Zebigo Starts Its Engine

Photograph by Hayley Young

Every time Mark Russell gets stuck in traffic, he is irritated by the long rows of almost empty cars clogging up the road. If only more people would carpool, there would be less traffic and hed be happier. Having spent 13 years commuting on local freeways to jobs at Boeing, Intel, Kistler Aerospace and Blue Origin, he saw the need firsthand.

Thats why he created Zebigo.com, his Seattle startup that helps commuters find a car pool to join, or drivers to find riders. Participants sign up for the service through the website. When passengers need a ride or drivers have extra seats in their car, they can input their trip data and let Zebigo find a match. When a match is found, the system sends out an alert through e-mail or text message.

To make riders and drivers feel more comfortable with each other, Russell designed the system to allow each participant to look up information about the other. Users can decline potential matches for any reason, and can also filter search results based on criteria like gender, employer or Zebigos rating (submitted by the commuters) of each driver or rider.

Signing up for the matching service is free, but if you accept a ride, Zebigo uses PayPal to transfer an amount of money from the rider to the driver based on the distance traveled to cover gas and parking. The rates are based on what the IRS allows people to deduct for driving on business. From the total fee, Zebigo takes a 49-cent fee to cover the transaction.

Zebigo, which was started with help from SIRTI, a Spokane-based incubator, is launching first in Seattle. The company hopes to quickly reach a critical mass of subscribersfrom 1,000 to 2,000that it needs to ensure that viable matches can be found.

Zebigo is partnering with employers to help get the word out about the service. In exchange for companies telling their employees about Zebigo, we provide the company with aggregated data indicating how much CO2 they are saving, Russell says.

Although Seattle is Zebigos launch market, Russell is already thinking bigger. We will incrementally launch in each city in the top 50 major metro areas in the U.S.West Coast first, then nationwide. We think there is a great worldwide market for this service as well.