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Bird scooters is a completely unviable business. It lacks revenues during the rain and winter and when it's dark. One user using it for an hour completely drain

• easytiger 7y ago
  to boot they are facilitating the hostile usability of urban areas for pedestrians now terrorised by idiots on these.
  • ctoth 7y ago
    Given that before self-same idiots would be driving two ton death boxes, this seems like a pretty good trade off to me.
    • bongobongo 7y ago
      I've never seen somebody drive a car on the sidewalk. I see scooteridiots going 15+ MPH on the sidewalk all the time.
    • organsnyder 7y ago
      We don't have them in my city (thankfully), but in the cities I've visited most of the people using them were teenage joyriders who would otherwise be walking.
      • elygre 7y ago
        M50 here. Have it, use it, love it.
        • easytiger 7y ago
          Hopefully you are responsible and keep off pavements/sidewalks
          • elygre 7y ago
            My jurisdiction actually allows the use on pavements/sidewalks, under the same rules that apply for bicycles.
            • easytiger 7y ago
              Must be awful for pedestrians. Where is that?
    • DisruptiveDave 7y ago
      To purport that these people drive cars and ride scooters in the same manner is unfair. Same with bicyclists - I witness dozens of them running stop signs and red lights every single day. Can't imagine they do the same in cars.
    • Dirrk 7y ago
      You don't need a license to ride scooters. Yesterday I saw a gaggle of preteens riding a squadron of scooters.
    • easytiger 7y ago
      Incorrect. In London they replace people getting trains for the most part. They also make flagrant use of pavements.
    • Fins 7y ago
      Somehow I doubt that where you live, those "two ton death boxes" are often driven on a sidewalk. If scooters keep to the road, they are perfectly fine. When they drive on sidewalks, eventually one of them will be biting my elbow.
• izzydata 7y ago
  That seemed obvious to everyone though so how did they ever get valued so highly? Is the whole point of companies like this to fool investors into giving them money and then keep the sham up for as long as possible?
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • docker_up 7y ago
    VCs are generally greedy and stupid at the same time. They follow the herd more than any other industry. The fact they invest in something means little as to how savvy they are or how successful the product will be. 90% of all startups fail, and there have been plenty of spectacular implosions in the past and there will be plenty of spectacular implosions in the future. Bird will be the WebVan of this business cycle.
    • MegaButts 7y ago
      > 90% of all startups fail There's no way it's that low. Maybe 90% of VC-backed startups, and even then I think it depends on how you massage the definition of 'fail'
      • jeron 7y ago
        https://www.failory.com/blog/startup-failure-rate https://www.failory.com/blog/startup-failure-rate 90% failure rate comes from research by Small Biz Trends
        • MegaButts 7y ago
          A cursory glance at that data tells me it makes no sense. They cite several industries with failure rates substantially below 90%, don't give a single instance of a failure rate greater than 90%, but tell us it averages out that way. Also real estate businesses only have a 42% failure? So I have a greater than 50% chance of becoming a real estate mogul? I just don't buy it, and I don't believe those other numbers either. And the only source they cite on the website, http://www.moyak.com/papers/business-startups-entrepreneurs.html http://www.moyak.com/papers/business-startups-entrepreneurs...., doesn't really lend any explanation to their numbers. I think their data is wildly skewed by sampling bias, as they claim to get their data from interviewing failed founders. Welp, they never interviewed me - how many other people have they never interviewed because they simply never knew the company existed? How many founders, after failing, go out of their way to talk about their failure? VCs have a strong incentive to create a story that starting a company has a greater chance of success than it does, because it's low-risk for them and they want a churn of potential investment prospects. I think 1% is a much more realistic number than 10%, unless we're limiting ourselves to Sequoia-backed post-Series A companies.
• AstralStorm 7y ago
  If the scooters would solar charge and return then somehow automatically, it'd help immensely. Self driving scooter is somewhat further in the future then a self driving car though. The scooters usually even have enough charge left to slowly return home.
• hombre_fatal 7y ago
  I never lived in a city with these types of scooters, but I'm just now finding out you don't need to stow them at a docking station. Guadalajara has a "mibici" bike program ($20/year) where you undock a bike, get 45 minutes on it, and plug it back into a rack somewhere, else the costs mount up. Always assumed these scooter programs worked like that. Being able to dump the scooter anywhere makes me realize why people consider them such an urban nuisance. Not really something I'd task the average person to do with forethought or courtesy unless it hits them in the wallet.
  • barkingcat 7y ago
    People often thrown them in other people's backyards, over fences, and into rivers and waterways in order to "make fun". This business model was never going to work.
  • dullgiulio 7y ago
    Never understood that either. People rutinely dump shopping carts everywhere unless they can recover a few of their dimes by bringing it back. One cannot say that there were no previous experiences to learn from...
    • mywittyname 7y ago
      They do? It might be just because of where I live but I can't recall ever seeing a shopping cart outside of the parking lot of a store.
• smallgovt 7y ago
  >> Bird scooters is a completely unviable business. There's almost certainly a viable business. At the end of the day, it's a question of whether the unit economics will work out. These scooters cost $1K and on average, each scooter gets ridden ten times a day with an average fare of $5. It doesn't take rocket science to see a profitable solution even with maintenance costs. The problem right now is that these companies are being extremely wasteful in order to capture market share.
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  • Someone 7y ago
    ”and on average, each scooter gets ridden ten times a day with an average fare of $5” FTA: ”revenue shrank sharply to only about $15 million”. That’s per quarter, so about $160,000 a day. At your claimed $50 revenue a day, that would be 3,200 scooters. Bird operates in over 100 cities worldwide (https://www.bird.co/cities/ https://www.bird.co/cities/), so for that to be true, at least one of those cities would have less than 32 scooters. ⇒ it would surprise me if each scooter gets used even once a day, on average.
• floatrock 7y ago
  All you've described is costs, not why costs must necessarily be higher than revenue. Every business has costs, many businesses have seasonality, and every VC blitzscaling business operates at a loss in order to capture market share. It's the playbook. Here's a counterpoint why it might be a viable business: it unlocks a new market. Scooters enable a new class of trips: trips between 0.5 and 2 miles. There's currently not a lot of trips happening in that distance... below that you can walk, above that you take transit, but that coffee shop 1 mile and change away is just enough of a pain in the ass that it's not worth going there. Unless there was something that made it easy to go that distance. Scooters are a new modality of transport that opens up an entirely new class of trips. Combined with the fact that the population is broadly trending towards dense urban environments, you have a whole new market you've unlocked. Scooters aren't about replacing Lyft rides -- no one uses a scooter for a full hour -- scooters are about servicing trips that are too short for an lyft.
  • javagram 7y ago
    In several large cities there is already a workable solution for those trips though. Bike share with fixed stations, like CitiBike in NYC or Capital Bikeshare in DC. As I understand it the fixed bikeshare costs are controllable and those systems are not losing money at anywhere near the rate of Bird. EBikes will be rolling out soon for some of these systems too so that solves another one of the disadvantages they have against eScooters.
    • 2FACTORAUTH 7y ago
      The problem with bikes is that you get incredibly sweaty even in the winter. I'm sure there's solutions to that as well but I would prefer not to have to towel down or change clothes after arriving at my destination.
      • smallgovt 7y ago
        This problem is fixed by eBikes. Jump on a JUMP bike in San Francisco and you'll find that there's little to no physical exertion.
• will_brown 7y ago
  >There is no way where Bird becomes a viable business that grows into its absurd valuation. I was recently chided and reproached by the HN mods for knocking scooter companies (even got the old “this isn’t personal, but don’t...”). the point is with any SV funded company you don’t need revenue or even to be a viable business. You just need SV money (I think Bird has already burned through $415M and now asking for this $300M) to launch the business and “grow” the user base and/or metrics(someone here once fittingly described the model as selling $5 bills for $1). So now you raise $500M sell $5 bills for $1, the startup staggers their sales so they show constant growth month over month, in reality you raise additional rounds to get more VCs to buy in and help market the company, then finally when you show tremendous growth (metrics), show revenue of $100M, then you file for a IPO and explain away the losses of $400M by saying at any point you can “flip the switch” and cut costs by no longer reinvesting in growth but make profits. Then at IPO you cash out and dump the shit company that’s never made a dollar on the public because all they see is the media pushed by SV/VCs with the media contacts, the big SV investor names, 100% growth month over month metrics, and the hope they to will get rich.
  • smallgovt 7y ago
    This is a very cynical perspective. The public markets are generally very unforgiving. This is why so many tech companies are choosing to stay private longer. If it was all about duping the public, they would IPO asap before the ship sinks. Sure, there are examples like Blue Apron that seem to fit your narrative, but they are the exception. If your narrative was correct, hedge funds or other intelligent investors would quickly catch on and short funds that purely track tech IPO's and make a killing. Obviously playing the markets is not this easy.
    • tyingq 7y ago
      "In this year’s first quarter, the electric scooter operator lost nearly $100 million while revenue shrank sharply to only about $15 million" Bird seems to fit the cynicism just as well as Blue Apron. I'm unclear how the above ever turns into anything viable.
    • dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
• temp-dude-87844 7y ago
  Bird, like Uber before it, is ultimately making a play that in part includes skirting regulation at first, and then pivoting to regulatory capture and alliances with companies who benefit from its services. Just as Uber was practically unlicensed cabs until saturation made it oftentimes politically untenable to ban, entire new regulations were created to fit Uber going forward, and Uber now delivers people to stores and food out of restaurants. In some places, it even has government contracts to serve as a substitute for transit. Bird is dumping these scooters in cities, and is now working with them to become the preferred provider who is allowed to do this in that city, while others aren't allowed yet. Having that head start is a significant advantage in capturing marketshare. And while a second or later mover can come along and dump their own scooters and convince people to get their app, Bird can then choose to leverage their relationships with governments and businesses and dent the progress of an upstart. The whole point of VC funding is to build out the capital-intensive parts quickly and develop moats that make switching to later comers difficult. Discussions about how Uber has no moat come up from time to time, but ventures like Uber Eats that form a captive market are demonstrably moat-like. The real question is whether Bird can develop such a moat, or is simply laying the groundwork for some other knockoff to come along later, by which time Bird is low on cash, and all hurdles that would have impacted similar companies have been cleared by Bird.
  • tedmiston 7y ago
    It's harder to see the tangential markets for Bird to break into analogous to Uber's added verticals like Uber Eats, business travel, freight, etc. Maybe last mile package delivery from a nearby hub? Maybe they are holding out to become a future Uber Scooters acquisition like Jump Bikes. One idea I would like to see is Bird rides sponsored by the business you're going to, kind of like how some businesses reimburse a parking garage ticket. It looks like Uber has started offering a program like this [1] as well. [1]: https://www.uber.com/us/en/business/vouchers/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/business/vouchers/
• gruturo 7y ago
  This sounds fixable with some technology. So, I'm dreaming here, but a scooter with 2-3 times the battery life, able to self balance and limp (1-2mph, with flashing lights) on the edge of the road (or sidewalk if allowed) back to a charging station (or to a high traffic area based on some predictive algo) would fix almost every problem in their current business plan. I know that the self driving bit is far from trivial (understatement of the decade) but at very low speed you can stop, get out of the way, phone home for some help. Simplified scenario, and likely full of holes, but you get my idea.
• bryanmgreen 7y ago
  There could be some compatibility between government bike programs and scooter rentals. My city just installed a ton of rental bikes and now they compete with scooters. Not sure what the collaboration/execution would be, but that's my first thought.
• lost_name 7y ago
  Well, for what it's worth, they rent their own scooters as well as license out their platform. Perhaps some of the value comes from that. https://www.bird.co/platform/ https://www.bird.co/platform/