![]() The company had developed systems that allowed members to access cars without constant key-swapping. Mobility was already a large company, with 17,400 customers and over 700 vehicles. The European car-sharing company was different from those already operating in the US, like Car Sharing Portland (which later became Flexcar and merged with Zipcar in 2007). It was during her research that a study involving Switzerland’s Mobility Cooperative caught her eye. Unsure of what that might actually be, Danielson looked for ideas somewhere familiar: academic journals. Now 56, Danielson hasn’t spoken to Chase in more than a decade.Īntje Danielson, co-founder of Zipcar As the company came together, its co-founders grew apart But in fact, both founders left the company more than 10 years ago, as power struggles and disputes prevented both Chase and Danielson from seeing their shared vision through. And the company’s profile only grew when car-rental giant Avis bought Zipcar for $491 million in January 2013. Today, Zipcar - which is still headquartered in Boston - has offices in more than 26 American cities and 860,000 members across the US, Austria, Canada, Spain, and the UK. Within a few days Chase and Danielson had their first official Zipcar business meeting. That night she went home, talked to him, and decided to go ahead. Chase was enthusiastic, but she wanted to make sure her husband would be okay with her taking on such a big project. So, one afternoon in October of 1999, Danielson took a chance and told Chase about her car-sharing idea. “He said, ‘Well, why don’t you just ask her if she wants to start this company with you?’” “She said, ‘Oh, that’s really interesting, and I’ve been thinking of starting a company, too.’” Danielson’s husband was encouraging. “I was sitting in the playground after school, and there was this other mom who had a business degree and I was telling her about ,” Danielson recalls. Danielson spoke of wanting to branch out of academia, a desire that had her, too, mulling entrepreneurship. Chase started telling Danielson about wanting to put her business degree to good use, about her entrepreneurial ambitions. As Danielson, a Harvard geochemist, and Chase, an MIT business school graduate turned stay-at-home mom, kept chatting, their casual park encounters grew more profound. The two women had met at their kids’ kindergarten, but supervising the playground is how they got to know each other. In the late ’90s, Antje Danielson’s son Max and Robin Chase’s daughter Linnea often played together on a tire swing in Cambridge, Massachusetts' Dana Park.
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