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Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

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Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#51

Post by shereadsthenews »

RobLach wrote: post #18
shereadsthenews wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans will try literally anything as long as it is neither sensible land use nor proven transportation schemes. This scooter stuff is extremely appealing to the American mind.

What about the American mind makes electric scooters so alluring? That statement sounds ridiculous.

I don’t know and I can’t explain it. If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.”

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#52

Post by m4x »

paulsutter wrote: post #11

Bad title - article does not cover unit economics at all (it's barely mentioned) > The pair hit on a number of topics, including the unit economics, safety and seasonality of the scooter business

It is discussed in paragraphs 4-7. No real figures are given, but you wouldn't expect them to be in an informal interview.

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#53

Post by _2d30 »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #51
RobLach wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the American mind makes electric scooters so alluring? That statement sounds ridiculous.

I don’t know and I can’t explain it. If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about bikin…

> I don’t know and I can’t explain it.

I see, so you just said something that sounded edgy and cool to you that's backed up by no reasoning. Generally HN has higher quality discourse than this.

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#54

Post by W-Stool »

Here in Reno we have Lime bikes (the scooters were withdrawn after being deployed without city permission) and they are almost like litter - they are laying around all over the city but I almost never see anyone riding one. I'm all for bikes and bicycling but the fact that they have no designated docking stations means people leave them everywhere and to this old fart it is borderline blight.

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#55

Post by paulsutter »

m4x wrote: post #52
paulsutter wrote: post #11

Bad title - article does not cover unit economics at all (it's barely mentioned) > The pair hit on a number of topics, including the unit economics, safety and seasonality of the scooter business

It is discussed in paragraphs 4-7. No real figures are given, but you wouldn't expect them to be in an informal interview.

Here's the meatiest statement. Not very useful.

> What we see on the unit economics of those, it’s like night and day

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#56

Post by justboxing »

keerthiko wrote: post #3

I still think Bird's success is merely symptomatic of American shortsighted solutions to systemic US urban planning issues. I doubt this will reach the same level of popularity in cities/countries with great public transit, highly walkable streets, and good existing last mile solutions (bikeshares, bikelanes, high bus coverage), but I'm happy to eat my words if I'm just not seeing it and folks from Amsterdam, Seoul,…

> I doubt this will reach the same level of popularity in cities/countries with great public transit, highly walkable streets,

I hope you are right. The littering / parking isn't the biggest problem or nuisance. It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians. Forget the fact that it's illegal[1] in most states to ride a motorized vehicle (other than disability vehicles) on the sidewalks, almost all of these lyme, scoot, bird riders ignore it and routinely cause collisions in San Francisco.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters

> A motorized scooter may be operated on a bicycle path, trail or bikeway, but not on a sidewalk.

Related: Reminder: It Is Illegal to Ride Scooters On City Sidewalks => https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks-i...

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#57

Post by tenpies »

masonic wrote: post #38
baroffoos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what purpose other than locking kids and poor people out of the world and worsening traffic and health issues. If 2 cyclists crash in to each other they will cause minimal property damage and any medical costs should be covered by the government. There are so many other situations where people can accidentally cause property damage that don't require insurance. Its just the cars have a very high risk of causing h…

If 2 cyclists crash in to each other they will cause minimal property damage Cyclists hitting pedestrians have caused death in SF.

It's very hard for a cyclist to hit and run. On a bicycle, even when it's not your mistake, a mistake will usually end up killing or hurting the cyclist. It's not like a car where you can kill a non-trivial amount of people and see zero repercussions.

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#58

Post by reaperducer »

MauranKilom wrote: post #10
ggm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (also?) think these disruptive transport plays are a bit grubby, and probably predating public transport shared costs and the commons. Here in brisbane, they basically became scofflaw over "riding without helmet" and "riding on pavement" to force the issue. Why the state authorities caved instead of taking them to the cleaners is beyond me. We've already started to have drunks on scooters, elderly people feeling ex…

It might just be me, but I'm having a hard time following your post due to these terms: > scofflaw > taking to the cleaners > juicers I normally would just go look it up, but this is a high density of jargon/colloquialisms. Or maybe it's not and I just never heard them, but I'm just offering my data point here.

One of the things I enjoy most about HN is learning the idiomatic language of other cultures, even if I have to look a word up.

I don’t think that asking people to use bland, lowest common denominator language is an incentive for smart people to participate. This isn’t the Simplified English version of Wikipedia.

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#59

Post by masonic »

tenpies wrote: post #57
masonic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 2 cyclists crash in to each other they will cause minimal property damage Cyclists hitting pedestrians have caused death in SF.

It's very hard for a cyclist to hit and run. On a bicycle, even when it's not your mistake, a mistake will usually end up killing or hurting the cyclist. It's not like a car where you can kill a non-trivial amount of people and see zero repercussions.

  It's very hard for a cyclist to hit and run
Actually, in most SF bike-pedestrian collisions resulting in pedestrian injury, the cyclist flees.

Example:

https://patch.com/california/san-francisco/pedestrians-hospi...

Re: Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

#60

Post by ardy42 »

megy wrote: post #42
ardy42 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars are only safe in a separated car lane, so why not ban cars, remove the car lanes and transform them into bike / scooter lanes ? Because streets were designed as car lanes, and bikes/scooters are niche transportation technologies [1] when compared to cars? [1] Bikes and scooters are really only useful for short-distance individual transport. They do not handle long distances, groups, and cargo very well.

Except they were not. Cars are just too dangerous to have anywhere near people. They should be banned from cities and suburbs. 40,000 people die every year in the US because of cars. Dumbest idea ever.

> Except they were not.

99% of the streets for miles and miles around me were built after the invention of the car for near-dedicated use by automobiles, and those that were not were converted to that design.

> Cars are just too dangerous to have anywhere near people. They should be banned from cities and suburbs.

You say that, but I'd like to see you move your family to new house without using an automobile to move your stuff.

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