Translation: we are entering a scooter bubble.
How do we short it??
Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
51–60 of 488 posts
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#52My guess is that Lime and Bird's latest investors don't actually believe in these insane valuations. Instead, they see these companies as a safe place to park their money due to the limited downside provided by liquid preference terms.
I discovered scooters recently and have rode them in three major cities during the past month. I have to say it is the most genius consumer tech product I've seen in a long time. I instantly felt a sense of "wow" after riding the first one (bird). The entire experience is so simple, so elegant (ui/ux), cheap, efficient, and most importantly FUN. I looked up bird and lime to discover they'd each received over 400M in funding and it makes perfect sense to me. This is a disruptive technology that's going to see major adoption in every city across the entire planet. You have to ride one to understand, especially in an urban, downtown, waterfront or metro type area. They're going to easily cut into bikeshare and short-trip rideshare services. Take a ride and you'll see, #scootlife!
Also worth noting, none of the technology is itself "new", but rather bird & lime particularly have packaged existing technologies together to make a product with all the qualities mentioned above. Innovation is usually just a twist on something that's already out there.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#53I cannot stand the Limes and Birds around Santa Monica. I walk out of my apartment, and the streets are littered with them. It's annoying when walking, it's even more annoying when jogging, and riders are constantly riding them (without helmets) on sidewalks even though we have bike lanes. They're even a nuisance when driving. I'm hoping for some legislation that will ban them -- I might set up a grassroots campaign…
I was actually in Santa Monica / Venice area for the first time a few weeks ago. I was /floored/ with how many scooters there were. I live in Atlanta and find them to be super awesome and unintrusive, but I could understand how the sheer quantity could put you off of them. At least realize that they aren't so ridiculously overpopulated in other places -- it's probably the tourists that make it financially worth it to…
I was in Atlanta last month, and outside of Midtown (Tech/GSU), I didn't see them anywhere else. Here, we have them in SM/Venice, in Westwood, in Culver City, in DTLA, etc.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#54Anybody miss the days when companies were named something that was at least tangentially related to their function?
When was this?Google
You might just be thinking it used to be that way because when a new company/product becomes successful, their brand name becomes the term for the thing.
Kleenex
Xerox
Asprin
Hoover
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#55Lime and Bird have collectively raised nearly a billion dollars within 14 months of founding at valuations of $1.1 billion and $2 billion, respectively.
For reference, American Airlines has market cap of $18 billion and 950 jet planes.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are cars allowed to litter the public roads and park all over the place, taking up a massive amount of space with mostly empty seats and driven around less than 10% of the time?
It's not littering since local statues have rules about parking. FYI, in some areas, parking is illegal, and in most areas leaving your car in a spot for too long will allow the city to tow it. Since the majority of places don't have statues for scooters, the default actually is littering, it's no different than dumping anything else on the sidewalk.
Yeah, but those statutes came after cars were popular. Early on, I bet people were parking all over the place and it was people complaining about it that lead to those rules being put in place.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#57I cannot stand the Limes and Birds around Santa Monica. I walk out of my apartment, and the streets are littered with them. It's annoying when walking, it's even more annoying when jogging, and riders are constantly riding them (without helmets) on sidewalks even though we have bike lanes. They're even a nuisance when driving. I'm hoping for some legislation that will ban them -- I might set up a grassroots campaign…
[deleted]
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#58Remind me again why they are allowed to litter all the public sidewalks and street corners with their scooters? Regulation hasn't caught up yet?
Because people derive value from the service. It's faster than walking, more convenient than an Uber, and doesn't require a car. Let's leave the "get off my lawn" comments off HN.
Just because lots of people derive value from a service does not give them carte blanche to push externalities onto everyone else.
I mean, do you say "No no, you can't complain about all those chemicals being dumped into that river... look at all the value people are deriving from thing the factory is producing!"
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because people derive value from the service. It's faster than walking, more convenient than an Uber, and doesn't require a car. Let's leave the "get off my lawn" comments off HN.
It's not a "get off my lawn" comment. Regulations about these scooters don't exist in the large majority of places- meaning the default local regulations about illegal dumping apply. Whether people derive value from it or not is not important to local laws. These scooter companies are operating in a grey area; that's a fact. Please don't quickly dismiss discussion about this issue, especially in such an ignorant mann…
> These scooter companies are operating in a grey area; that's a fact
That's not true at all where I live. Santa Monica often bans them for not following rules, makes deals with other companies, etc.. Every app is forced to implement geofencing for not allowing riding on the beach walkways, for example. On popular roads like Abbot Kinney there are small fenced off corals where the government has replaced a car parking spot with a scooter and bicycle one. So yes, scooter companies do have specific laws they have to follow. It's actually a drawback since the city favors Jump over local companies like Bird, and Jump has a lot less availability.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#60I have spent a lot of time observing this phenomenon in Venice; here are some of my thoughts.
What these scooters have done for SM-Venice is, they’ve gotten people to park farther away and spend less time in cars. Especially the tourists. What does that mean for locals? Well, for one, it means that the nuisance of having to drive slow past people on these things, rather than the nightmare of sitting in standstill traffic if all of those people were in cars instead. Summer traffic in Venice was definitely helped by the scooters, as they replaced a bit of car traffic. These “short haul mobility vehicles” make it much easier for larger groups of people to engage in a large, spread-out, mostly-pedestrian area.
They’re completely dorky and I’ll never be caught dead on one... but, at the same time, there’s serious benefits to us all that these things exist. There’s definitely problems (not sure how I feel about seeing them in piles outside of public schools, such as Venice High, and there’s something very Idiocracy-esque in watching them being used by people who would benefit from walking), but I find it to be an overall net-positive.
I’m interested to see where the next form factors go, and how these things factor into future urban planning decisions. Especially within geofenced environments where you don’t have to pay for them, they just exist. There’s a lot to ponder here.