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Meet Anup Parikh and Matthew Stevens of The Fast and The Curious

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Anup Parikh and Matthew Stevens.

Please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve worked in the electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure market since 2013 (with a brief 14 month gap in between). The past three years, I’ve been selling electric vehicle charging stations for the industry leader. About a year ago, my friend (Sarang Patel) introduced me to all sorts of interesting online interview web series such as Hot Ones, Desus & Mero, The Shop, and Sneaker Shopping.

I went home for the 2018 holidays and began brainstorming how I’d really like to use the format of these various online shows to drive better education and adoption of electric vehicles. I thought and I thought. Eventually I came up with a concept I would call Entrepreneurs in EVs. Originally I had narrowed myself down to interviewing Entrepreneurs who already drove electric cars. I came to realize that was still a very niche population and my first two guest invites politely turned me down anyways. Through various life events and networking, I came to meet a young entrepreneur, Mandeep Patel, who through mutual connections agreed to be my first guest. It was then I realized I would tie my concept to Entrepreneurs who are focused on businesses that directly or indirectly address climate change and/or are bettering the environment in some way. We shot our first episode in Houston in August 2019 and released it in November 2019. My good friend, who I’ve known since high school, Matt put in brilliant efforts behind all the editing. I was very impressed and so were many of our first viewers.

Since that initial success, we have tried other interview formats like “Man on the Street” (think Jay Leno’s Jaywalking). We tried this in New York City in early December 2019 and did the same concept in downtown Houston at Discovery Green the Sunday (Dec 22) before Christmas day.

There are a bunch of other Version 1.0 concept shows we plan to shoot in the coming months. Then we can proceed with making more of the same depending on which concept resonates most with our audience.

Has it been a smooth road?
Surprisingly, by my very own perfectionist expectations (which are hard to live under) the road has been mostly smooth. The initial struggle was finding someone to agree to give us their time to interview them when we really had no audience, influence, or proof of concept.

The other struggle is that my editor and I live in different cities and time zones so it can be challenging to coordinate schedules.

Other struggles include learning experiences. For example, we did a “Man on the Street” interview in New York City near the iconic Vessel but unfortunately we used a low quality microphone so all of our audio came out poor. It basically rendered our shoot useless. It taught us to invest in better equipment so we don’t compromise future shoots.

What else should we know about The Fast and The Curious. Tell us more about the business.
The Fast and The Curious will do anything to bring awareness to electric vehicles (EVs), drive EV adoption, help our planet and have fun while doing it.

We specialize in driving awareness about the electric vehicle market to the general public.

We are most proud of creating a concept and generating content that we believe no one else is yet doing and has a lot of potential to grow into something very meaningful.

What sets us apart is that we are building a platform that accomplishes two goals: drives awareness of EVs and helps highlight whichever sustainability-related business/entrepreneur we may be interviewing. We recognize there’s a lot of good businesses out there doing great things for the environment but they may not be getting the exposure we think it deserves.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The overall electric vehicle (EV) market is poised for massive growth. It is said the transportation industry will undergo the biggest transformation over the next two decades. I’ve likened this upcoming shift to what happened with telephones. We went from pulling out an antenna on our house phone, to fitting a phone in our pocket, and to a smartphone today where we can access almost anything. And all that took only 20 years. For me, it’s fun to think in those terms and envision how much transportation will change, when we’re still only in “the antenna days”.

We will see electrification happen across all modes of transportation and even see autonomous driving take off. Maybe getting us closer to the days of The Jetsons and flying cars.  All electrified of course.

Contact Info:

Photo is taken by Paolo Sagullo


Image Credits:
Carlos Brunet
Matthew Stevens

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