Today, Oliver interviews Erdem Ovacik, CEO of Donkey Republic, the first shared micromobility player to go public globally. Donkey Republic is listed on the Nasdaq First North exchange in the Nordics. It’s a great discussion about how the market has evolved, and why they see increasingly tight cooperation with governments being the next phase of shared market developments.

Specifically, they dig into:

- the backstory of Donkey, including where the name came from and the development of the bikeshare market in Europe

- Donkey’s unique approach of being both an operator and SaaS business and the economics of the varying parts of the business.

- Why they’ve pursued a ‘virtual dock’ solution rather than just straight free-float and what that’s enabled them as a business.

- Why they see the growth of the business being in publicly funded bike share systems in the EU.

- How their valuation compares to other companies in the shared space, and what the reception of investors has been like.

- what the listing has provided them in terms of options and what the costs have been

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Thanks to our sponsor for the episode, Ubiq, who is making shared mobility profitable with data-driven services to automate operations and ensure vehicles are in the right place, at the right time, to meet demand. Ubiq’s customers have increased revenue by 20% while also decreasing operational costs.

Ubiq offers services including Automated Rebalancing and Charging as a Service (ChaaS), using the power of the crowd to exploit the full potential fleets. The StreetCrowd also service matches vehicles requiring repositioning, or charging with crowd users, allowing shared mobility providers to automate operations. 

Ubiq is also increasing the efficiency of ops teams, by helping identify underutilized vehicles. With its plug-in forecasting models one can easily see where improvements can be made. Ubiq’s systems are plug and play and you can get started right away. Check them out at Ubiq.ai.

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The next Micromobility America conference is now scheduled for the 23rd of September. It’ll be in Pier 70 in San Francisco and have more than 50 top speakers from the industry, more than 1000 global participants and 500+ startups and brands represented. If you love this space and want to find your tribe here, head to micromobility.io to find out more details.