RidePal offers corporate luxury commute bus services for companies and individuals in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

History

The genesis for RidePal came from co-founder Nathalie Criou's experience commuting from San Francisco to her job at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

in Mountain View on Google-provided buses, then losing access to the bus service when she moved to another job. The

cleantech Clean technology, in short cleantech, is any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities. Cl ...

business incubator Business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services starting with management training and office space and ending with venture c ...

Greenstart selected RidePal as one of 5 companies out of 152 applicants for its second accelerator program in February 2012. In August 2012 RidePal closed a seed investment round of $500,000. Investors included Jeff Clarke,

500 Startups 500 Global (previously 500 Startups) is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, Califor ...

and

Lisa Gansky Lisa Gansky (born May 1, 1961) is an American entrepreneur and author. She was the co-founder and CEO of Global Network Navigator (GNN), the first commercial website, which was acquired by America Online (AOL). She was also the co-founder, CE ...

. In August 2012 RidePal added four new routes to its network. The Mayor of

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

, Greg Scharff, said at the September 2013 launch of RidePal's service to Palo Alto from San Francisco: "This service takes cars off the road and allows for more growth. You're allowing Silicon Valley to grow - thanks for that". In September 2013 RidePal announced Series A funding of $3.2m led by

Nat Goldhaber A. Nathaniel ("Nat") Goldhaber is an American venture capitalist, computer entrepreneur and politician. Goldhaber helped found Maharishi International University and was special assistant to lieutenant governor William Scranton III and founder ...

of Claremont Creek Ventures and

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Venture Capital Group, and stated that they have over 30 customers including

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application Tu ...

Groupon Groupon is an American global e-commerce marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services in 13 countries. Based in Chicago, Groupon was launched there in November 2008, launching soon af ...

and Clinovo In October 2014, RidePal partnered with YP to launch its first shared Los Angeles route, with service from West LA to and from Glendale. This brought the total number of active service routes to 26. On June 25, 2015, RidePal announced that they had run out of funding and would cease operations. Bauer Transportation purchased the service in 2015 and states that 'It Has Returned'.

Corporate affairs

Services

RidePal works on a

shared mobility Shared may refer to: * Sharing * Shared ancestry or Common descent * Shared care * Shared-cost service * Shared decision-making in medicine * Shared delusion, various meanings * Shared government * Shared intelligence or collective intelligence ...

collaborative consumption Collaborative consumption is the set of those resource circulation systems in which consumers both "obtain" and "provide", temporarily or permanently, valuable resources or services through direct interaction with other consumers or through a me ...

model for corporate commuters, with route planning based on commuter demand and geography, as well as corporate recruiting priorities. On different lines, employees can be picked up by a RidePal bus and are taken to their place of work. The company's services focus on businesses that are interested in offering their employees the advantages of commute alternatives but don't have the resources or interest in building their own infrastructure. The RidePal buses have been called luxurious: They offer between 30-40 seats, provide more space than regular vehicles and offer other features like leather seats and Wi-Fi. Rides can be paid for with company provided credit or individual payments, e.g. via credit card. Public lines can thus also be used by individuals whose companies don't work with RidePal. In 2015 a ride in the Bay Area was between $4.75 and $12 per ride. According to the company, it serves more than 500 clients.

References

{{Reflist Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area 2011 establishments in California Transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area 500 Startups companies