Blog
April 2009

Welcome to our blog. Through it, we hope to offer insight into or products and technology, as well as some general news that we hope may affect your transportation habits.

Three years ago this week I said goodbye to my job at Microsoft to launch Goose Networks on nothing more than an interesting idea and a few dozen cans of Red Bull.  Zac joined me out in Seattle soon after, and we hunkered down that summer to explore just how (and if) we could build a business around using technology to alter everyday transportation patterns.

We focused our first six months on building a ground-breaking, SMS-based service to enable real-time ridesharing.  The technology worked, but we never quite discovered how to recruit enough users on to the service to take advantage of the network effect.  What we did discover, however, was that more and more companies and organizations were growing their own internal commuter management programs, and many of them had similar technology needs that weren't being met.  Starting in late 2006, we began to re-imagine Goose as a technology platform that could power all types of commuter management services -- commute reporting, shuttle management, and, of course, rideshare matching.  By the end of the year, we had snagged our first two big contracts, and have been powering some of the country's most effective commuter management programs ever since.

We've certainly re-adjusted our focus a number of times since April 2006, but our core mission has remained remarkably consistent all along.  Here's to another three years!

The Pacific Northwest is one of two new regions added in 2009 to the enormously successful Clean Tech Open which launched in California in 2006. Goose was the transportation category runner-up in 2008. As a part of the kick off event for the new Pacific Northwest Clean Tech Open, Goose spoke to a packed house last night at Seattle's recently renovated Arctic hotel. 

The size and enthusiasm of the crowd are good indications of the future of the Clean Tech Open outside of California. We are excited to have such a valuable program happening in our backyard and look forward to supporting the entrepreneurs who will represent the Northwest in what is now a national competition.

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