I'm super excited to have our next guest on because George Harrison is the founder of shift

shift.com we're going to talk about that and the company going public via a SPAC.

There's been a lot of spectacular companies going public and we're going to talk about the whole

SPAC movement which everybody's very interested in. But in addition, George created Uber, years before Uber existed or left with something called

Taxi Magic.

So we're going to get into the history of that and what it's like as a founder to create a game-changing company but not win the big prize

welcome to the pod George Arison and I'm pronouncing correct it's Arison a O N correct? That's correct and thanks for having me

excited to talk to you. Yeah so I let off with it. It's got to be an interesting moment a

lot of your friends probably bring this up and family members. You create a

taxi magic which if my memory serves me correct was a way to get a taxi and

have it dispatched.

Sounds very familiar to me and you did that back in 2007 which was a couple of years

before Uber existed correct?

Yeah we started Taxi Magic in February of 2007 and you

know launched it as a product first on the East Coast and then in San Francisco as

well you could book a taxi to come to you through your phone.

At this point it was a Blackberry and a Palm device, Windows Mobile, iPhone did not

yet exist. And then you could also pay for the taxi through the phone as well all connected

to the dispatch systems at the taxi fleets.

I didn't realize you also had payments because that was Uber's and Lyft's big innovation as well, but you did it with taxis, not with Lincoln Town Cars.

Take me back to that decision to do taxis and not Lincoln Town Cars.

Yeah, so we I mean we actually did Lincoln Town Cars in New York, but the thinking was we wanted

...