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The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

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Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#41

Post by bonestamp2 »

luqa wrote: post #31
RugnirViking wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is see…

In my city (Milan, Italy) bike-sharing is an extremely common solution. I feel like the business model is the main problem. Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat. Every few years a new startup can enter the marketing with a better bike. The incumbents have to improve their or risk losing the entire market in a matter of weeks.

Can you help us understand why bike-sharing is popular in Milan? For example, why wouldn't someone just buy a bike?

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#42

Post by analog31 »

rdiddly wrote: post #36
RugnirViking wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is see…

I've pondered that question too. Something like Uber or Lyft works partly because of the cost and burden of car ownership. It's attractive to use someone else's equipment if you don't have to buy, maintain, finance, fuel, insure, and store (park) similar equipment yourself, to the tune of thousands of dollars per year. But then you look at bike ownership. I almost want to put "bike ownership" in quotes because even t…

Interestingly, a thing about Uber/Lyft is that the number of cars is limited because they are based on converting existing private cars to hired use. So Uber/Lyft don't eliminate private cars. The number of bike shares that can be pumped into a city is limited only by the capital that can be pumped in.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#44

Post by Balgair »

> Bluegogo’s contribution alone was 800,000 bikes, impounded in cities across China – wave after wave of blue bikes, piled two high, sitting in construction sites and empty lots on the outskirts of megacities, waiting. Decaying.

> Zoom out from the specific, and you quickly start to drown in the enormity of it all. Millions of bikes, assembled by thousands of hands. Entire towns like Wangqingtuo, built around servicing a rapacious demand. Restaurants and hotels and supermarkets, constructed and opened and shuttered in what are now virtual ghost-towns. Countless families relying on the bikeshare industry to survive. Seats and spokes and tyres beyond number, consigned as fast as they were made to technicolour scrapheaps around China. All of it, this vast mound of human toil, left to rust and rot among bamboo and rubble.

I am continually facinated with China and it's people. But in instances like this I get a real feeling of looking into the eyes of Yog-Sothoth, the Gate and the Key.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#46

Post by fooblitzky »

RugnirViking wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is see…

Seattle collects data on bike share usage, available here: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

Seems in the sunnier months they get about 200,000 trips, from a fleet of 10,000 bikes.

I think a lot of people start riding the share bikes before deciding to purchase a bike themselves too. Overall ridership is up 12% this year.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#47

Post by DenisM »

microtherion wrote: post #32
DanFeldman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume Why do you think that is? It's so common to hear advice that bigco's will always want to hire people w/ Startup experience, but does that not extend to the founders?

There might be at least the perception that the CEO will spend most of their tenure plotting their next startup (and quite possibly poaching employees and intellectual property on the way out). Think Anthony Levandowski. Are there any well known cases of startup CEOs who were wildly successful as employees in another company?

>Are there any well known cases of startup CEOs who were wildly successful as employees in another company?

Wildly might be a high bar, but otherwise it's pretty much majority of acquisitions.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#48

Post by Phrodo_00 »

mbesto wrote: post #37
nradov wrote: post #14

It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so. The last major innovation was aero carbon frames. Since then everyone is just copying each other and trying to improve by fractions of a percent for weight, stiffness, and efficiency. Most of the value and innovation has shifted to the groupset suppliers, with Shimano taking the lion's share of the market and a f…

> It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so. Are you not familiar with electronic shifting? Integrated components? Sure, frames have basically all consolidated down to a few similar model types, but I see that as a good thing. It means the market has all figured out that "this is the most aerodynamic frame possible". I mean honestly, what else would you e…

FSA Also recently launched a drivetrain, and there are also other brake manufacturers (I'm an oddball who likes mechanical disk brakes so I pretty much have to look for them)

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#49

Post by mayormcmatt »

I didn't know this CEO was the same as from Bluegogo. When that bike share company entered the Bay Area market, they helped push out artists from a West Oakland warehouse studio called Lo-bot and were occupying it for maybe six months before disappearing. The place is still empty.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#50

Post by Someone »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #9
RugnirViking wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is see…

The main problem with bike shares is the ridiculously short time limit. If you could check one out for a few hours they’d be more useful, instead most are time limited to about 30 minutes. My sister used one once to bike by a lake front and she said she was stressed the whole time about not making it to the next station to reset the time limit before it expired.

The main Dutch bike share system doesn’t have silly time limits. It has a fixed price of €3,85 (about $4,35) for a day. That allows you, for example, to cycle from a train station to a business meeting, park the bike there for a few hours, and cycle back to the station in the afternoon.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-fiets.

It also features halfway decent (for the task at hand) bicycles.

Both are good for consumers, but I don’t think such a system makes venture capitalists happy.

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