The suburbs west of Boston are united on several fronts, among them expensive homes on idyllic back roads and an insatiable quest to vote anyone with the name Kennedy into office. The people here also drive their children to school in high-end cars, and this is where a Boston startup called Sheprd sees opportunity. Instead of Mom and Dad driving—or, heaven forbid, making the kids ride a bus—a shiny Land Rover will whisk them to class in the comfort they deserve.
That Land Rover LR4 with the school-bus sign is real, and the drivers are full-time employees who must pass the same licensing as actual school-bus drivers. For $17 a ride, any K-12 child in Newton, Massachusetts, can take a Sheprd to summer camp, dance class, music school, the YMCA, or another 14 educational institutions in town. Kids get a leather-lined, air-sprung ride with Kindles and booster seats. Parents can impress other parents with their impeccable taste in chauffeurs. (The uniformed drivers are paid a minimum of $20 per hour, wear ID badges, and must pass a Breathalyzer before each shift as well as undergo random drug testing, in addition to a physical and a criminal background check.) Really, though, founder and CEO Nick Jasset said Sheprd is a more reliable, safety-intensive alternative to Uber or other kid-friendly ride-hailing services like California’s HopSkipDrive.
“It’s the convenience of an Uber with the trust and security of a super-premium school bus,” Jasset told CD.
Part of that security means drivers will only drop off children at designated areas during open hours, so that, as with a real bus, the kids become the responsibility of an adult on those premises. Sheprd’s policy is never to renege on a ride, and its drivers won’t leave the curb until the child makes it inside. So far, Sheprd hasn’t run any advertising. The white Land Rovers with the flashing signs on their roofs have attracted attention on their own.
“We’re automating the carpools that would ordinarily take place in these cars,” he said.
If you’re wondering why Sheprd would run an 11-car fleet of Land Rovers—vehicles that aren’t the last word in reliability or fuel economy—it’s because Sheprd is funded by Jaguar Land Rover’s subsidiary, InMotion Ventures. That’s a venture-capital fund run in Coventry that lets JLR, like many automakers, test (and profit from) emerging tech and mobility companies. Since Jasset founded Sheprd in February 2017 and began operations last May, InMotion has poured more than $1 million into his company, a substantial sum to drive a bunch of Land Rovers around in a single town.
Jasset makes an effort to distance his company from that other app-based ride-sharing program, Uber, and anyway, Sheprd doesn’t quite have the instant convenience of ordering a last-minute ride. Parents must book or change rides the night prior, so if Billy thinks he’s going to skip fencing practice, tell him he’s sword fighting and that’s final. Eventually, if the concept works (Jasset wouldn’t say how many rides he’s completed or the total number of customers he serves), Sheprd might shepherd the children in other wealthy Massachusetts towns and then conquer “the Westchesters and the Greenwiches.”
Jasset insisted he’s not running a rich-kid shuttle. Some parents using Sheprd, he said, are on some sort of government assistance. But there’s no going past it: booking your kids a private Land Rover school bus does make a statement.
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