Ben Rosen and the Poool commuting technology
I just had breakfast with Ben Rosen, founding partner of the Sevin Rosen venture capital firm and now retired. Ben's firm was the lead investor in my first startup 25 years ago. As a matter of fact, Steve Dow, who was the associate who found us way back then, is still an active partner with Sevin Rosen and is one of Benetech's advisors. Ben is also on the board of Caltech, which is my alma mater. I wasn't surprised to find that Ben has a great idea for a technology social enterprise, and it was fun to talk about it. Ben's been thinking about global warming issues for quite a while, and came up with an idea that could be implemented quickly and make a major impact on pollution and congestion. The concept is improved ride sharing technology for commuters to make carpooling more practical. Ben grabbed my attention with the following quote about the problem: Traffic is worse than it's ever been... but better than it will ever be. More people and more cars in the U....