Meet my customers!

Let me tell you something very cheesy.
"I'm not doing my business for money...but for connecting with people"

Well.. sort of.. I like having this additional income and like the fact that I can go around bragging about how fast Rent-My-Bike turned profit.  Yet, I have plenty of other ways to get much more money...TAing..working at the library..stock trading..etc.

What I like the most about Rent-My-Bike is that it bring to me all those people...whom I'm very unlikely to meet during my daily grad student life.
          Gaurav, my new customer today, is the founder of One Degree Solar, a company that designs/builds/distributes Solar energy in Africa. His wife happens to be a medical student rotating at Stanford for the next couples of week..and, yes, he needs a bike to commute. Typical bike rental cost is probably not the most important reason for him to choose my business..it's probably the fact that I offered to drop off a bike at his apartment in Palo Alto..on the first evening he arrived.
            Similar story for Steve, my customer last week, an attorney from Las Vegas. Steve is currently working on a number of projects in D.C. and San Francisco. Last week he rent a house in Palo Alto and would like to have bike to ride to and from Caltrain station in the morning and evening. Steve also got a bike the first evening he arrived; I dropped it off on my way from lab to home. He was impressed enough to give me 5 stars on Yelp...that was really something given that most of his reviews on Yelp are at 2 stars or below.
           Last Friday I also met William..I don't know what his profession is but he has an electrical engineer cousin in Redwood city. William lives in German and will travel area this week..and wants a bike with a back rack to put his small bag on.William showed up at Stanford two days before his appointment with me so I didn't have time to fix that only one bike (with a back rack)..back tire was expiring..two out of three gears didn't work..back brake was also loose.. I told him my bike was not really in a good shape and asked if he want to come back later in a day. William said "no problem ..I love working with bike!"..somehow .. a day after he changed back tire, fixed gears and brake. I ended up giving him back all rental fee plus a little extra money for fixing my bike.
            Two weeks ago we rented a bike out to Pleuni, a visiting scholar from Harvard...specialized in computation biology. I was in Thailand that week for a conference so I have Mike, my Thai undergrad friend, running the business. It turned out that Mike is also planning to study computational biology! Pleuni forward him interesting article in the field..also invite him to visit her lab at Harvard.
             I also got to know a few visiting medical students. It started from Eva..a forth year medical student from New York. I gave her a simple female mountain bike..she had problem with the seat..the basket ..etc. I remember spending almost half an hour trying to adjust the bike. It turned out that that half an hour paid off. I got a very good referral to a few others visiting medical students from New York..the same school as Eva.. yes! all of them need to be at Stanford for a month and look for bike rental!
Did I tell you about Robert, an investment banker from Mexico showing up at my lab looking for a bike?
Did I tell you about Mona, an Iranian computational sociologist working on ancient literature mining?
Did I tell you abut Jakrit, a summer student from Thailand?
...maybe next time.
As I told you, this is no longer all about money...

23 October 2012, Palo Alto, CA, USA