Fun Czar Moves From Drinking to Driving

Former Fun Czar Zachary A. Corker ’04 is splitting his time between Cambridge and Seattle, juggling renovations of Loker Commons and launching a text message-based carpooling service.

This week, Corker, along with college roommate Nicholas A. Shiftan ’04, launched a beta version of GOOSE, a company that uses SMS text messaging to facilitate carpooling in Seattle, Wash.

Registered users send a text message to GOOSE, or 46673, indicating their location, their destination, and whether they are looking for a driver or a passenger. Within 10 minutes, the driver and one or more passengers receive a text message with the information needed to give or get a ride.

The text message sent to participants provides the name of the person they will be carpooling with and the timing. The “rider” also receives information on the car picking them up, while the driver is given MapQuest directions to the pickup location.

“The goal is really to provide a convenient and cost-effective alternative to the single-occupancy vehicle,” said Corker, who is also Project Manager of Loker Commons Planning and Program Development.

While living in Seattle and working for Microsoft, Shiftan said he, like many recent college graduates, worked inconsistent hours, making it harder to set up a regular carpool. As a result, in February, he came up with the idea for GOOSE.

“Erratic hours...made traditional car-pooling or ride-sharing pretty much impossible,” Shiftan said. “But there are so many Microsoft employees in downtown Seattle that I literally found myself passing friends of mine on my way to work every morning.”

Shiftan and Corker said that the concept for the service was also a result of the high levels of traffic and congestion that commuters face in the city.

According to Corker, whose role for GOOSE primarily involves sales and marketing, a one-hour commute to work in Seattle, for example, could take as little as 20 minutes in High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes, which are open only to cars with two or more passengers.

Shiftan and Corker, taking advantage of this incentive—as well as high gas prices and an increased awareness of global warming—started working on the service full-time in June.

The Harvard grads chose to launch their service in Seattle for several other reasons as well.

“It’s a very young city, it’s a very tech-savvy city, it’s a very environmentally friendly city,” Shiftan said.

If the beta-testing period proves successful, Shiftan and Corker said they hope to expand into other cities such as Washington, D.C. and Boston.

While they recognize that the idea of coordinating carpools through technology is not a new one, the duo emphasizes the novelty of using text messaging to execute it.

“There are only so many hours each day you’re sitting in front of your computer. You have your cell phone on you 24 hours a day,” Corker said.

GOOSE’s beta program is currently open to 200 Microsoft employees in downtown Seattle. Upon signing up for the service, users receive $10 of “GooseGas”—virtual money that can be used to reimburse the driver of the carpool for half of the gas used on any given trip.

For now, Shiftan, Corker, and a few investors are funding this part of the service.

Once the service is available on a widespread scale, participating employers must pay a monthly fee so their employees can use GOOSE as a perk.

Shiftan, who concentrated in Computer Science at Harvard, wrote the code for GOOSE and created the company’s website, www.readysetgoose.com.

“I haven’t slept much since April,” Shifton said.

Corker, too, said he has not had much free time as he also oversees the renovation of Loker Commons and the construction of the Queen’s Head Pub, originally slated to be completed this month.

“He has been very important to the project from the beginning and we wanted his continued involvement until it opened,” Associate Dean of Harvard College Judith H. Kidd wrote in an e-mail.