emissions come from how we
move around and half come fromhow we live.
So even if you were to make theremarkable, awesome, one of
those systems I just said thathad, wonderful, positive impacts
(41:33):
on energy use, which I don'tthink any of those will Now
you're moving people into anarea where their lifestyle is
more spread out and they're notwalking and their houses are
bigger and they're harder toheat.
And so that's a negative.
We're looking at a situationwhere we're, the things are
trending negative, bothtransportation, real estate,
land use are all trendingnegative.
(41:53):
How do you fix that?
You fix that by giving them away to move.
Electric.
You move shorter distances.
It's not just, distance matters.
Even if it's electric, it's howfar you're moving and creating
that land use that works.
These are 50 year decisions.
We've got two and a half billionpeople who are moving to cities
from, or from rural areasworldwide over the next 25
(42:16):
years.
Each one of those people needshundreds of square feet.
Probably 500 square feet onaverage.
That's something like 50 billionsquare feet of real estate has
to get created Each and everyyear for the next 25 years to
support this migration.
And if we do that wrong, thoseare 50 year commitments in
poorly formed buildings.
And I picked on sprawl there.
(42:36):
I think people have longestablished that sprawl, that's
individual houses have to beheated and cooled.
Okay.
That's clearly going to use moreenergy and create more
emissions.
And.
skyscrapers, those types ofliving.
Oh yeah, heats and cools as muchas, there's very much less
energy used to do that.
So that's the right answer.
And now it has turned out to sayactually no, because the energy
(42:59):
that you factor in of creatingsuper tall buildings.
obliterates that advantage thatyou gained on the operational.
And especially right now, we'rea tipping point here of climate
change, putting in tons ofupfront carbon in order to gain
a long term carbon benefit mightnot be the best decision.
And just, it doesn't work outlife cycle wise.
(43:20):
The man Lloyd Alter says, Causeit Goldilocks density from a
sustainable point of view whereyou want to be in this 4 to 6 to
8 story, maybe 12 story range.
That's the most sustainabledensity and building style and
conveniently, it's the stylewe've already established is the
style that people like.
(43:42):
It's just something thatawkwardly.
The transportation networkdoesn't support, you really
can't support that level ofdensity with just cars or even
cars and buses can help a bitand yet that's not dense enough
for trains to really work.
Trains need more density thanthat to be highly effective.
So it's this middle ground andwe've got some interesting
charts that we haven't releasedto show.
(44:02):
It's just a bimodal distributionthat there's a lot of
development around the densitythat cars work at.
There's a lot of developmentthat there's the density that
trains work at.
Neither of those are where weneed to be for sustainability
and we're filling in that gapfor this Goldilocks area that's
both sustainable, but also whatpeople want what cities want,
what developers wanna build.
It's just a great place to beand amazing that no one ever
(44:25):
really focus on that as atransportation problem.
Before.
Shikher Bhandary (44:29):
This was awesome.
We genuinely love anythinginfrastructure, anything
capital, anything physical.
Before we leave, we always handthe virtual mic.
To our guest to give a shout outto your team as well as maybe
sending a message as to howpeople could reach out to you.
Maybe it's a hiring thing, maybeit's funding and stage is yours
(44:51):
to provide that
Jeral Poskey (44:51):
Yeah.
Before we're done, I do want usto shout out to all the team
I've mentioned a few by name andfor those who I didn't get to
thank you for what you're doing.
I do think we have the puzzle.
Built at least for the stagewe're at, and now we're at this
point where we have a leadinvestor for our next round
looking forward to closing that,looking forward to building a
(45:11):
bigger puzzle, adding a wholenew section to a puzzle, making
a modular puzzle.
At the same time, I'vereferenced some of our industry
partners.
And so as we go, as we moveforward, I see that expanding
among planning, design,construction, so many of these
are local, you can't just haveone partner for the whole world.
And so we look forward to seeingthat, and especially the real
(45:32):
estate side.
One thing I didn't mentionbefore was that real estate
partner here really understandthe land acquisition ahead of
our system expansion and thenthe entitlement phase.
And so finding the right partnerin the real estate space to help
plan out how the growth happensand how to take advantage of
that really to make it betterfor.
For everyone to have better,larger, more profitable sites,
(45:53):
but also just getting this levelof density out there, the bigger
it is, the more places you haveto go, the better the
experiences.
Yeah, love the team.
We have a look forward toexpanding it.
Look forward to closing thisnext funding round and then
getting more partners in boardhere in the coming months and
on,
Shikher Bhandary (46:11):
That's awesome.
Thanks a lot, Gerald.
We can't wait to jet.
What say we fly out to NewZealand when this.
Jed Tabernero (46:18):
that'd be great.
Jeral Poskey (46:19):
that's a very hospitable country.
They're going to make sure youenjoy your trip down there.
Jed Tabernero (46:23):
Great news.
Shikher Bhandary (46:25):
great..
Just to close out a big shoutout to Gerald Polsky and swift
cities for a fresh take onbeating urban gridlock.
From a mountain view warehouseto broader horizons, they're
crafting a solution.
Uh, straightforward as a snaptogether kit in Ikea.
(46:45):
Keep an eye out swift citiesmight just change the daily
commute game.
The information and opinionsexpressed in this episode are
for informational purposes only.
And are not intended asfinancial investment or
professional advice.
Always consult with a qualifiedprofessional before making any
decisions based on the conceptprovided.
(47:08):
Neither the podcast, nor iscreators are responsible for any
actions taken as a result oflistening to this episode.
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