Micromobility

This week, Horace joins Oliver on the podcast to talk about hype cycles, capital formation and transport funding patterns historically, and what we can learn from them about the micromobility space now. 

Specifically: 

The parallels between the hype cycles for MP3 players, the internet and personal computers vs. micromobility.

The perils of ‘being early’ in large scale technology adoptions. 

The history of funding for the auto, railway and canal sectors transport systems, and parallels to micromobility and the infrastructure required.

Why pioneers for traditional transport innovations largely end up with arrows in their back. 

Why we’re unlikely to see large scale infrastructure deployments like we used to in democratic countries.

This week, Oliver interviews Joe Kraus, President of Lime.

Lime are the largest players in the shared micromobility space globally, and this episode has been a long time coming. It was awesome to get Joe on to talk about their history and plans, the state of the industry and business model, regulation, the challenge of climate change and where micromobility can assist. Joe is an awesome guest, and in a world of hype, keeps a very level head about the potential of this space.

This episode is well suited to investors, operators and regulators interested in hearing about why the opportunity Lime/the wider industry offers is far more than just a few scooters on the street. 

Specifically we dig into: 

- Lime’s history coming out of 2016 Chinese bikeshare bubble, the move into scooters and rapid growth of that business. 

- The Google Ventures investment and how Joe came to be involved.

- Joe’s thoughts on business model evolution and how the market will shake out in the short/medium term, especially around a global player vs local competitors. 

- We dig into regulation, and whether there are parallels to other global/local companies and traditional public transport funding/operation models. 

- We discuss Lime's policy/operations challenges, using the example of Auckland, New Zealand, where wheel locking issue/death on a scooter lost them the licence in the following round. We talk about how the binary nature of the businesses ability to operate impacts the structure they have for operations/policy teams to ensure they have sufficient local agency to be responsive. 

- We talk about the missing gap of a micromobility industry association in terms of advocacy, research and lobbying and what needs to happen to make this a reality.

- We talk about how Lime is working to avoid the mistakes that Mobike and Ofo made in the Chinese bikeshare bubble, and Joe’s plans to ensure that Lime stays afloat and relevant for the long term.

- We discuss the Call to the Industry that Joe made in Berlin regarding safety, climate and equity of access, and dig in on climate change, and what Lime can/is doing to help push that conversation forward.

- We talk about Lime’s plans to reach the next few billion riders, especially in the developing world, and what is needed to make that a reality.

It’s one of our best interviews to date - highly recommend checking it out. 

Joe will also be speaking at the upcoming the Micromobility America summit coming up April 22-23 in Richmond in the Bay Area. It’ll be an amazing event - we will have industry leaders from all over the world there speaking about the best new ideas in this burgeoning industry. Check out the website (micromobility.io) to get tickets.

This week, Oliver interviews Emily Castor Warren, one of the first employees at Lyft and then Lime in the policy space. We have an amazing conversation about the history of rideshare and micromobility, especially as it pertains to regulation, and where operators are getting it right and wrong. Emily is currently working with Fontinalis, a VC firm investing the future of mobility. She has some of the deepest experience in the weeds with regulating new mobility, and yet at the same time able to see the massive wider vision of possibility for this. It’s a great interview.

Specifically we dig into:

* Her experience as one of the first employees at Lyft, her interest in ride hailing and how she saw the conversation re: cities and technology shift over the 5.5 years she was at Lyft.

* Her view on the quickly shifting regulatory landscape of micromobility, and what the likely predictable outcomes are 12-24 months from now re: particular business models.

* Her post-Lime life working with VC at Fontinalis (the Ford Family Venture arm) and how they, and the wider industry, are thinking about the policy and regulatory implications of their investments.

* What areas she’s excited to see technology disrupt in the transport/mobility space and why

* Where the upcoming challenges for micromobility are coming from in the regulatory space including enforcement, new vehicle types, micromobility autonomy (she’s less bullish than Oliver!), speed of infrastructure adaptation and more.

* What she’d recommend entrepreneurs think about when looking to build companies in the mobility/transport space.

In today’s episode Oliver interviews Assaf Biderman, CEO of [SuperPedestrian](https://superpedestrian.com/), about his background founding the MIT Senseable Cities Lab and then Superpedestrian. Assaf has been thinking about micromobility longer than most anyone we’ve had on the podcast - this was a fun and very illuminating interview.

This conversation convinced Oliver that the ‘intelligence’ that can be infused into micromobility devices has far deeper implications than first thought, especially for driving down operational costs and improving vehicle longevity.

Specifically we dig into:

- The context for why micromobility is such a boon compared to the other transport options that cities can consider for moving people.

- His history founding the Senseable Cities Lab and their early work

- How that led to founding SuperPedestrian, and the early lessons with the amazing Copenhagen Wheel

- The pivot they've made into scooters, the important variables for the next generation of scooter hardware and why they believe that these need

- Why Assaf believes that Superpedestrian's intelligent 'nervous system' combines with mechanical improvements will drop operational costs by over 50% for operators.

- The implications of their approach on thinking of their product as a 'computing platform' and why they see their model as a hardware + SaaS business.

- Their supply chain structure and costs, and why their entirely proprietary approach can actually make componentry cheaper.

- Their recent $20m raise, and what they're planning to do with the money.

It's one of the densest and most interesting discussions to date - hope you enjoy!

In today’s episode, Taco Carlier, CEO of Vanmoof joins Oliver to talk about building beautiful e-bikes, the role of design and how to get the next billion people on bikes in our cities across the world. It’s a great discussion with someone who’s been in the space for a long time (Vanmoof was founded 10 years ago!). Taco is also the first Dutch guest we have had, and so we also dig into Amsterdam and it’s transport system.

Specifically, we dig into:

* Vanmoof’s story from the early stages through to today, including how being based in Amsterdam influenced the company.

* The company's mission 'to build the next billion bikes' - how does this permeate the company and what they choose to focus on.

* We run through their business operations - the design/sales/ops in Amsterdam, manufacturing in Taiwan, where they have their company stores and metrics from their business.

* The move Vanmoof have made into micromobility/electrified and the lessons learnt there from a product/hardware experience.

* We unpack how customers are using the vehicles, including this quote: "Normal bike commuters travel an average of 3km to work, but with an e-bike that figure jumps to 20km. It opens up biking to a much wider demographic of city-dwellers, creating an enormous new opportunity. Almost 70% of people who purchased the S2 & X2 are now using the Electrified as their primary mode of transport."

* Taco’s design inspirations, why they only have two bike types, and who he considered competition.

* How they protect themselves from the traditional ‘red ocean’ dynamics of the Bike hardware industry, with it’s low margins and barriers to entry. We explore what are the things that have kept them out of that trap.

* We discuss the subscription model, and the postponed launch of the upcoming electric models on that business model, including why and how is it higher margin and what they think about the 'job to be done' in this business model?

* We unpack the primary barriers to adoption of higher end e-bikes and why that underpinned their ‘Bike Hunters’ model.

* Their experience with fundraising - why they chose to go for a crowdfunded round in the last raise, who they look to for funding, and why they’ve pursued a hybrid financing model.

It’s a great interview!

In today’s episode, Felix Jakobsen and Enrico Howe from Unu Motors join Oliver to talk about the Global Scooter Sharing Market Report (for clarity, we’re talking mopeds), a recent publication on the state of the shared moped market globally. It’s a great discussion about the expansion of a space that often gets overlooked compared to it’s more well funded kick scooter cousin.

Specifically, we dig into:

* The history of Unu Motors, and how they came to be tracking the shared moped market.


* The crazy + 164% in moped numbers over the last year, where that growth has taken place, and where they see it coming from in the future.


* The Indian micromobility market, and why it’s uniquely different compared to other markets.


* The KPI’s that they track (fleet utilisation, usage duration, fleet availability)


* How they see business models evolving, and what are the adjacent verticals that could potentially get into this space


* The regulatory approaches that they see around the world, and what that implies for users, operators and regulators.


* The funding environment and why they think there is still far more capital to be deployed in this space


* Why this sector is more capital efficient than other micromobility sectors


If you’re interested in reading the report, please check it out here (share.unumotors.com)

On today’s podcast, Oliver interviews Bharath Devanathan, SVP, Growth at Bounce Mobility, about their moped sharing business in India. They recently raised a $150m round to expand their operations across India. It’s an amazing conversation - one of the best so far about the potential of shared micromobility to change transport systems for good in fast growing and highly constrained urban environments in the developing world.

Specifically we dig into:

- The history of how Bharath came to Bounce, and the story of how it morphed into moped sharing.

- The biggest operational challenges that they have in Bangalore and other cities they operate in

- How the governments in the cities they operate in India regulate and view them, including incredible statistics about how much they’re contributing to first/last mile connections in Bangalore

- The rise of Micromobility in the context of the overburdened transport systems in Indian metropolises that need to more 10m+ people a day

- Their plans for growth across India

- We dig into their KPI’s and how the perform relative to international benchmarks for moped sharing

- Their expansion into electric moped sharing and the unique challenges that they’ve faced in user education

I found this an amazing interview, that validated Horace’s thesis that the biggest growth in Micromobility will come in developing markets.

On today’s podcast, Oliver interviews Sam Baker, COO of Wunder Mobility, about their software platform that underpins a number of carshare, carpool, Micromobility and other services players in Europe, and is about to expand to the US.

Specifically we dig into:

- Wunder’s early success in carpooling, and how their strategy differed from Oliver’s experience watching commuting products being built at Uber.

- Sam’s thesis around ‘digitizing the 99%’ of transport operators, so that they can connect in to the forthcoming Mobility As a Service platforms

- Why Sam disagrees that there will be ‘one app to rule them all’, and instead that the future of Mobility As A Service will involve lots of interoperable components.

- What traditional fleet operators can bring to the new world of venture capital funded mobility

- His take on data standardisation for mobility operators

- The potential for examples of full end to end Mobility as a Service platform such as the one that Sixt has rolled out in Europe to replace car ownership.

I found this a great interview - Wunder hadn’t been on my radar, but they are now.

Today, Horace and Oliver talk about the newly released SAE Micromobility Standards, the Cybertruck announcement and Horace’s latest thoughts on the boondoggle of autonomy.

Specifically, they dig into:

- Why the new SAE Micromobility standards matter, what they’re competing against and why definitions like this default to lowest common denominators.

- The Cybertruck announcement, including discussion about what appears to be a new type of body manufacturing, and the implications of the radical design. Plus, Horace admits to liking it, even if he doesn’t think that the entire category of trucks should exist.

- We dig into why Horace believes that autonomy for cars is such a boondoggle, and the implications for wider mobility technology investment and talent.

If you’re interested in hearing Horace and Oliver talk in more detail about these issues on exclusive calls plus get discounts on the Micromobility Conference, swag and more, sign up to Triple M here: https://micromobility.io/triple-m

Show notes:

- SAE Micromobility Standards [https://www.sae.org/news/press-room/2019/11/sae-international-publishes-industry’s-first-standard-for-classification-and-definition-of-powered-micromobility-vehicles]

- Cybertruck Coefficient of Drag modelling [https://electrek.co/2019/11/25/tesla-cybertruck-aerodynamics-cfd-rendering/]

- Scooter supply chains with Michal Naka and Stephen Lambe [https://medium.com/mimomusings/on-the-origin-of-scooters-76f6a28d49d]

Thanks also to this week’s sponsor Twilio IoT. Shared micromobility is a deceptively hard business. Keep losing your connections to those vehicles and soon you’ll be out of business. That’s where Twilio IoT comes in - providing SIMs and a cellular connectivity platform to seamlessly connect in 180+ countries. Twilio helps companies like Lime, Skip, Spin and Beam to cost effectively scale faster, deploy further, and optimize their supply chain. Twilio is also the leader for SMS and phone verification APIs to reduce fraud and improve user experience. 

Are you looking for the right global cellular connectivity partner to scale with? Twilio is offering free SIMs and test credit to Micromobility Podcast listeners for a limited time.

Visit here to find out more - https://bit.ly/2XPctKC.

Today on the podcast, Oliver interviews William Henderson, CEO of Ride Report about micromobility data and mobility-as-a-service systems. Ride Report is the reporting dashboard for over 50 cities globally for their dockless shared micromobility operations, and William's team work very closely with regulators and operators globally to build trust among all the different parties. William also has a great historical context for urban transportation and what has/hasn't worked in the past. It's a great conversation!

Specifically we dig into:

- William's background at Square and how that skillset led him to start Ride Report.

- The role of data in building trust among operators and regulators, and why that needs to sit with a third party

- A run through of the Mobility Data Specification - an introduction for those unfamiliar, why it works and is problematic and why Uber is suing LADOT.

- The necessity of good quality data in building open mobility systems, and which cities are doing it well.

- The history of how bike share and public transport emerged and developed and the parallels to micromobility systems today.

- Which cities are adopting best practice for regulating shared scooters/bikes around the world, which ones are not doing it well and why.

- Why scooter/micromobility parking on street corners is a smart idea that serves multiple purposes.

- The parallels between payments systems vs. the interoperable mobility-as-a-service ecosystem.

Things referenced in the discussion:

- LA Department of Transport - https://ladot.io)

- Mobility Data Specification - https://ladot.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/What-is-MDS-Cities.pdf

- Open Mobility Foundation -https://www.openmobilityfoundation.org

Thanks also to this week’s sponsor Twilio IoT.

Shared micromobiltiy is a deceptively hard business. Keep losing your connections to those vehicles and soon you’ll be out of business. That’s where Twilio IoT comes in - providing SIMs and a cellular connectivity platform to seamlessly connect in 180+ countries. Twilio helps companies like Lime, Skip, Spin and Beam to cost effectively scale faster, deploy further, and optimize their supply chain. Twilio is also the leader for SMS and phone verification APIs to reduce fraud and improve user experience.

Are you looking for the right global cellular connectivity partner to scale with? Twilio is offering free SIMs and test credit to Micromobility Podcast listeners for a limited time.

Visit here to find out more (https://bit.ly/2XPctKC)