16 ms·

VCs squandered billions on scooter startups

149 points by lxm 4y ago

ukulele 4y ago
Squandered is a bit harsh. I don't have skin in the game either way, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a profitable business to be built once the dust settles. It can be hard to know in advance just how big that market would be, and how defensible.
- powerhour 4y ago
  I wonder if there is a path to profitability if they have to deal with all the scooter-litter described in the article. That'd probably mean having someone continually going around town moving scooters into racks or something like that.
  - bfdm 4y ago
    Well a start would be educating riders on how to safely park the damned thing when their trip is done, instead of literally dumping it on a sidewalk/pathway, and collect fines for bad stewardship. You could have motion/orientation sensors to complement the GPS to see if they are moved after the rider parks it. It's far from unsolvable its just that nobody cares or is motivated.
    - jlund-molfese 4y ago
      Lyft/Divvy does this in Chicago. If you lock the scooter at a docking station, there’s no additional charge, but if you leave it somewhere else, there’s a small fine of $1
    - fragmede 4y ago
      At the very least, Lime and Scoot now require a picture of the properly parked scooter upon ride end. I wouldn't be surprised if the other apps are the same.
- 11thEarlOfMar 4y ago
  Here is an example of squandering: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/ https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...
  - lowercased 4y ago
    That is wild!
  - beaned 4y ago
    If they're going to make that many bikes, why not just give them away? Why have them be "shared" and made to be returned to a pile? It would at least eradicate theft. Most people would have the same model. You could get a handout instead of having it stolen, and if it was stolen, then that person could get the handout. And the only people claiming them would be the ones using them.
    - dheera 4y ago
      Because capitalism and accountants prevent you from giving stuff away.
      - manigandham 4y ago
        That's in China. "Capitalism" isn't preventing any of that there.
        dheera 4y ago
        In practice, China is highly capitalistic as an economy. It's authoritarian capitalism, not communism, even though it has a "communist party". This phenomenon of bikes piling up is literally venture capitalists throwing money at startups (in return for equity) to deploy more and more bikes to outnumber competitors in a hopeless race to monopolize bike sharing. It's literally an exhibit of one of the failure modes of extreme capitalism. Giving them away, as GGGP suggests, would actually be a departure from capitalism, and perhaps a good one.
- Macha 4y ago
  Though if it takes $2.9 billion in funding to make a business with ultimately, let's say $10m/yr net profit, I'd still call that squandered. Especially if part of that move to profitability ends up needing to be like european city bike hire schemes where they need docks to avoid theft, reducing availability and adding infrastructure costs.
- friedman23 4y ago
  Profitable is not enough. This is an extremely competitive business space. Employees joined these companies and were granted equity at multi billion dollar valuations and investors invested in these companies at multi billion dollar valuations. What is the addressable market here? What do margins look like? I would be surprised if the companies that win this market are going to be worth more than $2 billion dollars.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    > Employees joined these companies and were granted equity at multi billion dollar valuations and investors invested in these companies at multi billion dollar valuations Hubris and a lack of pragmatism has a cost. Of course the equity is worthless! If you do small things that don’t scale and poop aren’t profitable, and then scale and still aren’t profitable, there’s nowhere else to go. These investments of time and fiat never seem to ask, “walk me through the milestones you’ll accomplish to corner the market.” Same with Uber (from their S-1): “We include all passenger vehicle miles and all public transportation miles in all countries globally in our TAM, including those we have yet to enter” eye roll TLDR The koolaid has a bitter aftertaste. (tangentially, Uber has spent almost $28B and still isn’t profitable)
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      s/poop/products. Regretful typo.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  My reading is that "squandered" doesn't refer to the potential market for scooter-sharing services itself, but to the poor strategy of pumping an insane amount of money into a new/untested category in a very short amount of time.
- tz18 4y ago
  Squandered isn't harsh at all. The deployment of capital was disproportionate to the size of the profitable business that will result. It could have been better spent elsewhere... or saved.
- benzible 4y ago
  VCs aren't in the business of creating profitable companies. Their LPs aren't going to be happy with a negative return on their investment, regardless of whether they helped to create a nice, sustainable small business along the way.
randtrain34 4y ago
and instant grocery startups
- JadoJodo 4y ago
  I'm not sure who these are for, but it definitely isn't me. According to some back-of-the-napkin math I did: - Most items are marked up 16% - There's a ~$5-15 service fee (that's WITH Instacart+) - And most of the sources I saw showed that you should tip between 10-20% (which they deserve, given what I've seen of how they're paid). While I could absolutely see using the service if I was having a party and couldn't leave to pick up some forgotten items, paying $60-80 extra on top of my $200 grocery bill is too rich for my blood.
- arnvald 4y ago
  Yeah, when I used it the first time I was in awe, but over time I removed their apps and I just walk to the supermarket. Their prices are quite high, delivery time is unpredictable (even though their app says 10-15min, sometimes I had to wait 30-40min), and their inventory is limited. I still use them once every 2 months or so, but on a weekly basis I'd just rather go to a local supermarket myself.
  - tropdrop 4y ago
    My biggest issue is the high rate of failure with fresh produce. I remember when one of my orders came in with a bag of organic sweet potatoes, with the claim that the organic Russet I had ordered were "out of stock." I was doing a specific recipe, so ended up having to go to the same supermarket from which I had just had my groceries delivered (thinking, perhaps I could get singles or non-organic). The bags of organic Russet were right there, right next to the organic sweet potatoes. On that same order, the bananas that came were so green that they wouldn't ripen for three weeks. When I've had groceries delivered, issues like this are the rule, not the exception.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    Popcorn has been quite good. They’re clearly burning a ton of VC cash. Use it up while it lasts!
dragontamer 4y ago
I don't think $2000 and under devices belong in the rental space, in most situations. That's the real issue at hand here. Scooters are light enough that someone can just buy one and carry it around with them all day. At $5+ a ride, it isn't long before people would rather just buy one of their own. Bikes are at least large enough to be a hassle to carry around. ----------- Consider computers (and no, not cloud computers. Like normal office computers). There was a time when timesharing computers was popular, when computers were $100,000. Similarly, back in high school, one local entrepreneur gave a talk to my school. He explained that 3d printers, while their costs were going down, were still too expensive to own. He predicted 10 years before 3d printers were popular for home labs (and it turns out he was right). In those 10 years, he made money by renting out university-level / research 3d Printers (no one wanted to buy $100,000+ printers anymore, everyone saw the writing on the wall and would rather rent), so the rental company did well, albeit only temporarily. (Overall, the talk was about "risk taking". In this case, the calculated risk that he'd make money before the business opportunity closed as 3d printers became cheaper) ---------- But these Bird scooters look like they're around $500? If you're using the thing like 2 or 3 times a day, it won't take long at $5 / ride before it makes more sense to just buy one for yourself.
- alexashka 4y ago
  The sweet spot for scooters/bikes seems to be as a tourist attraction. I live in Toronto and there is a rental bike thing with bike docks. The bikes are shockingly heavy, the phone app sucks, but they remain popular. I attribute the success to summertime tourism.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > But these Bird scooters look like they're around $500? If you're using the thing like 2 or 3 times a day, it won't take long at $5 / ride before it makes more sense to just buy one for yourself. Theft. I live in a city where you can expect any portable form of transportation to get stolen, from inside your house's garage at that. Renting offloads the risk of theft to someone else.
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
exogeny 4y ago
Normally I despise defending VCs, but: First, I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand the mandate of VCs. The firms themselves receive funding from limited partners, who are often very large pools like the California State Pension or Yale University. Those pools are almost all deployed into very low-risk asset classes, like bonds. A very small amount, say like 2-3% is invested in the PE/VC asset class, thereby diversifying and giving that fund some upside plays in their overall portfolio. Now, because the VCs were given the mandate by their LPs to find home runs and not a bunch of singles and doubles, this changes the logic by which they make their decisions. You may have heard of the pejorative "lifestyle business" in this context, but it's the reason why a lot of small businesses or low-upside startups don't get funded: they just don't have enough TAM to justify a potential home-run outcome. Second, if we look back to when Bird and Lime blew up, it was still very, very early for these businesses and their breakout trajectory probably didn't look all that dissimilar from other home runs. (Lots of analogues here: how did Clubhouse look in it's early metrics? Probably a lot like Facebook. HQ Trivia probably looked a lot like Zynga's first breakout game.) It's only in hindsight where you're able to look back and see that adoption wasn't what they thought and cities were more adverse to it and so on, but it doesn't mean the investment logic at the time was flawed -- it just means that it didn't work out. Again, any VC will tell you that they'd rather invest 100 times in something with a 1% chance of being Uber than invest in 100 mom-and-pop shops. I'm sure many people will say "I guess, but it was obvious that they weren't going to make it!", to which I say, yeah, maybe. But it was probably obvious that Uber wasn't going to become Uber until they did; you only need to have in a portfolio to make it because you become A16Z or USV. And if the metrics from the first year look like Uber and the default gameplan is investment-driven, loss-heavy aggressive growth, then it doesn't seem like such a bad bet.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  While I agree that this logic applies to the first, and maybe (though this is arguable) the second, none of the later startups in the same space were plausible "home runs". If that model was going to work, it would work for the first or second company in that space (unless they were somehow pathologically mismanaged). An also-ran in the same space is not only less likely to succeed, but if they succeed it will be because that space will be one where there are many long-term competitors...which will mean they have no "moat", and cannot be the "home run" that the original investor was looking for. So, in this case, you could excuse the investors in Bird and maybe Lime, but it seemed that there were a lot more companies than that.
game-of-throws 4y ago
I wonder if these wild valuations could be kept in check if there were a way to short/buy puts on private companies. There's positive pressure on valuations from the funding, but scant negative pressure. Scooters-as-a-service can probably be a profitable business worth millions, but you had to be really out of touch to think it could be worth billions.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Also I always wonder about margins. They have software component, but they also have rather expensive hardware. And then overhead of management of that hardware. Like paying people to relocate and charge them as needed.
- mym1990 4y ago
  That defeats the whole point of a private company, and take away most of the benefits. The thing with the scooter business is that there isn't really a moat for it. Any number of players can come into the market(and they did) and just run the price down the bottom. But by that point a company can probably IPO and transfer the risk from the VCs to the public market.
- snek_case 4y ago
  Unpopular opinion: I know there would be other problems to solve if things were different, but I wish there was no such thing as private companies. As it is, private companies are an investment vehicle that regular people just don't have access to. It's a game of who knows who with very little regulatory oversight. Maybe early stage startups don't need a ton of regulatory oversight (they have other things to worry about), but maybe it also shouldn't be legal to have a private company with a market cap over a billion dollars.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  I kind of have a secret about this: if you’re an accredited investor, you could 100% take short positions on these shares by borrowing shares from employees and seeking them in one of the random secondary markets that’s out there. It’s just no one does because the asymmetric downside of going naked short on companies with low market caps (“uh oh, Uber just bought this company for 10x my strike price because xyz stupid reason”) If you want to get really complicated you can write puts, but good luck pricing them and finding enough liquidity.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I wish we would build social housing for people with some of the money our society throws in the burning dumpster of startups. See how they do social housing in Vienna (it's nice). https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  This would be nice, but it's also possible to get cheaper rent by just, y'know, letting people build housing easily. That's how the rent in Seoul and Tokyo is surprisingly reasonable, despite being megacities. We're now at a point where rent prices are higher in Columbus Ohio than Tokyo (1). Part of this is probably average apartment sizes being smaller in Tokyo, but still, that seems insane to me. 1 - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Japan&city1=Tokyo&country2=United+States&city2=Columbus%2C+OH&displayCurrency=USD https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
  - wyre 4y ago
    Cheaper housing and better social programs together would be great.
  - rr808 4y ago
    Can we please stop talking about Tokyo housing. It was only a few decades ago that California was cheap and Tokyo was insanely expensive and locals couldn't afford it. 30 years of economic depression has created cheaper houses.
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago
      > Tokyo was insanely expensive and locals couldn't afford it. IIRC that was buying housing, not renting. Purchasing housing is subject to speculation in a way that rent is not. But if you have data that says otherwise, I'd love to see it. The data I can find shows the expected price spike in Japan for buying condos, but no such spike for renting: Condos - https://japanpropertycentral.com/2013/10/japans-apartment-market-over-the-last-40-years/ https://japanpropertycentral.com/2013/10/japans-apartment-ma... Apartments - https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/changes_in_house_rent https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/changes_in_house_rent That said, I wouldn't be surprised if rents were higher in an economic boom, I just doubt it got as crazy as condo prices did in Tokyo.
londons_explore 4y ago
Scooter startups have in my opinion totally missed their target market. Sit looking at a scooter on a street in a city, and you'll see perhaps 10,000 people walk past the scooter before one person uses it. So, in the 'go short distances' market, walking has 99.99% of the market, and the scooter industry has 0.01% market share. In my view, that's a total failure. Scooter companies should have interviewed each person who walked past a scooter and asked themselves, why didn't that person use our product? In many cases, it's a combination of cost, friction of setting up an app and account, and fear of something going wrong and being fined (for example, parking the scooter out of the operating zone). Scooter companies should have solved all those issues. You should be able to use the scooter entirely for free, without an app or any registration, perhaps limited to 10 minutes or 5 mph. Then, encourage people to pay for more time or more speed when they become accustomed to being able to get around quicker.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Interoperability would indeed help a long ways in many markets but it's antithetical to the monopolistic business models of the current tech industry. Card processing is something you can do on a cheap microcontroller - the only blocker here is EMV certification. I'm sure with all those millions (billions) collectively poured into the industry they could've released a cheap EMV-certified module that can accept payments locally, or failing that, bypass the certification problem by building their own, interoperable system end-to-end so that customers at least just had one app to install. It reminds me of a company here selling(?) powerbank vending machines - seems like they're still around, at least online (I can't imagine this thing ever making money, but I suspect it was more about "growth & engagement" and resume fodder than building a sustainable business): https://chargedup.theup.co https://chargedup.theup.co - the problem is that for you to take out a powerbank, you need to install an app on your phone. This automatically excludes the customers whose phone has already died even though they're the most likely to pay for it. I used to see their machine at my local bar for a couple years and I don't recall anyone ever using it. At some point it disappeared and replaced by a competitors' that at least has a built-in card terminal. Still don't recall anyone using it ever, but at least I guess you now technically could if you had no other option.
- 4y ago
arnvald 4y ago
Maybe last-mile mobility is a problem that requires public-private partnership. Public communication does not need to bring profits, it needs to serve the citizens. If public communication limits need for parking space, limits traffic jams and polution, that's a win. A number of cities introduced city-wide bike sharing networks that are paid, but subsidized. Sometimes it was more successful, sometimes less, but at least a few cities proved it can work. They can also work with the public transport card, removing the need for an app. Maybe the same can be applied to scooters? With the current approach they'll disappear in a few years, as their prices are too high, but having to maintain and charge them daily adds a lot of operational costs.
CodeWriter23 4y ago
This is the result this idea deserved. Here’s a better idea: finance individual scooter purchases/leases as a business. Manufacturing will match actual not falsely inflated demand, and people will take better care, not just leave their scooter lying about on sidewalks and crosswalks.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  I've heard of three different companies offering e-bike leases, with the monthly lease payments eligible for commuter reimbursement by employers. It seems like a good business model.
- holler 4y ago
  fwiw almost 95% of my time scooting has been while traveling, and for that it's a great way to cover lots of ground in foreign places.
Nextgrid 4y ago
Always a pleasure to see scummy monopolists lose billions and fail to achieve their monopoly.
newaccount2021 4y ago
renewiltord 4y ago
America is hard to say because it's a bit of a conservative place and highly tuned to reject anything novel on "dangerous" grounds. But I'm curious about urban micro mobility in developing South and South East Asia. This stuff must have failed there, but I wonder why it didn't displace a 50 cc motorbike. Storage capacity? Range? Ease of refuel?
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  Perhaps already bicycles (widely owned) and other similar options to fill this need?
- fragmede 4y ago
  Have they failed? Replacing an existing industry is much harder and slower than grafting a new one in.
mertd 4y ago
This is not even a hindsight 20/20 situation. The math never made sense. They were too brittle to make the LTV turn profitable. Maybe people were hoping for subsidies? Practicality-wise, they neither belonged to the sidewalk (too fast) or the road (can't deal with obstacles).
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > The math never made sense. I bet it was a "growth & engagement" situation. The objective was never to build a sustainable business but was instead to build an engineering playground while collecting hefty salaries paid by VCs.
- rasz 4y ago
  Those startups popped into existence in the west just as pictures from Chinese rental bike graveyards showed up. Everyone with IQ of a donut could see where it was going.
jrm4 4y ago
For all the people somewhat defending the VC's: Nah. One point I haven't seen here is the extent to which these things just littered cities; there's something of a "tragedy of the commons" type argument here. Honestly, I'd be interested in favor of a bigger movement for individuals to hack and "steal" them for keeps. (Note the quotes around steal, please. I am a lawyer and I do not believe I am inciting an illegal action because I believe there's a very strong legal argument as to their status as mislaid or abandoned property.)
- chrismartin 4y ago
  Can downvoters please explain why they disagree with this comment? Agreed on the litter. Imagine I own 1000 scooter-sized fake pink flamingos, imagine they contain a bunch of lithium batteries for some reason. I set them out on city-owned property and encourage strangers to take them. Predictably, they get left all over the damn place. Blocking sidewalks and wheelchair ramps, in storm drains, waterways, and dumpsters. Some of them get picked up one way or another, but the rest become hazardous waste litter that cannot go in the normal trash. Who should bear responsibility for cleanup and disposal? That a city would allow this to happen with no penalty to the owner is a lavish gift of a public (and at times rivalrous) good to a private party.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Bro, I thought I was taking crazy pills and I'm still baffled as to why I don't see this argument made elsewhere more. I've seen enough blocking sidewalks and I'm just like, well, hey good thing I don't happen to be in a wheelchair right now.
    - chrismartin 4y ago
      I want to visit Amsterdam to see how they deal with this. Most people there get around on an (almost scooter-sized) bicycle but they usually _own_ it themselves, so there's incentive to look after it and not allow it to be impounded for blocking the way (or stolen or whatever). I think the "you don't own it so you can forget about it after the ride" aspect of Lime/Bird/etc is a bug, not a feature.
jimmar 4y ago
My family went to Washington DC recently and there were perhaps 4 companies providing scooter rental. I found out that if I rented one, I could not then rent one for my teenager. That was a fail. Then, the scooter I rented happened to be in a "no park zone." I could rent the scooter, but not return it to the exact place I'd rented it from. So I had to go out of my way to park the stupid thing. My wife rented hers from the exact same spot, but then immediately a "no ride zone" was triggered, so she had to push it for 1/2 a mile before she could actually ride it, all the while paying per-minute fees for the rental. It cost us probably $20 to go 3 blocks. It was not nearly as simple as scan to ride, ride, scan to park.
nharada 4y ago
It's a bummer to see what I think is a good idea in theory be hated because the people who implemented it did such a bad job in practice. The idea of having a fast, easy, low emission and cheap way to get around short distances in a city without needing a car or having to bring a bike or similar is awesome. Unfortunately, instead of solving the things citizens disliked about them (sidewalk parking/riding, inexperienced riders, rapid expansion) the companies decided they should just take the Uber approach and bulldoze any opposition with money. This made them a symbol of tech and gentrification for many, a symbol of growth and change for others, and aligned basically everyone in the city against them.
- robert_foss 4y ago
  These devices are hardly low emissions if you compare them to walking or biking which are the modes of transit they are most likely to replace. I had a conversation with an ex C-level employee of one of these companies, and there is no way for these devices to offset the environmental impact of production and shipping during the short lifetime of each device. The environmental aspect is a pure lie.
  - avn2109 4y ago
    As an anecdotal counterpoint, scooters have replaced Uber as my main method of transport and it's not even close. I probably take 4-8 scooter rides every single day and an Uber or two a week, when it was previously multiple Uber rides daily. Also Even if we deny the carbon-cycle benefits of electric scooters, they probably do have local air-quality benefits. (I don't have a car or bicycle and never did in this city, but I do walk less now than pre-scooter.)
    - glenneroo 4y ago
      Also scooters/bikes don't create any noise or soot pollution. I live on a very busy street on the 5th floor and I hate the noise when my windows are open (but I love having my windows open in general) - the noise is unbearable even after midnight, and after a couple days everything is covered in a fine layer of particles (dust, soot and whatever else is in the air). I didn't have any of these problems whenever I lived on a quiet street. Thankfully I'm moving soon to a quieter area again.
jeffbee 4y ago
Recently in Berkeley, California we got a bunch of new players: Veo, Superpedestrian, and Spin, which is an older company but just arrived here. So they are still chasing the dream, despite the money pit. For the customer these scooters and bikes are cheaper than the bus at distances of 1 mile and at longer range if you value your own time.
dvt 4y ago
I personally could not be happier with Bird's downfall. I was seriously thinking of running (as a one-issue candidate lol) for some City office in Santa Monica to get them off the streets. It was absolutely bonkers how terrible it was when they're weaving past you while driving, how terrible it was with people leaving them in front of my apartment building, and how terrible it was that the majority of folks taking advantage of them were out-of-towners anyways. This one time when I was walking home from a bar, some poor girl face-planted off a scooter in the middle of the street, she started crying, bleeding/etc. and myself and a few other bystanders had to call 911 to make sure she's okay and taken care of. So the vibe of cool cities like Santa Monica were totally ruined by these annoying "micromobility" startups, but also from a business standpoint, the idea also made no sense. All their pivots (in particular: what do you do with used scooters?), fell flat. With that said, I do know folks that worked at Bird (mostly ex-Uber or from the LA tech scene), and they were super smart, motivated, and driven people.
- lostdog 4y ago
  Just wait until you hear about ¨cars." Boy are you going to hate those!
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  The ubiquity of Bird scooters was probably my favorite part of Santa Monica.
pvwj 4y ago
As a method of urban transportation escooters have been relatively successful (at least in Europe). But this hasn’t translated into profitable businesses due to the lack of a strong technical moat: it’s too easy to clone Lime, Byrd, etc, especially with cheap capital availability.
kingofkyiv 4y ago
One place the scooters work well is in both Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine. The app for the scooter is the same as a popular taxi app and connected to it. Simple as scan the QR code and ride away. Leave it wherever. They still work great even in war time.
- dskrvk 4y ago
  Yup, they were especially great during the fuel shortage days when car traffic mostly ceased.
tompetry 4y ago
It was obvious as it was happening. this made me laugh: https://twitter.com/jaltma/status/1089589379406848000 https://twitter.com/jaltma/status/1089589379406848000
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
This one is actually a true stumper. Like the segway, urban short to medium distance transportation is a problem but somehow it's still not clicking. I think streets need to be free of cars for people to ride these. Would be an interesting experiment.
yumraj 4y ago
Genuine question: do VCs ever get fired by their firms, or forced to be fired by the LPs? There are a lot of VCs just play the sheep and don’t seem to know shit. I’m just curious what happens to bad VCs..
- manigandham 4y ago
  LPs fire them by no longer investing more money. An actual VC would get fired if they never made a good deal. And there's always the case of criminal actions (fraud, etc) but that's the exception. Other than that, venture capital is a high risk investment where 99% of the portfolio is expected to fail so it's not exactly a surprise when it happens. How are you going to prove that an idea was definitely going to be successful or not? If you know that then you should be a VC. The reality of portfolio theory means they only need a single big win to return all the gains, and the rest is just a reasonable attempt at disqualifying ideas and spending the money on things that might work.
  - yumraj 4y ago
    > LPs fire them by no longer investing more money. That I understand. I was curious if any VCs been fired by the firm for repeatedly making bad bets. But I guess since in general >1 partner signs up on a deal they share collective responsibility so can't blame a single partner.
pyb 4y ago
Didn't they ultimately fail because they are very unsafe ?
fab1an 4y ago
Based no how they mostly seem to be used in Berlin, scooters are predominantly a joyride thing for teenage to 20-something boys, doubling as status signaling given their relatively high costs (for this demographic) As a middle-aged dude, I find them quite awkward to navigate and much prefer a car, and I have literally never seen an older person use them. Are people commuting with those? I guess it happens occassionally, but the predominant use case, at least in Germany, seems just-for-fun cruising. Probably not a powerful or frequent enough thing to justify lofty valuations, and given the externalities (cluttering sidewalks, or folks having to fish them out of lakes and rivers) probably a net negative for society, too. Wouldn't like to see them banned out of principle, but I assume it'd make sense for cities to ask providers for some upfront deposit in case the provider can't ensure proper clean up etc...
- wil421 4y ago
  Same observation in US cities. Lots of younger people riding them for fun. I’ve done some joy rides on them for fun and to see part a city I was visiting. Haven’t rode one in years after the novelty wore off and partially Covid related.
atombender 4y ago
My small European city of 500k people had at least 9 (!) scooter brands last summer: Bird, Tier, Lime, Voi, Bolt, Zeus, Dott, Ryde, Surf. An article I found says there were actually 12 (!). As a result, last fall, there were a total of about 25,000 scooters out clogging the streets, enough that the city administration decided to establish a city-wide limit of 8,000 scooters. This spring, the city kicked out all but three services: Voi, Tier, and Bolt. As a consumer, I like scooters a lot, but market fragmentation was frustrating (one app for every service), and these days you can rarely even find a scooter when you need one. I ended up going back to using my bike.
Proven 4y ago
[dead]

149 points by lxm 4y ago

Squandered is a bit harsh. I don't have skin in the game either way, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a profitable business to be built once the dust settles. It can be hard to know in advance just how big that market would be, and how defensible.

powerhour 4y ago
I wonder if there is a path to profitability if they have to deal with all the scooter-litter described in the article. That'd probably mean having someone continually going around town moving scooters into racks or something like that.
- bfdm 4y ago
  Well a start would be educating riders on how to safely park the damned thing when their trip is done, instead of literally dumping it on a sidewalk/pathway, and collect fines for bad stewardship. You could have motion/orientation sensors to complement the GPS to see if they are moved after the rider parks it. It's far from unsolvable its just that nobody cares or is motivated.
  - jlund-molfese 4y ago
    Lyft/Divvy does this in Chicago. If you lock the scooter at a docking station, there’s no additional charge, but if you leave it somewhere else, there’s a small fine of $1
  - fragmede 4y ago
    At the very least, Lime and Scoot now require a picture of the properly parked scooter upon ride end. I wouldn't be surprised if the other apps are the same.
11thEarlOfMar 4y ago
Here is an example of squandering: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/ https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...
- lowercased 4y ago
  That is wild!
- beaned 4y ago
  If they're going to make that many bikes, why not just give them away? Why have them be "shared" and made to be returned to a pile? It would at least eradicate theft. Most people would have the same model. You could get a handout instead of having it stolen, and if it was stolen, then that person could get the handout. And the only people claiming them would be the ones using them.
  - dheera 4y ago
    Because capitalism and accountants prevent you from giving stuff away.
    - manigandham 4y ago
      That's in China. "Capitalism" isn't preventing any of that there.
      - dheera 4y ago
        In practice, China is highly capitalistic as an economy. It's authoritarian capitalism, not communism, even though it has a "communist party". This phenomenon of bikes piling up is literally venture capitalists throwing money at startups (in return for equity) to deploy more and more bikes to outnumber competitors in a hopeless race to monopolize bike sharing. It's literally an exhibit of one of the failure modes of extreme capitalism. Giving them away, as GGGP suggests, would actually be a departure from capitalism, and perhaps a good one.
Macha 4y ago
Though if it takes $2.9 billion in funding to make a business with ultimately, let's say $10m/yr net profit, I'd still call that squandered. Especially if part of that move to profitability ends up needing to be like european city bike hire schemes where they need docks to avoid theft, reducing availability and adding infrastructure costs.
friedman23 4y ago
Profitable is not enough. This is an extremely competitive business space. Employees joined these companies and were granted equity at multi billion dollar valuations and investors invested in these companies at multi billion dollar valuations. What is the addressable market here? What do margins look like? I would be surprised if the companies that win this market are going to be worth more than $2 billion dollars.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  > Employees joined these companies and were granted equity at multi billion dollar valuations and investors invested in these companies at multi billion dollar valuations Hubris and a lack of pragmatism has a cost. Of course the equity is worthless! If you do small things that don’t scale and poop aren’t profitable, and then scale and still aren’t profitable, there’s nowhere else to go. These investments of time and fiat never seem to ask, “walk me through the milestones you’ll accomplish to corner the market.” Same with Uber (from their S-1): “We include all passenger vehicle miles and all public transportation miles in all countries globally in our TAM, including those we have yet to enter” eye roll TLDR The koolaid has a bitter aftertaste. (tangentially, Uber has spent almost $28B and still isn’t profitable)
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    s/poop/products. Regretful typo.
CharlesW 4y ago
My reading is that "squandered" doesn't refer to the potential market for scooter-sharing services itself, but to the poor strategy of pumping an insane amount of money into a new/untested category in a very short amount of time.
tz18 4y ago
Squandered isn't harsh at all. The deployment of capital was disproportionate to the size of the profitable business that will result. It could have been better spent elsewhere... or saved.
benzible 4y ago
VCs aren't in the business of creating profitable companies. Their LPs aren't going to be happy with a negative return on their investment, regardless of whether they helped to create a nice, sustainable small business along the way.

randtrain34 4y ago

and instant grocery startups

JadoJodo 4y ago
I'm not sure who these are for, but it definitely isn't me. According to some back-of-the-napkin math I did: - Most items are marked up 16% - There's a ~$5-15 service fee (that's WITH Instacart+) - And most of the sources I saw showed that you should tip between 10-20% (which they deserve, given what I've seen of how they're paid). While I could absolutely see using the service if I was having a party and couldn't leave to pick up some forgotten items, paying $60-80 extra on top of my $200 grocery bill is too rich for my blood.
arnvald 4y ago
Yeah, when I used it the first time I was in awe, but over time I removed their apps and I just walk to the supermarket. Their prices are quite high, delivery time is unpredictable (even though their app says 10-15min, sometimes I had to wait 30-40min), and their inventory is limited. I still use them once every 2 months or so, but on a weekly basis I'd just rather go to a local supermarket myself.
- tropdrop 4y ago
  My biggest issue is the high rate of failure with fresh produce. I remember when one of my orders came in with a bag of organic sweet potatoes, with the claim that the organic Russet I had ordered were "out of stock." I was doing a specific recipe, so ended up having to go to the same supermarket from which I had just had my groceries delivered (thinking, perhaps I could get singles or non-organic). The bags of organic Russet were right there, right next to the organic sweet potatoes. On that same order, the bananas that came were so green that they wouldn't ripen for three weeks. When I've had groceries delivered, issues like this are the rule, not the exception.
- azinman2 4y ago
  Popcorn has been quite good. They’re clearly burning a ton of VC cash. Use it up while it lasts!

dragontamer 4y ago

I don't think $2000 and under devices belong in the rental space, in most situations. That's the real issue at hand here. Scooters are light enough that someone can just buy one and carry it around with them all day. At $5+ a ride, it isn't long before people would rather just buy one of their own. Bikes are at least large enough to be a hassle to carry around. ----------- Consider computers (and no, not cloud computers. Like normal office computers). There was a time when timesharing computers was popular, when computers were $100,000. Similarly, back in high school, one local entrepreneur gave a talk to my school. He explained that 3d printers, while their costs were going down, were still too expensive to own. He predicted 10 years before 3d printers were popular for home labs (and it turns out he was right). In those 10 years, he made money by renting out university-level / research 3d Printers (no one wanted to buy $100,000+ printers anymore, everyone saw the writing on the wall and would rather rent), so the rental company did well, albeit only temporarily. (Overall, the talk was about "risk taking". In this case, the calculated risk that he'd make money before the business opportunity closed as 3d printers became cheaper) ---------- But these Bird scooters look like they're around $500? If you're using the thing like 2 or 3 times a day, it won't take long at $5 / ride before it makes more sense to just buy one for yourself.

alexashka 4y ago
The sweet spot for scooters/bikes seems to be as a tourist attraction. I live in Toronto and there is a rental bike thing with bike docks. The bikes are shockingly heavy, the phone app sucks, but they remain popular. I attribute the success to summertime tourism.
com2kid 4y ago
> But these Bird scooters look like they're around $500? If you're using the thing like 2 or 3 times a day, it won't take long at $5 / ride before it makes more sense to just buy one for yourself. Theft. I live in a city where you can expect any portable form of transportation to get stolen, from inside your house's garage at that. Renting offloads the risk of theft to someone else.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago

exogeny 4y ago

Normally I despise defending VCs, but: First, I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand the mandate of VCs. The firms themselves receive funding from limited partners, who are often very large pools like the California State Pension or Yale University. Those pools are almost all deployed into very low-risk asset classes, like bonds. A very small amount, say like 2-3% is invested in the PE/VC asset class, thereby diversifying and giving that fund some upside plays in their overall portfolio. Now, because the VCs were given the mandate by their LPs to find home runs and not a bunch of singles and doubles, this changes the logic by which they make their decisions. You may have heard of the pejorative "lifestyle business" in this context, but it's the reason why a lot of small businesses or low-upside startups don't get funded: they just don't have enough TAM to justify a potential home-run outcome. Second, if we look back to when Bird and Lime blew up, it was still very, very early for these businesses and their breakout trajectory probably didn't look all that dissimilar from other home runs. (Lots of analogues here: how did Clubhouse look in it's early metrics? Probably a lot like Facebook. HQ Trivia probably looked a lot like Zynga's first breakout game.) It's only in hindsight where you're able to look back and see that adoption wasn't what they thought and cities were more adverse to it and so on, but it doesn't mean the investment logic at the time was flawed -- it just means that it didn't work out. Again, any VC will tell you that they'd rather invest 100 times in something with a 1% chance of being Uber than invest in 100 mom-and-pop shops. I'm sure many people will say "I guess, but it was obvious that they weren't going to make it!", to which I say, yeah, maybe. But it was probably obvious that Uber wasn't going to become Uber until they did; you only need to have in a portfolio to make it because you become A16Z or USV. And if the metrics from the first year look like Uber and the default gameplan is investment-driven, loss-heavy aggressive growth, then it doesn't seem like such a bad bet.

rossdavidh 4y ago
While I agree that this logic applies to the first, and maybe (though this is arguable) the second, none of the later startups in the same space were plausible "home runs". If that model was going to work, it would work for the first or second company in that space (unless they were somehow pathologically mismanaged). An also-ran in the same space is not only less likely to succeed, but if they succeed it will be because that space will be one where there are many long-term competitors...which will mean they have no "moat", and cannot be the "home run" that the original investor was looking for. So, in this case, you could excuse the investors in Bird and maybe Lime, but it seemed that there were a lot more companies than that.

game-of-throws 4y ago

I wonder if these wild valuations could be kept in check if there were a way to short/buy puts on private companies. There's positive pressure on valuations from the funding, but scant negative pressure. Scooters-as-a-service can probably be a profitable business worth millions, but you had to be really out of touch to think it could be worth billions.

Ekaros 4y ago
Also I always wonder about margins. They have software component, but they also have rather expensive hardware. And then overhead of management of that hardware. Like paying people to relocate and charge them as needed.
mym1990 4y ago
That defeats the whole point of a private company, and take away most of the benefits. The thing with the scooter business is that there isn't really a moat for it. Any number of players can come into the market(and they did) and just run the price down the bottom. But by that point a company can probably IPO and transfer the risk from the VCs to the public market.
snek_case 4y ago
Unpopular opinion: I know there would be other problems to solve if things were different, but I wish there was no such thing as private companies. As it is, private companies are an investment vehicle that regular people just don't have access to. It's a game of who knows who with very little regulatory oversight. Maybe early stage startups don't need a ton of regulatory oversight (they have other things to worry about), but maybe it also shouldn't be legal to have a private company with a market cap over a billion dollars.
RC_ITR 4y ago
I kind of have a secret about this: if you’re an accredited investor, you could 100% take short positions on these shares by borrowing shares from employees and seeking them in one of the random secondary markets that’s out there. It’s just no one does because the asymmetric downside of going naked short on companies with low market caps (“uh oh, Uber just bought this company for 10x my strike price because xyz stupid reason”) If you want to get really complicated you can write puts, but good luck pricing them and finding enough liquidity.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

I wish we would build social housing for people with some of the money our society throws in the burning dumpster of startups. See how they do social housing in Vienna (it's nice). https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...

TulliusCicero 4y ago
This would be nice, but it's also possible to get cheaper rent by just, y'know, letting people build housing easily. That's how the rent in Seoul and Tokyo is surprisingly reasonable, despite being megacities. We're now at a point where rent prices are higher in Columbus Ohio than Tokyo (1). Part of this is probably average apartment sizes being smaller in Tokyo, but still, that seems insane to me. 1 - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Japan&city1=Tokyo&country2=United+States&city2=Columbus%2C+OH&displayCurrency=USD https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
- wyre 4y ago
  Cheaper housing and better social programs together would be great.
- rr808 4y ago
  Can we please stop talking about Tokyo housing. It was only a few decades ago that California was cheap and Tokyo was insanely expensive and locals couldn't afford it. 30 years of economic depression has created cheaper houses.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    > Tokyo was insanely expensive and locals couldn't afford it. IIRC that was buying housing, not renting. Purchasing housing is subject to speculation in a way that rent is not. But if you have data that says otherwise, I'd love to see it. The data I can find shows the expected price spike in Japan for buying condos, but no such spike for renting: Condos - https://japanpropertycentral.com/2013/10/japans-apartment-market-over-the-last-40-years/ https://japanpropertycentral.com/2013/10/japans-apartment-ma... Apartments - https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/changes_in_house_rent https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/changes_in_house_rent That said, I wouldn't be surprised if rents were higher in an economic boom, I just doubt it got as crazy as condo prices did in Tokyo.

londons_explore 4y ago

Scooter startups have in my opinion totally missed their target market. Sit looking at a scooter on a street in a city, and you'll see perhaps 10,000 people walk past the scooter before one person uses it. So, in the 'go short distances' market, walking has 99.99% of the market, and the scooter industry has 0.01% market share. In my view, that's a total failure. Scooter companies should have interviewed each person who walked past a scooter and asked themselves, why didn't that person use our product? In many cases, it's a combination of cost, friction of setting up an app and account, and fear of something going wrong and being fined (for example, parking the scooter out of the operating zone). Scooter companies should have solved all those issues. You should be able to use the scooter entirely for free, without an app or any registration, perhaps limited to 10 minutes or 5 mph. Then, encourage people to pay for more time or more speed when they become accustomed to being able to get around quicker.

Nextgrid 4y ago
Interoperability would indeed help a long ways in many markets but it's antithetical to the monopolistic business models of the current tech industry. Card processing is something you can do on a cheap microcontroller - the only blocker here is EMV certification. I'm sure with all those millions (billions) collectively poured into the industry they could've released a cheap EMV-certified module that can accept payments locally, or failing that, bypass the certification problem by building their own, interoperable system end-to-end so that customers at least just had one app to install. It reminds me of a company here selling(?) powerbank vending machines - seems like they're still around, at least online (I can't imagine this thing ever making money, but I suspect it was more about "growth & engagement" and resume fodder than building a sustainable business): https://chargedup.theup.co https://chargedup.theup.co - the problem is that for you to take out a powerbank, you need to install an app on your phone. This automatically excludes the customers whose phone has already died even though they're the most likely to pay for it. I used to see their machine at my local bar for a couple years and I don't recall anyone ever using it. At some point it disappeared and replaced by a competitors' that at least has a built-in card terminal. Still don't recall anyone using it ever, but at least I guess you now technically could if you had no other option.
4y ago

arnvald 4y ago

Maybe last-mile mobility is a problem that requires public-private partnership. Public communication does not need to bring profits, it needs to serve the citizens. If public communication limits need for parking space, limits traffic jams and polution, that's a win. A number of cities introduced city-wide bike sharing networks that are paid, but subsidized. Sometimes it was more successful, sometimes less, but at least a few cities proved it can work. They can also work with the public transport card, removing the need for an app. Maybe the same can be applied to scooters? With the current approach they'll disappear in a few years, as their prices are too high, but having to maintain and charge them daily adds a lot of operational costs.

CodeWriter23 4y ago

This is the result this idea deserved. Here’s a better idea: finance individual scooter purchases/leases as a business. Manufacturing will match actual not falsely inflated demand, and people will take better care, not just leave their scooter lying about on sidewalks and crosswalks.

__derek__ 4y ago
I've heard of three different companies offering e-bike leases, with the monthly lease payments eligible for commuter reimbursement by employers. It seems like a good business model.
holler 4y ago
fwiw almost 95% of my time scooting has been while traveling, and for that it's a great way to cover lots of ground in foreign places.

Nextgrid 4y ago

Always a pleasure to see scummy monopolists lose billions and fail to achieve their monopoly.

newaccount2021 4y ago

renewiltord 4y ago

America is hard to say because it's a bit of a conservative place and highly tuned to reject anything novel on "dangerous" grounds. But I'm curious about urban micro mobility in developing South and South East Asia. This stuff must have failed there, but I wonder why it didn't displace a 50 cc motorbike. Storage capacity? Range? Ease of refuel?

rossdavidh 4y ago
Perhaps already bicycles (widely owned) and other similar options to fill this need?
fragmede 4y ago
Have they failed? Replacing an existing industry is much harder and slower than grafting a new one in.

mertd 4y ago

This is not even a hindsight 20/20 situation. The math never made sense. They were too brittle to make the LTV turn profitable. Maybe people were hoping for subsidies? Practicality-wise, they neither belonged to the sidewalk (too fast) or the road (can't deal with obstacles).

Nextgrid 4y ago
> The math never made sense. I bet it was a "growth & engagement" situation. The objective was never to build a sustainable business but was instead to build an engineering playground while collecting hefty salaries paid by VCs.
rasz 4y ago
Those startups popped into existence in the west just as pictures from Chinese rental bike graveyards showed up. Everyone with IQ of a donut could see where it was going.

jrm4 4y ago

For all the people somewhat defending the VC's: Nah. One point I haven't seen here is the extent to which these things just littered cities; there's something of a "tragedy of the commons" type argument here. Honestly, I'd be interested in favor of a bigger movement for individuals to hack and "steal" them for keeps. (Note the quotes around steal, please. I am a lawyer and I do not believe I am inciting an illegal action because I believe there's a very strong legal argument as to their status as mislaid or abandoned property.)

chrismartin 4y ago
Can downvoters please explain why they disagree with this comment? Agreed on the litter. Imagine I own 1000 scooter-sized fake pink flamingos, imagine they contain a bunch of lithium batteries for some reason. I set them out on city-owned property and encourage strangers to take them. Predictably, they get left all over the damn place. Blocking sidewalks and wheelchair ramps, in storm drains, waterways, and dumpsters. Some of them get picked up one way or another, but the rest become hazardous waste litter that cannot go in the normal trash. Who should bear responsibility for cleanup and disposal? That a city would allow this to happen with no penalty to the owner is a lavish gift of a public (and at times rivalrous) good to a private party.
- jrm4 4y ago
  Bro, I thought I was taking crazy pills and I'm still baffled as to why I don't see this argument made elsewhere more. I've seen enough blocking sidewalks and I'm just like, well, hey good thing I don't happen to be in a wheelchair right now.
  - chrismartin 4y ago
    I want to visit Amsterdam to see how they deal with this. Most people there get around on an (almost scooter-sized) bicycle but they usually _own_ it themselves, so there's incentive to look after it and not allow it to be impounded for blocking the way (or stolen or whatever). I think the "you don't own it so you can forget about it after the ride" aspect of Lime/Bird/etc is a bug, not a feature.

jimmar 4y ago

My family went to Washington DC recently and there were perhaps 4 companies providing scooter rental. I found out that if I rented one, I could not then rent one for my teenager. That was a fail. Then, the scooter I rented happened to be in a "no park zone." I could rent the scooter, but not return it to the exact place I'd rented it from. So I had to go out of my way to park the stupid thing. My wife rented hers from the exact same spot, but then immediately a "no ride zone" was triggered, so she had to push it for 1/2 a mile before she could actually ride it, all the while paying per-minute fees for the rental. It cost us probably $20 to go 3 blocks. It was not nearly as simple as scan to ride, ride, scan to park.

nharada 4y ago

It's a bummer to see what I think is a good idea in theory be hated because the people who implemented it did such a bad job in practice. The idea of having a fast, easy, low emission and cheap way to get around short distances in a city without needing a car or having to bring a bike or similar is awesome. Unfortunately, instead of solving the things citizens disliked about them (sidewalk parking/riding, inexperienced riders, rapid expansion) the companies decided they should just take the Uber approach and bulldoze any opposition with money. This made them a symbol of tech and gentrification for many, a symbol of growth and change for others, and aligned basically everyone in the city against them.

robert_foss 4y ago
These devices are hardly low emissions if you compare them to walking or biking which are the modes of transit they are most likely to replace. I had a conversation with an ex C-level employee of one of these companies, and there is no way for these devices to offset the environmental impact of production and shipping during the short lifetime of each device. The environmental aspect is a pure lie.
- avn2109 4y ago
  As an anecdotal counterpoint, scooters have replaced Uber as my main method of transport and it's not even close. I probably take 4-8 scooter rides every single day and an Uber or two a week, when it was previously multiple Uber rides daily. Also Even if we deny the carbon-cycle benefits of electric scooters, they probably do have local air-quality benefits. (I don't have a car or bicycle and never did in this city, but I do walk less now than pre-scooter.)
  - glenneroo 4y ago
    Also scooters/bikes don't create any noise or soot pollution. I live on a very busy street on the 5th floor and I hate the noise when my windows are open (but I love having my windows open in general) - the noise is unbearable even after midnight, and after a couple days everything is covered in a fine layer of particles (dust, soot and whatever else is in the air). I didn't have any of these problems whenever I lived on a quiet street. Thankfully I'm moving soon to a quieter area again.

jeffbee 4y ago

Recently in Berkeley, California we got a bunch of new players: Veo, Superpedestrian, and Spin, which is an older company but just arrived here. So they are still chasing the dream, despite the money pit. For the customer these scooters and bikes are cheaper than the bus at distances of 1 mile and at longer range if you value your own time.

dvt 4y ago

I personally could not be happier with Bird's downfall. I was seriously thinking of running (as a one-issue candidate lol) for some City office in Santa Monica to get them off the streets. It was absolutely bonkers how terrible it was when they're weaving past you while driving, how terrible it was with people leaving them in front of my apartment building, and how terrible it was that the majority of folks taking advantage of them were out-of-towners anyways. This one time when I was walking home from a bar, some poor girl face-planted off a scooter in the middle of the street, she started crying, bleeding/etc. and myself and a few other bystanders had to call 911 to make sure she's okay and taken care of. So the vibe of cool cities like Santa Monica were totally ruined by these annoying "micromobility" startups, but also from a business standpoint, the idea also made no sense. All their pivots (in particular: what do you do with used scooters?), fell flat. With that said, I do know folks that worked at Bird (mostly ex-Uber or from the LA tech scene), and they were super smart, motivated, and driven people.

lostdog 4y ago
Just wait until you hear about ¨cars." Boy are you going to hate those!
Ancapistani 4y ago
The ubiquity of Bird scooters was probably my favorite part of Santa Monica.

pvwj 4y ago

As a method of urban transportation escooters have been relatively successful (at least in Europe). But this hasn’t translated into profitable businesses due to the lack of a strong technical moat: it’s too easy to clone Lime, Byrd, etc, especially with cheap capital availability.

kingofkyiv 4y ago

One place the scooters work well is in both Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine. The app for the scooter is the same as a popular taxi app and connected to it. Simple as scan the QR code and ride away. Leave it wherever. They still work great even in war time.

dskrvk 4y ago
Yup, they were especially great during the fuel shortage days when car traffic mostly ceased.

tompetry 4y ago

It was obvious as it was happening. this made me laugh: https://twitter.com/jaltma/status/1089589379406848000 https://twitter.com/jaltma/status/1089589379406848000

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

This one is actually a true stumper. Like the segway, urban short to medium distance transportation is a problem but somehow it's still not clicking. I think streets need to be free of cars for people to ride these. Would be an interesting experiment.

yumraj 4y ago

Genuine question: do VCs ever get fired by their firms, or forced to be fired by the LPs? There are a lot of VCs just play the sheep and don’t seem to know shit. I’m just curious what happens to bad VCs..

manigandham 4y ago
LPs fire them by no longer investing more money. An actual VC would get fired if they never made a good deal. And there's always the case of criminal actions (fraud, etc) but that's the exception. Other than that, venture capital is a high risk investment where 99% of the portfolio is expected to fail so it's not exactly a surprise when it happens. How are you going to prove that an idea was definitely going to be successful or not? If you know that then you should be a VC. The reality of portfolio theory means they only need a single big win to return all the gains, and the rest is just a reasonable attempt at disqualifying ideas and spending the money on things that might work.
- yumraj 4y ago
  > LPs fire them by no longer investing more money. That I understand. I was curious if any VCs been fired by the firm for repeatedly making bad bets. But I guess since in general >1 partner signs up on a deal they share collective responsibility so can't blame a single partner.

pyb 4y ago

Didn't they ultimately fail because they are very unsafe ?

fab1an 4y ago

Based no how they mostly seem to be used in Berlin, scooters are predominantly a joyride thing for teenage to 20-something boys, doubling as status signaling given their relatively high costs (for this demographic) As a middle-aged dude, I find them quite awkward to navigate and much prefer a car, and I have literally never seen an older person use them. Are people commuting with those? I guess it happens occassionally, but the predominant use case, at least in Germany, seems just-for-fun cruising. Probably not a powerful or frequent enough thing to justify lofty valuations, and given the externalities (cluttering sidewalks, or folks having to fish them out of lakes and rivers) probably a net negative for society, too. Wouldn't like to see them banned out of principle, but I assume it'd make sense for cities to ask providers for some upfront deposit in case the provider can't ensure proper clean up etc...

wil421 4y ago
Same observation in US cities. Lots of younger people riding them for fun. I’ve done some joy rides on them for fun and to see part a city I was visiting. Haven’t rode one in years after the novelty wore off and partially Covid related.

atombender 4y ago

My small European city of 500k people had at least 9 (!) scooter brands last summer: Bird, Tier, Lime, Voi, Bolt, Zeus, Dott, Ryde, Surf. An article I found says there were actually 12 (!). As a result, last fall, there were a total of about 25,000 scooters out clogging the streets, enough that the city administration decided to establish a city-wide limit of 8,000 scooters. This spring, the city kicked out all but three services: Voi, Tier, and Bolt. As a consumer, I like scooters a lot, but market fragmentation was frustrating (one app for every service), and these days you can rarely even find a scooter when you need one. I ended up going back to using my bike.

Proven 4y ago

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