The pandemic might be hampering business for D.C. carpooling startup Go Together Inc., but Kimberly Moore plans to change that.
The company’s CEO is preparing to launch a new version of its platform, broaden its customer base and raise new funding this year, to come back after losing revenue from school closures during coronavirus that could continue into the upcoming academic year.
Here’s her game plan:
- Target school districts: The 5-year-old company’s CarpooltoSchool service, which matches parents with school carpools, has focused on individual public charter and private schools up to this point. The public health crisis has opened a new door for the startup, Moore said, because school districts will need to follow social distancing guidelines and parents could find smaller carpools more attractive.
- Develop the technology: Go Together is considering adding features like contact tracing and addressing concerns like financial liability in the next generation of its web platform and mobile app. The new version is slated to launch in September with tech to make students’ commutes safer and simpler to coordinate.
- Raise funding: Moore is seeking about $250,000 through grants, loans and accelerator funding. Moore has put on hold the $2.4 million seed round she’d planned for this year, after raising $450,000 to date.
Go Together has gained some traction and recognition up to this point, but raising capital and making connections with investors has been tough, Moore said.
“I’m a woman, I’m an older woman — I’ve got gray hair — I’m an African American,” she said. And even with paying customers and a proven model, “it feels like we don’t get credit for that, that the bar needs to be higher.”
But she hopes that may start changing. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer, and as issues of systemic racism become more widely discussed, “there are investors and ecosystems that want to talk to Black female founders in a way that they didn’t want to before, necessarily,” she said. “I also think that I am going to be selective because those opportunities — they can consume time, and I can’t spend my time in places that aren’t really real. I appreciate the interest, but unless you’re really cutting checks right now? Let’s talk when you really are.”
Editor’s Note: This story first appeared in the Washington Business Journal. It appears here in an abbreviated format. See the original post here.
