Martin Heikel, an alumnus of the NMU College of Business and 2020 Executive in Residence, speaks on Tuesday at the Northern Center. Heikel has considerable experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds. (Photo by Christie Bleck)

MARQUETTE — Martin Heikel drew from his personal experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds to give business advice to Northern Michigan University students on Tuesday at the Northern Center.

Heikel, a former Verizon vice president and founder/CEO of Flatiron Apps Company in New York City and a 1981 marketing management alumnus from the NMU College of Business, returned to campus as its 2020 Executive in Residence.

His talk, “Entrepreneurialism: Anatomy of a Start-Up, From Corporate Executive to Start-Up Founder,” included his belief that not everything can be planned.

“Sometimes we have to float around awhile, figure things out,” Heikel said.

He did suggest, though, not floating around too long.

“Try some stuff,” he said.

Early in his career, Heikel accepted a position for potential future leaders at PepsiCo.

How does one succeed with a similar product, Coca-Cola, with a similar price on the market?

“It really came down to my own personal skills,” Heikel said. “I had to really hone in on, ‘What can I do for the client to earn their trust and to help grow the business?'”

But after three years, he started to lose interest and momentum, so he shifted his focus to the technology sector.

Heikel spent more than a decade in sales and sales management at MCI Telecommunications Corp., landing the largest-ever corporate contract for the company to upgrade technology for the NASDAQ stock market.

He later became vice president at Verizon, creating the Verizon Financial Network.

At age 49, however, Heikel decided to leave the security of a high-paying position to become an entrepreneur.

“I don’t want to be older and say, ‘I wish I tried that,'” Heikel said. “People have regrets about what they didn’t try, not what they did try.”

His entrepreneurial bent, with the help of a business partner, was geared toward New York City, where it can be notoriously difficult to hail a cab.

On the other side of the equation, drivers are looking for passengers.

“Given the system, eventually they kind of connect up,” Heikel said. “Sometimes pretty quick, sometimes not.”

His research showed that taxi drivers cruise around town about 30% of the time with no passengers.

“If we could bump that efficiency up, which we had an idea that we could, that could be big stuff,” Heikel said.

That “big stuff” included passengers getting picked up more quickly, drivers making more money and social planners being pleased with fewer taxi emissions, he said.

Their idea would involve a software platform, learning about regulations, legalities, seed money and marketing, among other things.

Speed also was important.

“Maybe somebody we don’t even know is working on it,” Heikel said.

So, they had to move on their idea.

‘You get complacent, you die,” he said. “That’s what happens in business.”

Thus, their start-up, an app called ZabKab, was born. With the app, would-be passengers would press a green button that signaled they wanted cab rides. Drivers with the app then could see where those passengers were located on a map and find them.

Media attention also was crucial, and the company was the subject of several TV news programs, including “Money Moves” on Bloomberg TV, where the segment noted of ZabKab, “It looks to ease the burden of the taxi hunt.”

It did at first, with app downloads increasing and “hails” used every day, Heikel said.

Then a bomb dropped, and it came in the form of Uber, a ride-hailing company.

Heikel said Uber paid 200 drivers and put an icon on its existing app to test how it could push the boundaries.

“They would go into every city,” he said. “They would ignore the rules and regs, and they would just roll out illegally and just tell the town, ‘Sue me.’ That’s how they did it. They had a lot of money in the bank. How much money did the towns have to fight these suits?”

The Taxi & Limousine Commission, instead of trying to ban Uber, came up with a particular approach.

Drivers were told they couldn’t use mobile apps or they would be fined, Heikel said, with the drivers not understanding that ZabKab drivers were legal and others were not.

That made ZabKab what Heikel called “collateral damage” and “vapor.”

“People are hailing and there’s no more drivers,” he said.

In retrospect, Heikel believes if his company had 60 more days, it easily could have $10 million to support it.

Unfortunately, the decision was made to suspend ZabKab. However, he said a different approach was made in Miami, but undercapitalization was a problem.

“These kind of things can happen,” Heikel said. “Fortunately, not too many of these kind of events happened in my life, because that would be kind of rough.”

His entrepreneurial days might not be over.

Heikel said he is considering entering the virtual/augmented reality world.

“Maybe someday, I can come back and say, ‘Hey, you guys are using VR? Pretty cool, right? So, we did that,'” Heikel said.

He had another piece of advice.

“You have to have dreams,” he said. “You have to be realistic about things, and then pursue them.”

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.