Passio & MMM Law Podcast
Passio Co-Founders recently participated in a Podcast with MMM Law. Watch the video below, or read the transcribed podcast:
John C. Yates:
Hello, this is John Yates and I chair the Technology Practice at the law firm, Morris, Manning, and Martin. I’m proud today to be a part of MMM Tech Law and Business Report with my good friends, Mitch Skyer and Scott Reiser, who are the co-founders and key executives at Passio Technologies. So Scott and Mitch, great to see you.
Mitch Skyer:
Thank you John.
Scott Reiser:
Great to see you too, John.
Mitch Skyer:
Great to see you too.
Scott Reiser:
Thanks for having us on
John C. Yates:
You guys ended up building the company? Let’s walk through that and then maybe you can give us the quick elevator pitch too.
Mitch Skyer:
Sure. Well, I’ll start with how we met and built the company. I had my own consulting firm and I was doing a unique type of consulting for transit business operations for universities. So very specific and I joined a networking group called the Atlanta Business Alliance. One of my customers who is an Atlanta customer, the Atlanta University Center, Spelman, Morehouse, ITC, had a system in there that I’d helped them manage.
The problem was it was basically like computers on their buses. It’s not a good idea, but that’s how it was set up way back then. And I met Scott in this networking group. He joined right after I did. Scott knew desktop computers and IT and networking, that was the business he had. He had his own managed service and networking and computer support business. And so I asked him, I said, “Hey, can you help me fix these computers on a bus?” He said, “I guess it’s the same as doing it in somebody’s office.” We went out there and then the next part’s really great. So we looked at the stuff, Scott helped me fix it. We did that and he did some extra work for the customer.
Then he said, “You know, this system is really pretty lousy. We could do it better ourselves.” I said, “Well, that’s an interesting thought.” And so he said, “What do you think?” And he told me his idea. I said, “Okay.” So I brought it to our customer and I asked the customer, “I said, what about if we never had you mess around with licensing fees or anything, you have it for life. The only thing is, we get to sell it to everybody else, but for you, you have a lifetime license, will you help us?” He agreed in about 32 seconds, and from there we built it, tested it, and they’ve been a great long time customer and still a terrific customer since then.
Scott Reiser:
And honestly, we didn’t even think that it was necessarily going to past there. We were thinking, “You know what? This is a product. We’re selling it. We’ll make some dollars, maybe sell it to someone else too.” Then all of a sudden, we were getting more business, checks were flowing in, we were like, “We have to create a company.”
John C. Yates:
It’s a great story.
Scott Reiser:
Then we did.
John C. Yates:
The mission statement or the elevator pitch. I mean, how would you describe Passio?
Mitch Skyer:
Passio provides technology for the passengers, people who are operating it, and for the people who are managing their transit systems. And we do everything from universities, cities, airports, and non-emergency medical transport, to make sure that the passengers know how to get a ride, they know how to manage those rides, see where things are in real-time, and the people who are operating can schedule their resources and really make sure that they’re managing their costs, their time and the resources, including the vehicles and the drivers.
John C. Yates:
It’s a great story. So what separates us from everybody else out there because there are some other players that are doing this as well, but Passio seems to have a competitive edge. What’s the edge?
Scott Reiser:
I think a lot of the edge is really where we came from. Mitch came from a consulting background in the transit space. I came from a technology background. So the combination of his background and my background really brought together a sense of wanting to create the right technology, but in the right way, for the right people, with the right operational expertise. What we’ve seen a lot of our competitors, they are a technology company that started as technology, and then they got to try to understand the transit space. Whereas we came at it from a very operational side, to be able to understand the operations and then apply the technology to it. I think that really shows through, both in how we developed the software and what we implement, as well as in our customer service and support, as we hold that in high regard, as far as what we want to deliver to our customers.
John C. Yates:
What’s the perfect customer for us, would you say, Mitch and Scott? I mean, what are those characteristics, and how big is that market?
Mitch Skyer:
Well, every customer is a perfect customer, John, because we love them all. So, our perfect customers are the ones who embrace the technology and use it as a tool and use us as a resource. I don’t mean to say that in a light way, that really is the magic customer. What we love being is in the mid-market space and the mid-market space is enormous. So we think of things in the size of buses, but really it’s about the solutions you need and the number of buses in your fleet. There are some agencies with massive numbers of buses in their fleets, but those aren’t a lot. They’re out there. The New York’s, the Chicago’s, the LA’s, but what we’re looking for, those people who are in that mid-range of the number of vehicles in their fleet, but who are demanding superior technology, because they’ve got to do more with less.
I mean, that’s not just now, but that’s always. And so we’re looking for those customers who need multiple solutions, want things intertwined and working together seamlessly, not a hodgepodge. That’s what our platform does. And as far as where the potential goes, that’s where we find that it is enormous potential because we’re not just looking at solving the one simple product, we’re counting passengers are tracking or knowing when your next bus will arrive. But putting it all together, because the world’s changing and those buses have to do things, whether they’re buses, vans, minivans, they have to provide service where people need it.
Sometimes you need heavy-duty service on a major artery, but sometimes you need those vehicles to go when a passenger flags you down and we hope they do it virtually or electronically through our system, how do you get there? But how you do not reduce what you’re serving these other clients who need that regular service? It’s all got to come together. There needs to be one transit vision that uses the resources effectively.
Scott Reiser:
That’s really where we think our operational background and expertise will come into play even stronger is with having that vision. That we can say, “Okay, we now have all these products, all these pieces of how different transit operators run, now let’s pull together and then make it work with the operators.” Because once the technology can work with the operators. Then it can work with the riders.
John C. Yates:
I love that, an integrated transit vision. It’s a great way to describe it. So maybe a final question, COVID-19, how has it impacted the business and how do you see it impacting the business movement?
Mitch Skyer:
I’ll jump in to start that, just what we spoke about, just a moment ago that you asked us, I’ve been calling it, transit elasticity, and that’s not the word that we’re going to use in the future, but it gives you a picture. It needs to move in and contract and expand as you need it. So that’s one thing that we’re seeing overall. I don’t think that’s going to be limited to COVID, but if you take the specifics for COVID, people need real-time information about how the buses are being used and where, and who’s on the buses. That comes into two major categories for right now, where we are today. Number one is the passenger load. How many people are on the bus at any given time?
It used to be, you would cram 30, 40, 50 people on a bus or even more sometimes. That just can’t happen now. That’s just not safe. So knowing how many people are on those buses and where they are. If you need more vehicles to meet the demand, or you need to let people know, so we do that now in real-time, we can tell the operators how many people are on that bus between stops and we can show it to the passengers. The other thing is the world of contact tracing and Passio has a system called Gateway. We’ve added a contact tracing module, and we’re already out there with our customers. People have already purchased it because they need to know if somebody that index case or that person who’s infected, how are we going to tell the people who are near them? That’s what our system does. We tap, we swipe, we know who’s on there. We know where you got on and got off.
Once you report that you’re not feeling well, and then, unfortunately, if it turns into something worse, we can then quickly look at your system. See who rode a few minutes before you get on, who was there when you were on, and who got off before you did and we can report that instantly. And these universities, cities, agencies can report that to those people immediately, because they already know who they are. We give them the identification of who was on when this person who was ill rode the vehicle.
Safety and knowledge are really, I think, the key going forward. And that’s what we’re focused on, is how do we allow our operators to provide a safe environment and have the knowledge in order to run their environments better?
John C. Yates:
So many folks that are involved in the healthcare community are utilizing transportation of the kind you’re helping to coordinate. As a result, they’re in an environment that is more likely to be susceptible to infection and the like. So what you’re doing and the way you’re doing and the contract tracing become just so critical. So it’s very interesting how you put that in place and be able to implement it so quickly. I suspect that’s been a big attractiveness of your company to a lot of your customers too, hasn’t it?
Mitch Skyer:
Yes. They appreciate both the combination of having that offering. I mean, we get asked pretty much daily, “How does it work? Can you show us? Can we view that video that describes it, so we can pass it up the chain?” We’re making sure that they know. But more importantly, they also want to understand how they’ll use it. That’s the ones that have already signed up and just a matter of the last couple of weeks, they want to understand how the transit operations will help them meet their needs for public health. And that’s what we’ve been able to do, we’re experts on the transit inside. We’re giving them the tool like Scott mentioned briefly earlier, and helping them put that together.
So now the very smart people who are working on how they protect their populations now have a tool that’s easy to use, easily accessible. We’ve always been open with our information. That’s how we’ve grown and we’ve built. We don’t say no. If you have another company doing something, we’re open to those ideas. We’re open to sharing our data. That allows our customers to have the flexibility they need. Now more than ever, they don’t need a company saying, “No, you can’t have that, or we’re limiting it.”
Scott Reiser:
That’s really how we’ve built our business is, from being a small business, is saying yes to our customers and listening to them and coming up with creative solutions that will help them. That’s what we’re continuing to do during this COVID crisis.
John C. Yates:
Well, Scott and Mitch, you’ve done a great job in growing the company. I recall a couple of years ago when I first ran into Mitch and learning about how you and Scott have worked together growing this company, I’m proud to be wearing my lime green Passio tee shirt here. And I’m very proud of what you’re doing. So congratulations! Keep up the good work! Thanks for what you’re doing helping to address the COVID-19 issues too.
Mitch Skyer:
Thank you, John.
Scott Reiser:
Thank you John.
Learn more about MMM Law here.
