The feed of updates to Reilly Brennan
This originally appeared as a column in Why Is This Interesting on Feb 12, 2026 When an Uber arrives, I don’t like to keep the driver waiting: it doesn’t feel considerate, plus I don’t want it to impact my overall score (a long wait time is the No.1 reason your rider rating can decline) . But automated vehicles flip this dynamic on its head: wait times have no penalty and no social contract…
Phonetically, the best brand names may be two syllables with a long “ E” sound at the end (Sony, Ghostly). It’s probably no coincidence that this is also the structure many longer names take when shortened into nicknames. But, my close second to that group is a Terminal S brand. A few of these started out as founder / family names, with the apostrophe eroding over the years. Many are simply words…
When Uber introduced surge pricing in 2011, many condemned it as merely a price gouging tactic. But consumers eventually realized its primary benefit: unlike fixed supply networks such as hotel rooms or taxi medallions, Uber had the ability to add more vehicles to its network almost instantly as demand spiked. This meant that more customers could reliably get more rides when they needed them.…
My friend Paul Pfanner is one of my favorite entrepreneurs. In many aspects of business (and life) he’s gone twice, in some cases reversing decisions he made after he learned more — perhaps about himself. For example, he rebought the company he once sold. He even went one better than that: he remarried his wife. Paul is a fantastic communicator (in words and illustrations) and I’ve been lucky…
Together with my friend Chris Thomas, we have put forward an initiative which is called Tuebor and if you’re from Michigan and love the state, I think you are going to like this project a lot. Simply put, it is an honor-pledge commitment to invest in a Michigan business, every year. This could be investing in a new startup or simply buying 1 share of a large public company stock based in Michigan.…
Automated vehicles are still emerging and the media and public often lump them together — a symbol of the fact that the market currently has no outright leader. Each company’s success is individual, but their failures are often clumped together as if all operators were one company. This is wrong, of course, but sentiment is subjective. These companies W in A lone, L ose T ogeth er (W.A.L.T.E.R.)…
A few years ago I put together a new auto-focused job board and I had two simple goals: I just needed a place to view all of the jobs for all of the Trucks portfolio companies, primarily so I could point job seekers to them and therefore our companies could hire great talent. This was born out of a relatively boring logistical problem: dozens of Trucks companies used dozens of job listing…
Early this morning I went with Andrea to the Cranbrook spring flower sale. It is on the grounds of ‘ Cranbrook House’ which is the large house that the Booth family lived in even before Cranbrook was a campus. The sale is popular — your aunt is there with hundreds of her friends parking their Volvos and Buicks and thinking about their gardens as they walk inside. This ad-hoc market happens in the…
Our founders always say hiring is the most difficult thing when we poll them (harder than financing, actually). The reality is that finding candidates for jobs in categories like autonomous vehicles, robotics and transportation is hotly contested. After looking (unsuccessfully) for something like this for my own needs, I realized I needed to build it myself. So that is the simple origin behind my…
When quarantine began, I read tips for getting hi-res optics during Zoom video calls. These product recommendations were useful, but expensive — many of the beautiful DSLR kits were north of $1000, while the so-so external webcams were $100-$200 . However, you can get breakthrough optics for a lot less. In the list below, you can put together a very good DSLR kit for under $200 — provided you are…
(this post originally appeared on Why Is This Interesting , the newsletter started by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy) While U.S. election vote-by-mail deadlines vary by state , many millions have already been received, and some already counted . It is likely that 2020’s mail-in total will be significant—estimates are as high as 80 million ballots , or double the number from 2016. Consider your ballot,…
(this post originally appeared on Why Is This Interesting , the newsletter started by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy) My wife and I just drove 3000 miles across the US , during the pandemic. With our two kids and dog. What could have been a 6-hour flight to be with family turned into a 6-day road trip. Of course, few people consider such a thing even in normal times, but during a pandemic, this…
(this post originally appeared on Why Is This Interesting , the newsletter started by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy) Recently, we’ve seen global taxi, ride-hailing, and public transportation ridership drop by over 70% in the wake of COVID-19. The cause is, of course, that the majority of the world’s population isn’t leaving the house. But in places where shelter-in-place orders aren’t restricting…
An ‘ EFER ’ is a simple tool to make an email request go smoothly. Typically startups will ask ‘ Can you intro me to Big Cheese / Investor Person at Company X.’ Having a very straightforward, easily-forwardable email cuts down on the burden for the introducer. Simple ingredients: Subject line provides benefit for the intro Simple request in first paragraph Company description in second paragraph…
(this post originally appeared on Why Is This Interesting , the newsletter started by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy) Recently, the National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB ) released its report on a 2018 vehicle crash whereby a Tesla driver rammed into the back of a parked fire truck. The report suggests the driver was using the car’s advanced driver assistance system, aka Autopilot , at the point…
How do you fundraise (or hire, or talk about your idea to the press, or…) for your company? If you can frame your team’s work with this sentence in mind, I have found it is the shortest path to explaining your value. “ This unusual group of resourceful people is uncommonly good at something valuable” Being able to deliver on and communicate such an idea is all you really need.
Photo by Matt Duncan We’ve saddled production vehicles with high-quality sensors in the interest of safety — or what is currently referred to as ADAS or advanced driver assistance systems. But while most of these sensors are on 100% of the time the vehicle is running, they’re primarily doing the job of a quiet watchdog. They’re active and sensing, but accidents are infrequent and things like…
We need more destination information to make transportation more efficient. People tend to make car trips to the same locations (work, home, market, school, church, etc) — the number is generally believed to be 6 locations, although I don’t know of specific research that supports the claim. Because of our regularity behind the wheel, navigation systems aren’t used on most ‘ regular’ trips. We just…
Consumer navigation systems give us the ‘ best’ route, which is often defined by time: how do I get there fastest? There are some slight modifications (toll/no toll), but time optimization is typical, and rightly so. But we are starting to see some new things appear that will change our routing options: more available data fields that make possible alternative route optimization (A.R.O.) and more…
For the past month I’ve been prototyping something and am ready to push it out there for wider consumption: Future of Transportation weekly. FoT started accidentally — as a way for me to compile my weekly notes about things happening in transportation, logistics, automotive startups and the like. After I started sending these to some friends and they responded positively I realized I should just…
Sister Corita Kent’s 10 rules for the Art Department at the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles: Rule 1 Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while. Rule 2 General duties of a student: Pull everything out of your teacher. Pull everything out of your fellow students. Rule 3 General duties of a teacher: Pull everything out of your students. Rule 4 Consider everything an…
Sony discontinued their Dream Machine clock radios in the U.S at some point over the last year. This proved to be a non-event for most of the consuming public, but when I found out directly from Sony’s PR team last week (they’ve moved over to the “ Dash” line of clock radios), it struck me as the death of another great consumer brand. Is it that Sony can’t manage technology brands through format…
“ One of the reasons for Uniqlo’s success in Japan is the notion of ‘ zen-in keiei,’ which translates to “ everyone as a business leader.” In Japan, people who are hired in the stores are told that they are a part of management, that they make very important decisions, and that they have the potential of making it all the way to the top. I think this concept is very foreign outside of Japan.”…
We were already short on heroes, and now we’ve lost one of our best: My friend and former colleague Rory Wheeler died Tuesday morning, after a warrior’s fight against cancer. He was just 28, which is exactly not enough time for a guy like Rory to have walked the mortal space we call home. He wasn’t granted the time to build a life with his new wife, Kristen, or instill his brand of love and…
Thursday morning I woke up early to get a jump on traffic. I had to make it to a meeting at 10 but wanted to make sure I had enough time to make it to Glendale. I had planned for months leading up to my week in LA that I’d make my way to Forest Lawn Cemetery — where Dilla is buried. Forest Lawn is a massive park cemetery, rolling across a clump of land that’s dotted everywhere with mostly…
Tips for Artists Who Want To Sell John Baldessari (1968)
*‘It was crime and passion that led the illiterate to buy newspapers. Sex and violence made them want to learn to read. And one of the most important bridges leading from the original elite media to the current events cacophony of today was the detective magazine.’ -Eric Godtland in ‘ Sin, Cigarettes and Stiletto Heels’ (from the new book True Crime Detective Magazines )
Zuma Beach 2008 When Andrea and I went on vacation last week we fell in love with Zuma Beach and its neighbor, Westward Beach. When you introduce someone to California for the first time, it’s pretty easy to overwhelm them with the kinds of things that your brain thought were only possible on television. Sunset in Malibu can make two people from Michigan appreciate why Californians are so…
Bridge crossing the Mighty Mac in a tractor A few weeks ago, about 600 people crossed the Mackinac Bridge, aka the “ Mighty Mac” a 5-mile suspension bridge connecting Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. 600 people doesn’t sound like much of a big deal until you realize they did it riding antique farm tractors. Big old Farmalls and John Deeres and other work machines made before 1962 that are…
We spend a lot of time consuming various media forms, more so than ever. One big distinction that’s often made is between “ push” and “ pull” media. The difference is simple: pull means someone wants something and goes looking for it (I want a recipe for potato salad and go searching for one online), while push describes something that is sent to someone (usually with their permission and referred…