SXSW Startups: Migo
The Forrest Four-Cast: March 3, 2019
Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx. Winners in 10 categories will be announced at the Pitch Award Ceremony at 6:30 pm Sunday, March 10, at the Hilton Austin.
A finalist in Transportation and Delivery, which will pitch at 9:30 am Saturday, March 9, Migo is the free app for discovering the best way from A to B whether comparing options you know or discovering something new — without jumping from app to app. Migo helps riders discover the right ride, at the right time. Options include rideshare, carshare, taxi, scooter, bikeshare, and public transportation.
As a two-sided marketplace, Migo also helps partners and cities better understand multi-modal transit usage and demand patterns by delivering aggregate data down to a neighborhood level. They help partners cost effectively attract new customers, inexpensively engage with lapsed customers, and better understand the dynamics of comparison shopping behavior in transportation.
CEO Jeff Warren answered some questions about the company.
What are your goals for Migo this year?
We launched many of the features of Migo as tests and prototypes in 2017, so our big focus for 2019 is making our platform even better so we can onboard partners more easily and launch some major planned improvements to our multimodal UX. That’s core to our business: the ease and efficiency of bringing more ride partners to our customers and continuing to ensure we’re adding great value to those ride partners. We knew when we started Migo that there would be an explosion of ride partners and that’s proving true.
We love being a way to help out the ecosystem and this year we will be focusing on making that even easier for everyone.
Migo helps maximize choice and minimize price for transport. Can you explain how the app works?
Migo aggregates multiple ride types and partners so when you enter your destination, you can see the location and the price for each type of ride. We believe that the ‘best ride’ for you at any given time may differ, e.g. it’s not always about price. On a beautiful day, you can maximize your sense of well-being by riding a bike. If you are in a hurry, public transportation can often get you out of a city center and to an airport more quickly (and cheaply) than a car. If you are on vacation, an electric scooter might be a fun way to zip to lunch. If you have to pick up BBQ for an office party, you might want to use carshare to dash over to the pitmaster.
The Denver Post called Migo the Netflix of transit. Can you explain that?
We love Netflix because not only do we find the shows we know and love, Netflix learns about us and makes it easy to discover new shows that we didn’t even know we needed to binge watch.
Most cities in the world support an average of nine to 15 ways to get around. It’s all about discovery and that’s what can be great about Migo. You might think you want to grab a rideshare to get from A to B but then you open the app and discover that there is an electric scooter right there and that just sounds more, well, delightful.
At the Migo office, you will hear the word “ecosystem” used a lot because we believe in creating a platform that helps every ride company reach customers. That, in turn, means that customers are presented with a lot of options and can discover the right one for them.
Your team received a very sizable early funding round. What advice do you have for young startups searching funding?
Launching two-sided marketplaces is very difficult. Be very clear about your value proposition to both sides, and be able to make it very clear to the companies in your ecosystem.
What is your strategy to appeal to audiences older than the millennial generation?
We have a good communication loop with many of our power users and a good number are outside of the millennial range. If you think about the breadth of our offering, it really covers the gamut of use cases for transportation. Our use cases can go from finding the best option for getting a sales VP to her meeting when she lands at the airport all the way to getting an electric scooter for a college freshman to quickly get to his study group on the other side of campus.
Because of our focus on discovery and helping people find the best ride, whatever that is at that moment, the age of our customers varies widely from 18 to 80-plus.
Migo is currently based in Seattle, Wash. Tell us about the startup ecosystem there.
There has been a huge transformation in both the velocity of startups and types of startups. Six years ago, it seemed like it was all enterprise software hoping to get acquired by Microsoft and Amazon. Now it’s an explosion with all types of companies, with a much strong consumer ecosystem developing. Seattle has seen a new influx of funding sources come into the market, plus the launch of homegrown incubators like Pioneer Square Labs, Madrona Labs and Amazon’s Alexa Accelerator. We are in a coworking space called Novel that is wonderful for startups just pushing up to the next level. Other coworking spaces have also taken off like The Riveter, WeWork, Galvanize and more, which are really fostering a sense of community.
How and when did your team come together?
Many members of the team come from the travel space, namely Expedia, and we spent a long time looking at whether or not the lessons we learned in travel really did map to transportation (luckily for us they do!). I spent several years leading both mobile product and partner marketing (which includes Expedia’s relationships with Kayak, Trivago and TripAdvisor, among others) where I was on the ‘buy side’ of the great travel marketplaces.
What tech trend is your team most excited about?
We’re excited that tech is really, genuinely, beginning to sit in the juncture between technology and environmental sustainability. Mobility is only one piece of this. We’re seeing all sorts of advancements and are excited to be participating in this wave.
What aspects of the startup experience do you enjoy most?
I really love pulling together a group of people who get excited by an idea and working with them every day as a team. It’s awesome getting to know the motivations, desires and interest of those around you.
What has the startup experience taught you about life?
Failure happens but it’s a learning experience and not some obstacle that you can’t overcome. Failure is part of the journey.
Also, startup life is messy and it’s the right balance of letting go of control and sticking to your plan.
Name three people, in any field, alive or dead, you’d like to meet and tell us why.
George Taylor — my great-great grandfather who founded Taylor Instrument Company in 1851. He was a pioneer.
Warren Buffet — do I need a reason?
Lady Gaga — she’s fearless and yet shows vulnerability that she’s had to overcome.
What’s one piece of advice you wish you’d had that you’d give to others wanting to join the startup journey?
It’s totally cliche and yet it’s totally true. Expect everything to take longer, and cost more (at least in sweat and sometimes tears) than you want. In the earliest stages, though, it’s the tough times that make a team really gel and build the trust that it takes to power through. There’s always a silver lining if you give yourselves the chance to find it.
Look for more interviews with other SXSW Pitch finalists in this space between now and March.
Click here to see all 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2019, along with the links to their interviews on Medium.
Also, if you are an entrepreneur, check out all the cool panels and presentations in the Entrepreneurship and Startups Track, which runs March 8–12 at SXSW.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
