Zipcar Founder and MIT Sloan Grad Robin Chase Offers Entrepreneur Advice
Last month, Zipcar founder and “Peers Inc” author Robin Chase, ‘86, spoke at MIT Sloan‘s Women in Management’s Push for Parity Week, offering three incredibly valuable lessons to those in attendance.
Lesson #1: Intellectual Honesty
Chase encourages entrepreneurs to take the “intellectually honest” route. This means leaders become “learning machines” in order to understand what needs fixing. It also means CEOs need to “learn what [they’re] good at and when to put [their] trust in others.” Chase reminisced about her early ignorance of the auto industry when she started Zipcar in 2000: “I felt that when I went to meetings I really had to know my stuff.”
Lesson #2: “Know thyself.”
In addition to knowing their industry inside and out, new entrepreneurs need time to get to know themselves as leaders. It takes time—not to mention chutzpah and fortitude—to settle into a leadership role. Part of getting comfortable involves being able to trust oneself when outside opinions attempt to sway you in different directions. Chase said, “It took me a really long time to understand what I was good at and when my intuition was right.”
Lesson #3: “Make sure all team members are on the same page.”
When it comes to past, present, and future hires, Chase told the assembled crowd to try to look beyond a candidate’s CV in order to understand the person behind the resume. What are this person’s values and how do they align with my company’s?
Particularly for new startups, Chase stressed the importance of knowing “when you are not standing next to someone their value judgments will be the same.”
She added, “For my first hires, it was great knowing this person had been a bike messenger. In the beginning, everyone is doing everything. You want to have multipurpose can-do people.”
You can find more of Chase’s advice on the official MIT Sloan website, and download Robin Chase, Zipcar and an Inconvenient Discovery today.
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
