Building a new business from within a large one: How Ryder built the Airbnb for commercial trucks.

prehype

Building a new business from scratch is hard under any circumstance - adding the complexity of doing it inside a company can be daunting. Through our work at prehype we meet internal entrepreneurs who are attempting to build these new businesses from within a company - this podcast series aims to capture what they did and what they learned.

In this episode, we sit down with Romain Rousseau who is one of the co-founders of COOP by Ryder. COOP is the attempt at creating an “Airbnb for trucks” - as in creating a marketplace for underutilized truck capacity. Romain is also the Group Director of Digital Innovation at Ryder, a Miami Heat (and Lakers) fan and based in Miami, Florida, although originally from France.

We discuss the origins of COOP by Ryder, what initially enabled Romain to start - and what were key factors for him and the team to test and scale the new business. Romain will share his thoughts in how he built the team from within, how they chose to validate their idea and how they approached the supply & demand dynamics of their marketplace.

Produced by: Philip Petersen / twitter.com/pippipsi

prehype:prehype.com & twitter.com/prehype