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

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.