(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 543: Measuring Emissions Reduction for Bike Commutes

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Mark Kabbash, founder of The Dandy Horse. He chats with us about a new system for measuring and verifying bike commuting to obtain carbon avoidance credits. We chat about how the system works and the funding it could generate.

Find out more about Mark’s work at Linked In

To listen to this episode, find it at Streetsblog USA or our hosting archive.

Below is a full AI generated unedited transcript of this episode:

Jeff Wood:  Mark Kabbash, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Mark Kabbash: Oh, my I’ll tell you the worst parts first. I actually lied on my first job application. I’m fond of saying that I was supposed to be 17 years old for my first job, which was a bicycle messenger, and I liked it so much. I fibbed a little and I was 15 when I did so it’s been part of my ethos.
For quite a long time.

Jeff Wood: The bicycle part, not the lying part.

Mark Kabbash: Correct. Thank you. Yes.

Jeff Wood: So how did you get interested in cycling early on?

Mark Kabbash: I don’t think I’ve really had a bad day bicycling. I bicycled across the country at a very early age, 16 years old. I think I rode my bike from Boston by myself up through New Hampshire, [00:03:00] Maine, back to New Hampshire, Vermont, and back to Boston without GPS or a phone.
Which back then was a tough thing. I really enjoy being on the world’s most efficient mode of transportation. It’s really a wonderful way of life. I call ’em my steed, know my Steeds, and my company’s called The Dandy Horse. But I have a New York City apartment. I have way too many bicycles in my living room, much to the chagrin of my wife.
I can understand that. Yes. So I’m fond of saying that if a bicycle of mine were stolen, I’m not gonna call the police. And report grand larceny. I’m gonna call the FBI and report kidnapping.

Jeff Wood: you love him that much? Absolutely. That’s good. And so what about your work background? What do you generally do with your time and what’s your history?

Mark Kabbash: I’ve been self-employed since 19 years old. I’m fond of saying that. My best friend, the best man I’ve ever known in my life, the best man at my wedding. My father was a director of research at seven different Wall Street firms and partnered with three different brokerage firms. When I got in [00:04:00] trouble at boarding school, my friends went to camp.
I went to go stuff envelopes and licks. Stamps and my friends knew batting averages and I grew up knowing PE ratios. So I have a history of Wall Street and investor relations and funding different projects and companies, and I had the privilege of following those that excited me and gained my interest the most.
And that’s been my mode of learning, which has been fueled by interest, and I think that’s really a wonderful way of life.
Jeff Wood: I agree. That’s how I am too. It’s like the things that are interesting, the things that you wanna learn about and that lifetime learning is a really good way to go. I wanna know a little bit about your company, the Dandy Horse, and its origins, and even the origin of the name.
Mark Kabbash: The name I wish I could say it was a unique name on Tarone, but it was one of the original names about 200 years ago applied to the bicycle. It is the bike that you see little children on without pedals in a chain, and it’s how they learn how to ride today.
So the [00:05:00] Dandy Horse is an homage to the original name. The reason why I created the Dandy Horse, it’s pretty simple. That person I referenced earlier, my father battled Parkinson’s for 18 years in the last five. Weren’t that fun any minute with my dad was fantastic. But what I tried to do is raise money in different charity events pertaining to the cause that was impacting his health, and you’re very limited.
With using the bicycle as a means to raise money. You’ve all probably been on bicycle charity events. You know how they take place, but they’re very inefficient in a way that they allocate or they collect money in the fees associated to it. I’ll give you an example. In New York City. There’s a ride that starts at the Intrepid, the aircraft carrier, and it goes up the West Side Highway across the George Washington Bridge.
They actually rented the George Washington Bridge, brought up to Hunter Mountain and back, and the cost associated to it was extravagant, but people. [00:06:00] From, let’s say, bang, Maine would come down to New York City, solicit friends and family to donate money on a per mile basis, and they would come to New York and do that ride, but it would be so out of whack with regards to the amount of money they raised, but also the cost associated to that individual.
So I came to the mindset that there’s gotta be a better way to take the goodwill of the individual cyclist and make every ride a charity ride. Our team filed a patent that gave us the ability to give the brand recognition of the sponsor. In this case, let’s take a bicycle jersey and let’s take a company let’s call it Shram bicycle manufacturer as a jersey in front and in the back.
Let’s say it’s Michael J. Fox Foundation, which would be the cause. That sponsor would be willing to compensate the rider for those miles ridden, but there is no confidence that the truth of those miles or the jersey being [00:07:00] worn to the give confidence, to Shram, to continually make donations. So we did something very simple, Jeffrey.
What we did is we put a QR code. On the fabric within the apparel. In the lower left hand corner, we put a QR code on the helmet of the bicycle. We used NFC tags, near field communication tags, and we put it on the bicycle. So before a ride, we asked the people to launch our application, which is called vt.
There’s only four ways you could scientifically prove anything, Jeffrey, and that’s, you could verify it to an inspection demonstration analysis. Testing, we do all four in a method to create a high level of authentication of a bicyclist origination point pathway, but it felt odd making money when you’re trying to benefit a charity.
So it didn’t feel right, but the technology was there. Then [00:08:00] all of a sudden, the SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission had put forth what’s called the Climate Disclosure Act, and what they said is that every company that reports on those exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange, et cetera, have make claims that they are more environmentally friendly in regarding their carbon emissions than other companies.
But if they were to make a claim that was unsubstantiated in a financial statement and it was wrong, people go to jail and people were making, organizations were making claims pertaining to how environmentally conscious they were without the ability to verify and prove that those claims were accurate.
So investors are actually pouring money into unverified or unsubstantiated claims. So with my father’s background and my understanding of Wall Street, I came to conclusion we’ll use the same methodology to create a means of which [00:09:00] organizations can make a factual statement and be able to support it with auditable data.
And that’s the origination of our process.
Jeff Wood: How did you start to think about it as something that could be used in a broader sense?
Mark Kabbash: Bicycle infrastructure, bicycle theft, and those are the things that really bothered me. For instance, if you take Route 66 as an example, and you built that highway from Chicago to Barney’s, Beery in LA without hotels, gas stations, or parking lots.
Cars wouldn’t be able travel on that highway very far. On top of that, there would be no ability to come up with a maintenance of the highway by taxing or creating commerce based off the usage of that pathway. So what’s happened in America’s bicycle infrastructure is the same thing. They’re pouring money out of creating money from taxation and grants to [00:10:00] build a pathway, and then they’re burdening the local municipalities, which means to find ability to create an income to maintain those pathways.
And it was shortsighted. I applaud their efforts, but I think they’ve not done as well as they could have. So what we’ve done is we’ve tethered our commuter. In this case, I refer to our process, a bicycle commuter carbon avoidance credit. It’s widely understood that bicycle is a bicycle, right? Bicycle as a mode of transportation.
Still to date is the world’s most efficient mode of transportation. Nothing comes close. Even walking. So what we had to do is to create the delta. How can we prove the avoidance of carbon emissions? First, you had to create a baseline, what you normally do in mode of transportation. So our application was pretty clever.
Our team came up with the understanding that. If you fill out the profile in [00:11:00] our app, you’re gonna also have to put in the VIN number of your vehicle. We would ping the different agencies like the Department of Transportation, department of Motor Vehicles, and we’ll find out the name, make, and model of your vehicle, which includes the emission rates.
So that would be the baseline. And then we look at the traffic pattern to your destination where you work, and we look at the traffic patterns of that journey. And at times, if you’re in traffic for an hour with your motor running at idle, you can emit as much as 4,000 grams of C2 per hour at idle. Now a cyclist, they only produce 34 grams per mile.
So that carbon savings, we’ve come up with a methodology to have the international standards, the committees of which govern the protocols in which you could verify and collect data and then verify it. We meet the sweet spots, so we focus on [00:12:00] the delta, the difference, and you created carbon credit submitted to exchanges, of which then the carbon emitters that were trying to reduce their footprint.
Buy that carbon credit and reduce their exposure because at times, let’s say a diesel truck manufacturer or a transportation company, they really can’t get around the emission rates. So instead of being taxed, they fuel the carbon bicycle, commuter carbon ordinance market. By buying no demand on the supply of the bicycle, commute, carbon credits, and we wanna create a methodology that local municipalities get the proceeds of which they pour back into the sustainable bicycle infrastructure.
Jeff Wood: I love that. And it’s interesting because, we’ve talked to folks on the show about how we can use carbon credits to improve transportation funding, to improve bike and transit funding specifically. And it seems like there’s ways that certain states, [00:13:00] like California for example, do cap and trade and whatever else.
But I’m always curious what are the other markets that you’re gonna be selling to? If you are creating a system where you can actually measure and find out what the actual emissions reduction is, who are you selling that to, who’s giving you money? Especially if it’s not something that can be used in the current markets, or if it’s not something that the current markets are interested in purchasing.
Mark Kabbash: I’m glad you mentioned California. I really applaud their efforts. I think their mindset is in the right vein pertaining to the incentive that the adverse impact of carbon emissions. They just came out with a press release or a new law a couple of weeks ago pertaining to something called the VMT Mitigation Bank that stands for.
Vehicles, miles tracked mitigation bank, and what that does is they’re trying to reduce the miles towards your destination. A lot of people have heard of that 15 minute city where if you could reduce the amount of distance you travel, you’re therefore reduce the amount of emissions. Our process [00:14:00] of carbon creation or carbon avoidance and creating carbon credit with that feeds that model very well.
Hopefully find what we refer to as our pedal fortress with regards to securing the bicycle in an environment where creates an income by virtue like parking. But in our model, what we wanna do is provide a municipality, a shared revenue model as much as 80% of the proceeds of all of the facilities used to secure a bicycle.
Back into the community on top of the bicycle carbon avoidance credits, and on top of that, there’s something referred to as an offset. I just briefly mentioned the SEC Climate Disclosure Act. There are three different scopes of which companies can collect data and report it in, which they can be held accountable for with that data reflection.
The one I’d like to reference is [00:15:00] called Scope three, category seven. Of the greenhouse gas protocols. Every company on the SEC that trade on the public markets have to report how their employees get to work. But Jeffrey, it’s very frustrating to me because it’s done on a biannual survey. I, for one, have never seen a survey that can be audited and create a monetary value off of it.
It’s because they claim it’s too difficult. We’ve come up with a methodology that not only creates the ability to track and verify it, but we’re gonna provide those corporations the ability to subtract that scope Three category seven, the miles that, or the carbon credits that are created, or the carbon avoidance that’s created and subtracted from what’s called Scope three category six, which is business travel emissions.
And that’s the offset side of the equation. So we’re able to create a carbon credit, something that’s monetizable, reward [00:16:00] municipalities for the infrastructures that they create and reward their company the offset value. So they don’t get heavy taxed or burdened and be able to reflect the corporate social responsibility of their, that ties in with their incentive programs to get their employees to bicycle commute.
And Jeffrey, I wanna point out one other important facet. Personally I really loved George Orwell’s, 1984 and everyone knows that term Big Brother and tracking, and a lot of people don’t like the thought of their using their phone to be tracked. But we needed to create what I refer to as the want to.
And we want to get people to agree to allow those miles to be tracked. And the easiest way you could do that is to reward them monetarily. So corporations consistently are trying to reduce their healthcare premiums, which would save the increase, the bottom line, the profit margins of the corporation.
But if they’re able to do that, they could also save their employees [00:17:00] money. Now we can empower human resource officers to renegotiate the premiums of these healthcare policies because they could categorically prove with verifiable data that their employees are more healthy. So corporations like Johnson and Johnson reduced a tremendous amount of the premiums based off of their employees bicycle commuting, but that was faith-based.
Ours is verifiable. And one more little nugget pertaining to the health benefit. There’s an organization called Health iq. At their website, you’ll see it’s a life insurance policy company. They’ll reduce their premiums as much as 40% if you bicycle, commute, or bicycle 50 miles a week or more. Their actuarial tables don’t have verifiable data.
Companies like Strava does not have one mile that’s verified amongst their 150 to hundred 80 million users of that app. It’s all faith-based. [00:18:00] There’s no checks and balances. We provide those checks and balances that empower corporations many different ways to save money.
Jeff Wood: So tell me specifically how the program, as you’ve envisioned it works.
So you have bike lockers and you have a way for people to track where they’re going. You mentioned the way that you used it for the charity rides, but I’m curious like how if implemented or when implemented how would work specifically?
Mark Kabbash: So I mentioned the fact that if my bike is ever stolen, I would like to call the FBI reported as kidnapping.
I would not use any other methodology to secure my bicycle. That’s to humankind right now. It secured outside. There’s no facility that I feel comfortable with. My titanium rail brook saddle alone is something that if takes 20 seconds to remove. I would cry. I really would. The frame might be there, but pieces can be removed.
So what we did in our, [00:19:00] what we call the pedal fortress, is we embed a lot of technology into it. So much so that I would use my bicycles in this structure, in this facility without a lock. How we do that is it’s a reservation enabled system. So online or through your app, you could reserve the spot.
Therefore, you know if you ride, you’ve got a spot to secure your bike. So I mentioned the NFC tags and QR codes. We embed an RFID tag inside the tire of the wheel, and that is called a radio frequency identification. As a tag identifier in that, which is all this, what I’m referring to is part of our patent, so that needs a gateway.
It’s similar to what in East Coast we call easy pass, the method of which a car goes underneath a threshold and your build for the toll and the right to use those roads. So the facility, the structured pedal palace, we use the phone that the operator uses to open [00:20:00] one door. Then the building has the gateway and tracks the bicycle.
We bifurcate the building and the phone and track them differently, but at the same location. Why we do that is we have tv, digital signage within the facility and we’ll route you, Jeffrey, to a specific door. Think of get Smart. Remember that movie, that TV show Get smart and multiple doors of security and clearances.
So by virtue of routing you to different sections within the facility, we’re gonna be able to sink. The door opening with the phone that you are operating and know that the RFID tag bicycle that goes through that door is yours. So once you go into the A specific, I’m gonna call it a pod or a corral or stable of lockers or racks, you could rack your bike and then we prompt you to leave.
A different exit. And that exit is gonna have Sally port doors or like air locks, where the first door [00:21:00] opens by you using your phone or biometrics in different modes. And that first door opens, the first door closes. As you get in that vestibule, the system tracks and see if there’s any RFID tags in that vestibule.
If there is. Jeffrey, it better belong to you because if it doesn’t, you’re stealing that bike and we shut it down. We do with the digital signage, we say, Hey Jeffrey, I think you made a mistake. You took someone else’s bike. Go back and put it back. And we rely on the community and the goodwill as part of the safeguards.
So if that is your bicycle, or there is no RFID tag in that vestibule, the second door will open and you could leave. But we do much greater security than just that. That’s really neat, and it’s part of our technology and our patent. But I wanted to replicate the same type of security clearances that are needed for, let’s say, to get into the inner Tums of the Pentagon.
How we do that is we use machine learning and language. We use ai. [00:22:00] We have cameras that will be designed to track your gate. How you walk. We’ll also track the frame, the bicycle frame geometry that is part of associated to that phone in you, and if there’s a breach or any red flags in that methodology, we will gladly let you rack the bike.
We will not let you leave with that bike. Because we’re gonna have one of the most secured online registry systems that provide the ability for the bike, literally to have a little personality and say, Hey, help me, I’m stolen. How we do that is like Shram. I really I love their group os, which are Bluetooth enabled.
I don’t have one of those yet. When I grow up, I hope to have one of those, the fly by wire methodology works off of Bluetooth. That groupo is part of our patented technology. So what we’re gonna do is not only have the RFID tag, which is a passive tracking device, we’re gonna have an active tracking device.[00:23:00] The Bluetooth groupo communicate with the building. So if that building says, Hey, your groupo was stolen off another bike and it’s reported stolen, and you put that groupo the transmission on a different frame, we’re still gonna say, whoa, lock it down, secure it. Call the FBI, the police and make sure that product is not.
Removed from the environment. So with all those hardened layers of security in increases the probability of someone like myself to use that system with confidence, knowing that my bicycle, any one of my bicycles I could ride with and secure it without bringing a lock.
Jeff Wood: How big is this locker and where would you put it?
If it’s in a building, is it on the sidewalk? Where would it be located?
Mark Kabbash: Great question. So again, I’m a Wall Street guy, so there’s always that issue about the capital equipment cost. How do we overcome the burden for these sophisticated storage methodologies and systems? So [00:24:00] on municipal land, there would be no lease expense and we provide as much as 80% of the income to the local municipality.
For that to use that land. The facilities can be as small as 50 and a location. We would put a couple. If it’s 50, we would probably do groups of 10. But the unit economics with all the doors and securities and the TVs becomes less profitable, takes longer to overcome the capital equipment cost. So if you’ve ever been to Denmark or seen some of those massive.
Bicycle garages where they have multi-layers and you could ride multi-level. Nothing that big or dramatic, but they can be put pretty much anywhere, but the cost of the equipment needs to be covered. My little startup company with our team find it difficult to cover that capital equipment cost. So by using our methodologies, what we believe strongly is that what’s called a green bond can be issued.[00:25:00] To cover the capital equipment, so the taxpayers, the four wheel people aren’t taxed for the two wheel people’s benefit. I don’t like that animosity one versus the other. I’d like to believe that the bicycle commuters will be glad to be tracked into use the system just like. Car garage and a methodology that could create the income that can service the debt associated through those facilities, but that’s on municipal land.
Jeffrey, you might be aware of something called the US Green Build Council and US GBC. Yep. There are many other organizations like that. Some are fitwell. The Well Institute, GR ESB. Those methodologies are point scoring systems to reward REITs Real Estate Investment Trust. And compelling them to create a more sustainable and environmentally friendly management of a building.
Building of the building and the impact of the building on the local community members and [00:26:00] the people within the building. Every one of those organizations have a benefit to the reit if you have bicycle storage facilities. So if you were to Google the top 10 REITs in America and ask, what are the top five requested amenities by their tenants, you’ll find consistently in the top five is a secured bicycle storage facility, but they don’t do it.
The reason is money. They haven’t figured out how to create an income that is greater on a per square foot basis than that of renting the retail space to a tenant. So if you were to, for an example, in San Jose, California, the commercial real estate is about $50 a square foot. Our methodology creates as high as 50 square foot of income on the weekdays, and then they could have the reservation enabled system on the weekends [00:27:00] to further that revenue generating facility, which they could pocket that money themselves.
And in that model, they keep the 80% and they become what I refer to as a var value added reseller.
Jeff Wood: So is this program only for commuting or would it work for regular trips around the city?
Mark Kabbash: So it’s really important to understand that we bifurcate by design a commuter, a conscientious choice to reduce your carbon emissions.
Secure that bicycle from origination point to destination and to monetize those miles. But if I go out on a weekend just for fun or exercise, I’m not reducing carbon emissions. I’m having fun. So in that scenario, it could still be used. I would pay, I’m suggesting $3 an hour on the weekend. For the right to secure my bicycle.
If you think about it, if you go skiing, there’s apre ski events. If you go golfing, there’s, after you go golfing [00:28:00] events and even sailing or any nautical, almost every sporting event, there’s an apre event gathering. But if you go out with a group of friends and go for a ride, I could guarantee almost 100% of the time after the ride you go home.
You don’t go to a restaurant, you don’t go to a bar. You don’t talk about the great ride you had because you can’t secure all those bicycles. This will create the mindset that, Hey, let’s go to this neighborhood because US 15 bicycle, a group of, I think you guys have got the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the Silicon Valley bicycle.
You have a lot of really wonderful groups out there. If they had a destination, which they could. Meet after a ride and enjoy talking about that ride. I guarantee you there would be more commerce, more taxable dollars and more ability for municipalities to create an income associated to the bicycle community.
Jeff Wood: I’m still curious about the other trips, [00:29:00] not just the leisure trips, but the grocery store and to, take trips to daycare or whatever it is. A lot of folks on my street specifically have their cargo bikes and they’re taking their kids to school and it’s really great and obviously they’re avoiding driving a car.
Those are important trips that I think sometimes we, we don’t talk about, even though those are the majority of trips, commute trips take up what, from a overall perspective, it’s 18% of trips and so the other ones are for everything else.
Mark Kabbash: Thank you. And it’s a very important point. If I had my druthers, I would only ride my bike.
But what I wanted to do is provide the ability to say, I made the conscientious choice to reduce my carbon footprint. So also in our patented application, by the way, it’s a US PTO number 1 1 9 9 8 8 0 1 b2. If I ever get a tattoo, it’s probably gonna be that. But in that, to be referred to as a, if I were to enable you, Jeffrey, to say, put on an apparel that said Gillette, for instance, on [00:30:00] the Jersey, which is a sponsor to the not-for-profit cause on the back, I’m trying to compel you to wear that jersey.
So you could create an income for the cause that you are trying to battle for your loved ones and whatnot. So if you were to do that’s one thing, but how do you really create value for yourself and create the confidence for Gillette to empower? A certain dollar transaction per mile. So if you were to purchase, if this, let’s say, was at Walmart, a secured facility was at Walmart, now I get to ride my cargo bike or my regular bike.
I go into Walmart. I secure my bicycles in a parking facility. I go into Walmart, I pick up a product, and when I pay for it and I leave Walmart, I have a QR code or a barcode on every single product you purchase. And when I pick up the bicycle, I could utilize a phone or the attendant at the facility, scan that QR code, [00:31:00] tie it to you, and all of a sudden the digital TVs and the signage inside, we could say, Hey Jeffrey, thank you so much for picking up that Gillette pack of razors.
You made a conscientious choice and look, you’re even wearing a Gillette jersey because of that, Gillette agrees to pay additional dollars to that not-for-profit in which you’re trying to fight. So not fight with an not-for-profit, I’m sorry. Raise money to fight the cause that benefits the not-for-profit.
So we thought of every little nuance and it’s important to dial in the understanding. It’s the wanna, we’re trying to compel the individual cyclists to change certain methodologies of disclosure. In order value on what’s being disclosed for the cause in which you are benefiting. And we’d like to gamify it.
Like Strava is very successful. They gamify their age competition, the location, the speed, and the distance. And [00:32:00] we don’t like to compete because anytime I’m in a bike race, I guarantee I’m never gonna come in first. Won’t do. But I love it. So what I wanna do, wanna come in. Conscientious choice of reducing my carbon footprint.
So we gamify the carbon avoidance value and we match sometimes what will be matching sometimes your effort with planting trees in the local community to se CO2, as much as avoid producing CO.
Jeff Wood: What are some of the hard questions you get about the project and the program that you’re creating?
Mark Kabbash: So from a technical basis, there’s something, a term called additionality.
If I were to take our solution and go over to Europe in a city that already has 80% of the city or bicycle commuting, how can I say? They’re avoiding producing carbon. They’re already doing it, right? So I have to prove it’s an additional user. Be to reflect that categorically [00:33:00] without any question. So that’s one of the hardships.
The other is the capital equipment cost, and I don’t like the thought of grants. I don’t like the thought of being taxed. Either as an individual or an organization to come up with those dollars needed for that capital equipment. I like to suggest that US bicycle commuters are more than willing to secure their bicycle and willing to provide that big brother lookie.
We could scrub the name, so there’s no understanding of who did it, just the fact that it was achieved and that it’s an educational thing, Jeffrey. It really is having the industry understand for the first time ever, this carbon avoidance value. In a manner that is for the benefit of all I mentioned gamification.
Imagine if University of Michigan were to ask all of their alumni that bicycle commute [00:34:00] to assign their carbon avoidance value to the school. And then you get Texas A and m and UCLA and all the other schools trying their very best to get more alumni to bicycle commute in a manner that creates an income.
Schools, those alumni are very proud and they wear jerseys. They wear apparel with the logos of the school, and they buy the product. So why not make a conscientious choice to put on apparel or to use the system and which you voluntarily say, track my avoidance value and direct that value to organizations, which I want that value to be directed to.
Jeff Wood: You said Texas a and m, you should have said Texas, the University of Texas. I apologize. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I love those folks on my
Mark Kabbash: board of directors. I’ve got three people from university of Virginia, one of them’s Tiki Barber, the NFL running back. So I normally mention UVA, but I guess [00:35:00] you should put that
Jeff Wood: one in there every once in a while.
Yeah. So what’s next for you? Who’s gonna be interested in doing this and the general folks that you’re gonna be doing this with, and hopefully moving this idea forward.
Mark Kabbash: So what I’m really trying to do is get as many people to understand that it is there, it’s available. You asked a question before that I want to go back to real quick.
One was the difficulties I have, the hard questions I have. So one of them really is who writes the check? Because we have 12 distinct, unique methodologies to create income from every mile written. But who writes the check if the individual is creating the value? I’m trying to make it so the corporations write the checks.
But what I find equally as interesting is there’s these terms, original equipment manufacturers and value added resellers, and I don’t want a large organization that has a lot of staff, I wanna run it as they refer to as a lean organization. So if a helmet manufacturer were to put the QR codes [00:36:00] and or NFC tags.
We’re gonna provide something we refer to as a reverse royalty program. We’ll reward the helmet manufacturer as much as a dollar a month. If that helmet is used as part of the verification process, that exceeds a certain threshold of usage, 200 days a year, X amount of time in the bicycle storage facilities.
Same thing with bicycle manufacturers, cleats, apparel, you name it. And with that, we wanna reward the industry in a manner that compels them to embed our technologies inside the product at the point of manufacturing. So that kind of answers the question that the hardships and one the difficulties. But when it comes to writing the check, that’s also a difficult part because it’s the chicken and egg.
We’re a small little startup with a tremendous board of directors. Don’t let ’em know I said that a really phenomenal team. Again, [00:37:00] don’t let them know I said that, but we really are focused with the precision of a surgeon and what I believe firmly is you’ll start seeing our facilities crop up first in California because of the recent rules that have been provided and their.
Climate sensitive causes, but what’s really interesting, the close second very well could be Texas, the oil state. They have a need to come up with a methodology to support the bicycle infrastructure, and this is sustainable and it’s circular, meaning the ones that create the value are the ones using not just the product, the infrastructure.
So there’s a really great pathway run by a gentleman by the name of Dennis, which is the East coast Greenway. It goes from Maine to Florida, and I can’t wait to get on my bike and start in Maine and pedal all the way to Florida and assist [00:38:00] dentists to create a sustainable contribution of income designed to extend that safe bicycle pathway.
Speaking to the 40 some odd mayors that can be lined up and empower them to create an income for the community.
Jeff Wood: I like that. And I wanted to reach out and my friend Ana sent me your press release initially and I thought it was interesting just ’cause some of the stuff that I’d read before in Chong Ching, I think I sent you the article about that specifically, they were the first transit agency in China to be able to use their carbon avoidance credits basically to fund the system.
So they got, it’s not a large amount of money, $800,000 or whatever it is, but it’s something, and something’s not nothing. So I hope that this type of idea can be expanded to transit, to bikes to everywhere and every state in the country because climate change is, such a big issue.
And avoiding emissions is such a big question that we have. This is one of the ways to do it, and I find your company interesting and I hope that you all have success and I wanna know where folks can find out more about it. Where can folks get [00:39:00] information about what you all are doing? Where can folks reach out if they’re interested in testing it?
Sure. Again, the
Mark Kabbash: name of the company is the Dandy Horse. If you go to the dandy horse.com, you’ll see a bunch of information there. That’s our website. You’ll probably see more information at LinkedIn underneath the profile, the Dandy Horse. It’s chockfull of great facts and presentations. I think you’re gonna start seeing it crop up throughout the United States, hopefully very quickly.
Again, we’re a small little startup, but we have a unique patented technology and we have a very focused, dedicated team of people that really want to see this succeed, not necessarily just for ourself. One of the things my team believes in is that once we start in mass. Solution for charities. We wanna make every ride a charity ride.
I really would love to be able to be known as the company that created from beginning to end, a company that generated a billion dollars [00:40:00] worth of not-for-profit contributions faster than any other company ever known. I really believe we could do that because a great organization like Bike ms, they have 77,000 cyclists that go to 65 events a year, and they raised $190 million to fight ms.
I really believe that they would use our methodology far greater than only 65 days. They could use our methodology every day to take on and obliterate. In my case, my dad suffered from Parkinson’s, and I’m sure that unfortunately almost every person I know is related to or has a loved one that has been adversely impacted by an ailment, that has an underlining not-for-profit that is trying to raise money and awareness to combat that ailment.
And I want our technology as a tool to enable the goodwill and the wanna of individuals to use our [00:41:00] methodology to combat those ailments.

Jeff Wood: Awesome. I’ll put the links to the site in the show notes and to the LinkedIn page. Mark. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on.

Mark Kabbash: It was a lot of fun. I get very passionate and excited talking about our little company and hopefully we won’t be little for long and you’ll see us crop up everywhere and be able to enjoy your bicycle without locks.