10 GROUNDCOVER NEWS ENTREPRENEURSHIP FEBRUARY 20, 2026 Pedicab business up and running KEVIN SPANGLER Groundcover vendor No. 307 I am finding my way here. I found a great place to stay in Ann Arbor — a perfect location for my pedicab business. I am in the beginning phase of the best pedicab tour company in Ann Arbor. So far I have the pedicab, which is most important. I have been only doing this for a few weeks so far, cruising around Ann Arbor in my seafoam-green, human-powered taxi. I have had many riders so far and they’ve been so great, enjoying the pedicab experience. Riding on a pedicab is different than riding in a car or walking. You just sit back, listen to the music and watch the scenery while I pedal you around beautiful historic Ann Arbor, and I learn about you and you learn a little bit about me. I have even been able to trade services with people in some instances, in place of taking money, and hope to continue using this barter system in the future. Other forms of payment I plan to accept are: cash, credit cards, Bitcoin, artwork, silver, and rCredits (a mutual credit system accepted as currency by local businesses). The bike is a Main Street Pedicab, made and built in America. I am extremely pleased with the exceptional quality of the taxi cab. I wanted the best for my patrons. I believe I got the best, while supporting our local American economy. My overarching pedicab business goals include preventing my fellow patrons from getting behind the wheel while being intoxicated. My short-term pedicab goals are getting on Instagram and Twitter, creating business cards and a website. I will create and offer multiple planned pedicab tours, including a Slow Food Crawl of the Ann Arbor restaurants that source their ingredients locally, a tour along the Huron River and a tour of the artwork around Ann Arbor. My long-term business goal is to establish a thriving tour business in Ann Arbor where I teach and train people in transition, like myself, to make a living and support themselves. Job creation is important for our local economy. Come enjoy a ride on my special pedicab! Come create an experience you will never forget! Let me be your guide to a fun time enjoying our beautiful city while also keeping it green! The neglected wildcatters of Dallas PAUL RAYJAY WATSON STREETZine Darick walks four miles to his overnight dishwashing job in downtown Dallas. In his free time, he spends hours sketching on scrap paper, designing sneakers. His work gets noticed only in Europe, where shoemakers have used his designs. Darick is also my friend, and he lives at a homeless shelter. Darick is a modern wildcatter. Wildcatters were long shots, digging for oil far from proven fields, in places where only wildcats roamed. Dallas became their backbone, a city that understood and bankrolled their gritty dreams. The Dallas ethos is built on this spirit. But it often comes across as an irrational conviction, or something where failure is almost guaranteed. At times one might catch a glimpse of that spirit when hearing about billionaire Mark Cuban sleeping on the floor of a shared apartment or Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, risking her life’s savings in her early days. Inspiring anecdotes from times past, right? Wrong; the wildcatter spirit continues to this very day. Take, for example, my friend John. He was born in Florida and raised in a drug-abused family. Now, he lives in Dallas, where he started a nutritional manufacturing company that distributes to consumers globally. Or Jennifer, a self-described midwesterner at heart. She resigned her secure consulting job and started a company in Dallas, which is now working with a consortium of municipalities to build “smart cities.” Unfortunately, in present-day Dallas, the wildcatters themselves suffer neglect. In my time visiting with friends at shelters across Dallas, I’ve met a city of untapped entrepreneurs. There is Demetrius, who once ran his own trucking company before a family crisis left him homeless; Mark and his brother, who use his old car as a makeshift taxi with remarkable hustle; and Gerald, who cuts hair like a painter on canvas. Like Darick, they are practicing entrepreneurialism. It’s not that Dallas lacks resources. Job training and medical attention are built into the ecosystem. But these entrepreneurs don’t fit the mold. They are often trapped by past run-ins with the law or are fighting off addictions, making them “untouchables.” Their voices drowned in the din of programs. “It’s nothing new,” said Willy, a program officer with a foundation offering job-skills training at homeless shelters. “I often see sparks of extraordinary talent in my line of work. The problem is, it’s extremely hard to position a talent for funding. The donor-guided programs are only focused to enable underserved communities. And our hands are tied, either because it’s beyond our scope, or it’s a task requiring uncommon initiative.” Still, uncommon initiatives in entrepreneurial ventures are not new to Dallas. Take Peter Brodsky, a contrarian capitalist. In a gamble spanning 10 years, he turned an abandoned South Dallas mall into a “work and play” system for the community. The once-failing asset anchors a medical facility and houses office spaces and call centers, creating jobs and sparking commercial buzz, lifting all boats in an economically challenged neighborhood. Or consider the PNC Bank mobile - Like me on Facebook under “Kevin Spangler” to see the pictures and videos of how much fun my customers are already having. Call me to schedule a ride or just flag me down if you see me riding toward you. Originally published in the April 2016 edition of Groundcover News. units servicing the “unbanked” at shelters across Dallas. “We want to be the modern banker for residents at shelters,” said Hannah Lopez, assistant manager of an Orange-Blue bank on wheels. “We see the person we help today as a striving employee, or perhaps a future small business owner.” While all banks are required to service the low-income, PNC Bank’s strategy of financial inclusion bets on the possibilities among the improbable. After studying 150 strategic moves spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries, professors W.C Kim and Renee Mauborgne concluded in their global bestseller, Blue Ocean, that the key to creating an uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant is discovering untapped markets. “The key is to reach beyond existing demand. It’s about creating not competing; about focusing on non-customers; about breaking the value-cost tradeoff,” they explained. The wildcatters are precisely that: the untapped market existing beyond the value-cost tradeoff. It’s time well-wishers took a second look at people experiencing homelessness, regardless of where they lay their heads at night. Courtesy of STREETZine / INSP.ngo
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