A lucky few can say their work helped spur a fundamental shift in the economic model of modern societies.
If all goes well, Robin Chase may get to do it twice.
A decade before Airbnb and Uber, Chase helped kickstart the “collaborative economy” by co-founding Zipcar, which became the world’s largest car-sharing service. The big idea was to replace the enable convenient access to a valuable good (in this case, a vehicle) without requiring ownership.
Now Chase and others have founded Veniam. Their technology powers mesh networks, which provide a new way for people and things (devices, cars, appliances, etc.) to connect to each other and to the internet. The holy grail: ubiquitous no-cost wireless internet access that isn’t controlled by the telecom giants.
Fred Wilson, one of the most influential and successful technology venture capitalists of the last decade, announced last month that his firm has invested in Veniam. “We are consciously trying to see the future and seed the future,” he wrote.
Chase’s story is colorful. She was raised in the Arab world, the daughter of an American diplomat. She is the mother of three children, including one world-famous supermodel. And her career has seen lows as well as highs. “I was a complete shell,” she says of one tumultuous period. “It took me, honestly, probably a year to recover.”
I spoke with Chase for Sophia, a HuffPost project to collect life lessons from fascinating people. She shared practical wisdom about relationships, raising kids, finding happiness, how she approaches aging, and her latest thinking about the collaborative economy.
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Have you had any recent realizations about living a more fulfilling life?
I attribute a lot of what I have to dumb luck. I’ve made sure that my family and my children have understood that reality strongly. Being a white well-educated American who doesn’t have any immediate family in distress — that was just like a birthright. What a lucky thing.
My father was an American diplomat. I grew up in the Arab world. I feel that Americans, in particular, lack an appreciation for how incredibly lucky the circumstances of their birth are.
Did you try to foster that in some way with your own children?
There’s this story that lives in infamy. We’re sitting around the dining room table. My eldest daughter says, “I got straight A’s this semester,” filled with glee, making her younger siblings feel bad. I said to her, “You know, I’m not so impressed. You’re no Maya Angelou.”
I said, “There’s three things in life. You were born with the genes that you have through sheer luck. It had nothing to do with you; you can’t take any credit for that. Your environment is also dumb luck. You happened to be born to parents who believe in education. You have this great environment. You don’t get any credit for that. But you do get credit for working incredibly hard. So good for you. You worked incredibly hard. None of those other things you can get credit for.”
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I’ve realized that there’s a whole bunch of women in their 70s that are really fabulous. And I thought, I’d like to be one of those really fabulous women in their 70s. But in order to be a fabulous woman in your 70s, it means that I have to be intellectually astute and up and active and engaged now.
Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?
Yes. Addressing climate change. Let’s get with the program. Right now, this very moment that we’re sitting here, it’s either we make dramatic changes or we’re moving into a catastrophic world.
It’s not your grandchildren. It’s 20 years. In 20 years, it’s going to be a really sucky world out there. The reality is so extreme that my saying this makes people think, “You can’t trust Robin because she’s gone out of her mind.”
It is honestly a crazy reality. It is catastrophic. We’re seeing institutions one by one acknowledge it — the World Bank, the U.N., the IPCC and Obama — but it’s couched in these little careful terms.
As we’re sitting here, the highest likelihood is that we will go to between plus-7 degrees Fahrenheit and plus-10 degrees Fahrenheit global climate change by 2100. What in the heck does that mean?
Minus-7 degrees Fahrenheit was the last Ice Age 50 million years ago. Humans did not exist. And Boston and New York and most of North America was under one kilometer of ice.
So we went from one kilometer of ice, 50 million years ago, no humans — we are going to that amount of change in 85 years.
#marchwithme at the @peoplesclimate march starting tomorrow at 1130am Columbus Circle NYC >A photo posted by @rmchase on Sep 20, 2014 at 12:57pm PDT
That’s what we’re doing right this second. Even 40 years out is looking pretty rotten. And that’s if we do the things that we promised to do. If we don’t do those things, which is exceptionally likely, it’s in 20 years. It is not some distant thing, and it is not some small amount. This is ecosystem collapse.
So one of the things I think about Zipcar is that people realized, sharing resources leads to a better world. I have a better quality of life. I save money. And it actually has this dramatically strong environmental underpinning. So we can go there proactively, making it as best as we can, or not.
I think you do go through these seven stages of acceptance. And I think people are, right now, all around in the giant denial. If they aren’t in a giant denial, they’re in the pissed off phase. And we have to move through that and get to — let’s get going. Let’s do it.
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