We recently connected with Matt Friedmann and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, thanks for joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Our business has grown tremendously since we launched over 10 years ago. We started with 6 Freebee vehicles in South Beach, providing Free rides and generating all of our revenue by selling advertising on the cars. From there, we eventually expanded our fleet of electric vehicles to Brickell and Downtown Miami, as we built up our reputation in the market and with the advertising community. Once Uber and Lyft began getting popular down here, we knew we had to create an App so people could have a reliable way to request rides in our vehicles. Soon after we launched our “Ride Freebee” mobile App and local Cities began recognizing that our company provides a valuable transportation solution; filling the “first mile / last mile” void in the market, where it’s too far to walk and too close to drive.

The Village of Key Biscayne was the first City to enter into a municipal contract with us, to provide short distance public transportation for all their residents and visitors. This program was a huge success as we provided on-demand, door to door rides to everyone, which made it so people didn’t need to rely on their personal vehicles to get around, and it helped reduce traffic congestion, and parking issues. Everyone loved the service and our friendly drivers; especially the local business owners. We still sold advertising on the vehicles and gave a percent of this revenue back to the City to lower their cost of the Freebee transportation program.

After that, Coral Gables, “the City Beautiful” entered into a long term transportation contract with Freebee for multiple vehicles. This program was also very successful and next came the Town of Miami Lakes, followed by Coconut Grove. Today, we’re in nearly 30 Cities in the Miami / South Florida area and are continuing to expand. We’re currently as far South as Islamorada in the Keys, as far North as Delray Beach, and we have operations in St. Pete Beach on the West Coast. We provide transportation on Florida International University’s main campus for all of their students and staff. Additionally, Freebee has private transportation contracts with Office Parks, and numerous hotels. Our company recently expanded to Virginia Beach, VA; our first out of state market! We launched with 5 of our Tesla Freebee vehicles and will soon look to grow our operations and fleet more around the Virginia region. The feedback on our service in Virginia Beach has been very positive so far.

It’s exciting times for our company and we’re about to scale even more rapidly as we build out our team and staff. Since we launched our Ride Freebee App, we transitioned our drivers over to W2 employees of our company. We also now use multiple vehicle types, including our Tesla Model X’s, the one’s with the doors that go upwards like wings, and larger passenger vans. We still sell advertising on the vehicles as well and have rev. share agreements with the Cities. The advertisers love it because we’re able to drill down and really target the demographics they’re looking to reach with their campaigns. We’re also creating branded experiences for all of our riders

The growth has definitely been challenging as well as navigating the pandemic, but we have an excellent core team and an amazing formula for success. We’ve worked diligently to perfect our systems and processes over the years and to create a proven business model that Cities, passengers, advertisers, and communities love.

Of course, building this business from the ground up has not been easy, by any means. Especially since Freebee is such a new and innovative concept, as compared to say a traditional accounting firm or business that’s been around for decades. Now, that we’re expanding outside of Florida, it’s only going to get harder as our operations are further from our home base in Miami and we need to hire talented people locally, out of state, as well as managers to oversee the program, vehicle maintenance people, and more.

One of the keys to all this is building a great team, believing in yourselves, building a product or service that people love, creating a vision and mission that inspires people, giving back to the community, and staying consistent, day after day, month after month, year after year. In our business we’ve always needed to stay creative to navigate certain obstacles and continue to innovate. We also need to stay flexible and be able to pivot when necessary. Resiliency is another key to success.

To sum it all up, it’s been quite a ride :) I’m certainly excited to see what the future holds for Freebee and where we’ll be in another 10 years

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

 

Hey everyone, I’m Matt Friedmann – entrepreneur, dad, landlord, and circumnavigator. I’ve loved living in Miami for the past 17 years. Originally from the South Jersey / Philadelphia area, I came down here for college to attend the University of Miami’s School of Business and I’ve been here ever since. After college I had an amazing experience working for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines for 4+ years in a variety of exciting roles. I certainly enjoyed my time at Royal, but I always had an entrepreneurial mindset and wanted to build a company of my own. When my partners came up with the idea for Freebee, I was intrigued from the start and saw the potential of how fun, innovative, and scalable this business could be. I quickly decided to come onboard as I knew I could add a ton of value to the company and really help Freebee grow. Since then my team and I have been plugging away for the past 10 years.

Over time, the company has grown from just a few people to more than 200 employees and counting. We went from operating 6 vehicles in 1 City to having nearly 150 vehicles in almost 30 Cities. It’s pretty special that throughout all of these years, our core management team has stuck together and that we’ve managed to maintain our friendships outside of work as well. As a company, we’re still offering Free and 100% battery powered rides to everyone and now we have a more sustainable business model with all of our long term City transportation contracts. This is combined with our advertising opportunities on the vehicles and other revenue streams.

Personally, I’ve worn countless hats at Freebee over the years and I’ve always been responsible for leading the revenue generation for our company as well as bringing in and retaining advertisers for our vehicles. As the Chief Revenue Officer, I have a sales team under me and we’re continuously innovating and looking to create new revenue streams and add value to our clients. It’s been a rewarding learning experience, working on our Freebee App over the years with our developers to create a successful platform that now has over 200,000 users.

Since launching Freebee, there have been many positive changes in my personal life as well. I’m now happily married and my wife and I were fortunate enough to purchase a home in Miami at a pretty opportune time period. Our amazing daughter, Julia, is just over 5 months old and gets cuter by the day :). In addition to being a business owner and a dad, I’m a landlord up in the Philadelphia area and typically travel there every few months to check up on my properties and tenants, which I find enjoyable and fulfilling. It’s also a nice change of pace from the daily grind of Freebee

Outside of work I’m a big Philadelphia sports fan as well as UM fan. I’m excited to continue growing our Freebee company to more states and growing my personal family as well. In the meantime, I’m working on trying to balance everything in my life, with being a new father, but so far, so good and I feel very fortunate to have a great support system

Have you ever had to pivot?

Our company had to make a major pivot when Covid happened. We’re in the business of providing public transportation and when the pandemic occurred our ridership took a major hit. Many people soon realized that our vehicles were the safest form of public transportation in the Miami / South Florida area because the cars are open air for the most part, our drivers are W2 employees of ours, and they would wipe down and sanitize the vehicles after each ride.

however, during this time period, we pivoted to providing a food delivery service for many of our Cities instead of transporting passengers. This worked out well for everyone, since we provided the deliveries for the restaurants for Free, rather than collecting huge fees, and delivered the food for Free to everyone cooped up in their homes. It made it so our drivers could keep working and getting paid and that our company could continue to operate. We eventually switched back to transporting passengers full time in all of our Cities, but this allowed us to also fulfill our obligations to our municipal contracts; and everyone benefited. We’ve pivoted many times, but this is the most recent one that comes to mind.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We built our reputation in the Miami / South Florida market by giving back to the community, supporting many of the local organizations, and providing Free and 100% battery powered transportation to everyone. We’ve been operating every day in Miami for the past 10+ years and have always put a big focus on the customer experience during the rides and hiring and training the best, most outgoing drivers. Our company is a member of over 25 different Chamber of Commerce’s in all the Cities we service as well as the GMCVB , Beacon Council, and a number of other local organizations.

We always strive to give back. Just last week, I exhibited on behalf of Freebee at a local elementary school for Career Day, in one of the Cities we service. The kids of all ages loved sitting in and checking out our Freebee Tesla Model X’s, the one’s with the doors that go upwards like wings. The number 1 question I received that morning was, “are you Elon Musk?” and the number 2 question was “can I honk the horn” :) After that I attended a big Annual Business Excellence Awards ceremony, where Freebee was a winner in the “Innovation and Technology” category.

My team and I have constantly been active in the local communities we serve, attending as many events as we can, and providing free, fun, and convenient rides to everyone. We focus on building personal relationships and providing top notch customer service. This has certainly helped build our reputation in the market

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ridefreebee.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattfriedmann6637348
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits
@angleplatform

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