Lyft Takes over Ford GoBike

Dockless, electric is a game-changer. JUMP bikes hit 20MPH in a few seconds, take less effort than will get you sweaty (critical for meetings/commuting) and you can take the bike lane. Then the vast majority of the time you just hook it up to whatever chunk of metal is nearby and you're done. It's the fastest way between almost any 2 points in SF and often the most convenient too.

At $2 for 30min + $0.07/min it was an absolute steal. At $3 I may have to think harder but if it makes the economics work, I'm still in. I basically stopped using Uber and pay $5-7/day for all the electric biking I need. Could I buy one for a years' fees? Yep. But I don't want to deal with the hassle of owning.

I used the SF bikes multiple times over several years, and I did run into empty docks once or twice. But usually bikes were available and usable. More than once I ran into the person who maintained and moved bikes. They had a trailer with 2-3 bikes pulled by an e-bike--I thought that was a really great idea (as opposed to a van that ran n gas and would block the bike lane during loading and unloading).

I believe it's run by the local authority, and at such a level its easy to explain why it's much more likely to be economically viable. The state also has to deal with the externalities associated with other forms of transport (traffic, noise, pollution etc.), as well as the health consequences of its citizens. Additionally, it's not-dockless - which I think massively reduces the nuisance on everyone else.

I've been a Mobike subscriber for a year now (in Berlin). The bikes are crap (i.e. cheap, in need of maintenance) but they are everywhere and I see it as saving on gym cost (hard work to ride one). But, if I need to get from A to B, I get one because I already payed for it. I probably payed them around 100 euros or so over the last year. I just renewed for 3 months for 24 euros. Every time I do this the price seems to change. This gets me unlimited 30 minute rides. After that they charge 1 euro per additional 30 minutes (tip, lock and unlock seems to work). I consider this good value. I don't have to worry about bike repairs, bike theft, or leaving my bike in a dodgy area. As soon as I lock it, it's not my problem.

I've done over 1200 km on mobikes in the last 12 months. Even in the winter when the weather is less nice, I still used them enough to make it worth the subscription.

The back of the envelope math is pretty interesting. If you have 10K users like me that's about 1M revenue. For a city like Berlin (4M inhabitants), you can probably do better. At 100 euro per bike, 1M buys you 10K bikes. I have no idea what these things cost per year but both the upfront investment to flood a city with bikes and setting up the support organization (maintenance mainly) are not that high. I'd say if they shoot for recurring revenue from around 20K users in a city like this, they ought to be very profitable. They have plenty of capacity to improve utilization as at this rate most bikes are not in use most of the time.

The main issues I've seen with competitors is that they think too small. Something like Mobike only makes sense if you can find one without effort. A lot of the failed startups in this space did not have enough bikes or too complex bikes (they break). Launching with a few hundred bikes is pointless. Everybody that did this in Berlin is gone (ofo, byke (with a y), lime, etc. Mobike did this right. They flooded the city with between 5K and 10K bikes. They are all over the place. I suspect the bulk price for these things is pretty OK. The main challenge is the growth strategy: they need recurring revenue.

I suspect Jump, which recently re-launched here, won't make it in Berlin because they don't do subscriptions, their operational zone is tiny, and they don't have enough bikes on the streets. The value proposition kind of sucks compared to Mobike.

Mobike looks like it might fail because their bikes are deteriorating and they seem to be in limbo now that their China based headquarters looks like they want to focus on just China. Apparently they are looking to sell off the European operations. I think it's an operation worth saving but it is going to take an investment to keep their existing user base and there's a bit of urgency because the experience is getting worse as the bikes get shittier.

The only way to mess this up is poor execution. There seems a lot of that in this business. But it's not an inherently bad business.

They also don't comply with GDPR. After confirming several times they have completely deleted my account and any reference to my email, I still get marketing emails from them every now and again.