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Joe Okpaku

Co-Founder and Principal, The Forest Consulting LLC · 1 appearance on the record.

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executiveoperatorothertheforestconsulting.com ↗

Joe Okpaku is a Co-Founder and Principal at The Forest Consulting LLC and previously served as Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations at Lyft. He also served as Chief Policy Officer at Booster Fuels and worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

9statements → 4claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.67/5average certainty → 2.11/5average debate potential →

2 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 3 insights · 1 disclosure · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Joe argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Okpaku: Lyft created passenger insurance superior to standard taxi policies
“First of all, we created a new form of insurance that was basically higher than any insurance for taxi for taxi passengers across the country.”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:11 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments

How they sound: speaking style how? →

263 words/min while actually speaking · 5.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Joe Okpaku: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to 2,039 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Joe Okpaku is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

Everything Joe Okpaku said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

What-if
Uber staying in Houston led to harsher rideshare regulations nationwide
“I would dare say that The decision for our competitor to stay in that city actually led to more cities and more jurisdictions trying to follow the lead that Houston put out there because they believed, and rightfully so, that, hey, a company can clearly operat…”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:37 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Assertion Partly supported
Okpaku: 44 US states adopted Lyft's driver background check model
“We're now at a point where we have 44 states plus the District of Columbia that have essentially adopted the background check process that we came up with before we were regulated anywhere in the country.”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:57 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Insight
Operationally similar competitors cannot gain regulatory advantage over each other
“So ultimately I don't think there's really any way to get a competitive advantage when you are in the same sandbox.”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:26 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Okpaku: Lyft grassroots campaign crashed a city's email server
“We've had email campaigns that have literally accidentally, but shut down a city's email server because there were so many citizens writing in so much.”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:30 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Assertion Supported
Okpaku: Lyft created passenger insurance superior to standard taxi policies
“First of all, we created a new form of insurance that was basically higher than any insurance for taxi for taxi passengers across the country.”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:11 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Insight
Okpaku: Early Municipal Laws Set Precedents That Subsequent Jurisdictions Copy
“When you're dealing with a new industry like ride sharing, That has not yet issued any sort of legislation or regulations that that framework has not yet been created. You have, in my opinion, really one chance to get that right. If you have one law on the boo…”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:35 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Disclosure
Lyft exited Houston in 2014 over regulations while Uber stayed
“One of the hardest decisions that we had to make as a team back in 2014, which is our first decision to leave a major city. One of the first cities that was developing an ordinance was the city of Houston. And ultimately the ordinance that they developed was n…”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:13 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Assertion Supported
Okpaku: US parking spots cover more area than Connecticut
“One of our co-founders, John Zimmer noted that if you were to take all the parking spots in America, it would fill the entire state of Connecticut and more.”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:10 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments
Insight
Okpaku: Mayors' First Instinct Is Comparing Ridesharing to Existing Regulations
“When you're dealing with something like the ride sharing industry, the first inclination from a mayor or from a regulator in a particular city was, well, how is this different than what we already regulate?”
Joe Okpaku Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:38 a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | The Case Study of Lyft and Local Governments Jan 2, 2019 8m
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