5 ms·

Hindsight makes this easy to appreciate. Looking at it from the perspective of when these mobility companies started, there was a chance it could have worked.

gp 3y ago
Plenty of people believed it would fail from the beginning - are they prescient or just lucky?
- addicted 3y ago
  Every new technology and company has plenty of people believing it will fail from the beginning. And they will almost always be right because most companies fail. Identifiying companies that will fail is not hard. Identifying those that will succeed on the other hand is very hard.
smt88 3y ago
I live in a typical US city with rain, four seasons, and lots of cars. No one in my city thought this business model would work. The only reason it raised so much money is because VCs are idiots who don't understand how society works outside of California.
- dottedmag 3y ago
  Should all companies expand to the whole globe? There are plenty of well-off places with mild climate where using a scooter all year around is feasible.
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    No - and renting out scooters is a model that can totally work. But do micro mobility companies have the scaling potential/dynamic of a Google or Facebook (which would justify the way they raise money)?
    - palemoonale 3y ago
      What's this thing with prefixing 'micro'? Either you provide mobility, or you don't. Same with services.
      - DFHippie 3y ago
        Speaking only for "micro mobility", it seems useful to distinguish allowing someone to travel within a city from between cities from between continents. Sure, it's mobility, but there are different kinds or degrees of mobility.
      - kjellsbells 3y ago
        Agree, it seems to assume that the unit of mobility is something larger, like a car. When the fundamental unit of human mobility is just that, a human, since they are inherently mobile. We would do better to describe cars as macro mobility than scooters and bikes as micro. Pipe dream, I know.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    A friend of mine pointed out that almost all (upward of 90%) of the world’s population lives in a milder climate than Upstate NY.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  In 2024 pretty much every country has a scooter rental service. (Including very northern countries with seasons much more pronounced than any in the U.S.) I don't think weather is the problem here.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    Hard to say. Near Ithaca, NY we have a lot of rain and (usually) snow in the winter. I think a hardy person could commute on a bicycle much more than 80% of the time. It rains a lot in the Netherlands and people ride bikes a lot anyway; I think it is not so cold, I hear it is unusual that it freezes enough for people to skate on their canals these days.
    - addicted 3y ago
      Northern European countries have people ride bikes all year long because they invest in keeping the infrastructure rideable. In the U.S. the moment it snows the governments will send out a bunch of people and equipment to clear out the roads. In Northern European countries they will do the same for the bike lanes as well.
      - germinalphrase 3y ago
        Minneapolis plows the dedicated bike paths, and people utilize them year round.
  - smt88 3y ago
    They had the services. Were they profitable? The VC money forced Bird and others to unprofitably expand, which is why all those countries had scooter rentals.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  There's nothing interesting about the fact that everyone in a typical US city thinks some business model won't work. They always think that. You can't really get any useful information from that. Equivalent to a stopped clock.
  - smt88 3y ago
    It's definitely interesting when they're the intended customers.
  - jimberlage 3y ago
    I’ve always wondered why they didn’t absolutely plow VC money into lobbying for bike infrastructure across the US (or maybe they did and it wasn’t successful?) Forget app features, focus on the other half of the equation - the roads you expect your scooters to ride on. My impression is that my fellow Americans are way too pessimistic about city improvements, and also that Bird did the world’s worst job of getting cities to meet them halfway. Edit because I just thought of something else - if they were truly savvy, they would have made an industry consortium to lobby for shared infrastructure, to split the shared costs and increase their chances of getting favorable laws passed.

gp 3y ago

Plenty of people believed it would fail from the beginning - are they prescient or just lucky?

addicted 3y ago
Every new technology and company has plenty of people believing it will fail from the beginning. And they will almost always be right because most companies fail. Identifiying companies that will fail is not hard. Identifying those that will succeed on the other hand is very hard.

smt88 3y ago

I live in a typical US city with rain, four seasons, and lots of cars. No one in my city thought this business model would work. The only reason it raised so much money is because VCs are idiots who don't understand how society works outside of California.

dottedmag 3y ago
Should all companies expand to the whole globe? There are plenty of well-off places with mild climate where using a scooter all year around is feasible.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  No - and renting out scooters is a model that can totally work. But do micro mobility companies have the scaling potential/dynamic of a Google or Facebook (which would justify the way they raise money)?
  - palemoonale 3y ago
    What's this thing with prefixing 'micro'? Either you provide mobility, or you don't. Same with services.
    - DFHippie 3y ago
      Speaking only for "micro mobility", it seems useful to distinguish allowing someone to travel within a city from between cities from between continents. Sure, it's mobility, but there are different kinds or degrees of mobility.
    - kjellsbells 3y ago
      Agree, it seems to assume that the unit of mobility is something larger, like a car. When the fundamental unit of human mobility is just that, a human, since they are inherently mobile. We would do better to describe cars as macro mobility than scooters and bikes as micro. Pipe dream, I know.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  A friend of mine pointed out that almost all (upward of 90%) of the world’s population lives in a milder climate than Upstate NY.
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
In 2024 pretty much every country has a scooter rental service. (Including very northern countries with seasons much more pronounced than any in the U.S.) I don't think weather is the problem here.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  Hard to say. Near Ithaca, NY we have a lot of rain and (usually) snow in the winter. I think a hardy person could commute on a bicycle much more than 80% of the time. It rains a lot in the Netherlands and people ride bikes a lot anyway; I think it is not so cold, I hear it is unusual that it freezes enough for people to skate on their canals these days.
  - addicted 3y ago
    Northern European countries have people ride bikes all year long because they invest in keeping the infrastructure rideable. In the U.S. the moment it snows the governments will send out a bunch of people and equipment to clear out the roads. In Northern European countries they will do the same for the bike lanes as well.
    - germinalphrase 3y ago
      Minneapolis plows the dedicated bike paths, and people utilize them year round.
- smt88 3y ago
  They had the services. Were they profitable? The VC money forced Bird and others to unprofitably expand, which is why all those countries had scooter rentals.
renewiltord 3y ago
There's nothing interesting about the fact that everyone in a typical US city thinks some business model won't work. They always think that. You can't really get any useful information from that. Equivalent to a stopped clock.
- smt88 3y ago
  It's definitely interesting when they're the intended customers.
- jimberlage 3y ago
  I’ve always wondered why they didn’t absolutely plow VC money into lobbying for bike infrastructure across the US (or maybe they did and it wasn’t successful?) Forget app features, focus on the other half of the equation - the roads you expect your scooters to ride on. My impression is that my fellow Americans are way too pessimistic about city improvements, and also that Bird did the world’s worst job of getting cities to meet them halfway. Edit because I just thought of something else - if they were truly savvy, they would have made an industry consortium to lobby for shared infrastructure, to split the shared costs and increase their chances of getting favorable laws passed.