Boston Globe: She’s Running Her Cambridge Startup Out Of An RV

For Robin Liss, Thursdays are for staying put somewhere there’s a good wireless connection.

Liss has been living ― and running her startup company ― out of a recreational vehicle for the past month. She schedules most of her internal calls and videoconferences with colleagues on Thursdays, so she makes sure she and her boyfriend, David Simpson, are not driving down a remote highway that day. “Or at least we keep the drive to early morning or late night,” she explains.

Liss jokingly refers to the 24-foot vehicle as Delta II, since in her peripatetic pre-pandemic life, she had attained Diamond status as a frequent flier on the airline.

Liss still owns a condo in Cambridge, and her company, Suvie, still has an office there — though it is mostly unused. (The company sells a $900 countertop appliance that can both refrigerate and cook food, using the sous-vide method of heating bags of ingredients in warm water.) As she looked toward the fall, she knew she’d need to raise another round of funding to keep the company going. While other entrepreneurs might line up a slate of Zoom meetings with prospective investors, Liss came up with a different plan. She bought a used RV at a Vermont dealership for $34,000 and hit the road.

After all, if Suvie’s 30 employees were interacting with Liss primarily as a face on a screen, what difference did it make if she was in her Harvard Square home office or at the Hollywood RV Park in Los Angeles?

Liss says the ongoing road trip, which started Aug. 29, is about two things: visiting friends and family and meeting with current and prospective investors.

Check out the full article from the Boston Globe here.