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Comment by RugnirViking | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them?

I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street.

On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is seeing a new colour of bike.

The idea is sound in practise, but people seem to place great value owning their own transportation and the flexibility it affords them.

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Seattle collects data on bike share usage, available here: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

Seems in the sunnier months they get about 200,000 trips, from a fleet of 10,000 bikes.

I think a lot of people start riding the share bikes before deciding to purchase a bike themselves too. Overall ridership is up 12% this year.

Great link, thanks for sharing. A couple more stats for other readers here:

- In May 2019, bike share users took about 218,400 trips on a fleet of about 4,400-5,100 bikes. (~43 trips per bike average during the month)

- Around 95,000 individual users

- ~2 trips per individual user during the month

So, realistically not that great on a per-user basis and it seems like a lot of users are only trying it out a few times or grabbing a bike once in a while. That meshes pretty well with the idea that people who find themselves using the service frequently probably just buy a bike.

In Montreal, the figure ranges from 600,000 (May) to 900,000 trips (July) from a fleet of 7,500 (there are no bikes from mid-November to mid-April). They're everywhere.

Edit: I was still on the 2017 figures for some reason. 800,000 trips last May, 975,000 last August. (https://montreal.bixi.com/en/open-data)

Even with those ridership number the company went bankrupt in 2014 and had to be bought by the city that made it non profit.

In other words, not really a profitable market.

Companies targeting great markets fail all the time due to other factors. It not like all that needs to happen is someone point their finger at a good market and magically money starts piling up.

> I think a lot of people start riding the share bikes before decidin

I don't mean to sound elitist but riding BSOs is the surest way to turn people away from biking - and these bikeshare one look worse than the mamacharis ridden in Tokyo. In anycase, considering the bike culture of Seattle, I doubt there is a big overlap b/w the two kind of riders - casual and dedicated commuters.

I started as a casual biker (using the London bike share on vacation there) and became a serious bike commuter. It’s a journey, not a simple division.

It isn't just you. In a capital rich environment (where getting money for new ventures is easier than normal) a single success (even if it is just perception) and a low barrier to entry, can lead to many copycat companies appearing. And yes, they over saturate the market, and no you can't easily tell which will win and which will lose from the outside.

For the "serial entrepreneurs" this is an easy way to stay employed (it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume). These folks might just start a new company, raise some money, and voila they are once again on an "incredible journey."

In my experience for each "successful" exit (where the investors made some money) you get a ticket for one free "future" company from those investors. Once you don't have enough tickets to get another company funded you either have to change venues (new people, less history), or change markets (also new people but can be in the same locale).

> it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume

Why do you think that is? It's so common to hear advice that bigco's will always want to hire people w/ Startup experience, but does that not extend to the founders?

I can only speak for places where I've worked and hired folks, but the consensus seemed to be that people who seek out the CEO role are highly correlated with a need to control everything and less well correlated with "team players" (or people who can work with peers in a give and take sort of situation). In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person.

That and the cited "common knowledge[1]" that the population of CEOs contains a higher percentage of sociopaths than the general population. I have yet to work at a company that considered sociopathic characteristics as a "positive" for the company.

[1] I really have heard this from multiple sources but have yet to find any well executed study that shows it to be actually true so I treat such pronouncements with a bit of skepticism. I have heard more than a few people who are disgruntled at losing their job will blame it on their boss being a sociopath. Such externalization of causes feels good psychologically but it is also self serving.

There is such a series of studies - but they were all done by the same PI, who has built his career on redefining "sociopathy" over-broadly, more or less to enable him to have headlines like "20% of CEOs are sociopaths!"

edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Is it because I'm lampooning a "common knowledge" that people like? For pete's sake, the research paper that spawned this meme even got retracted by the authors: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23744006.2016.12...

> In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person.

I think it's less "The Boss" than the fact that the CEO is generally more marketing/finance focused (far less relevant after a buyout as the purchasing company already has that established) than the CTO or VP of Engineering.

There are, of course, exceptions where a company gets bought specifically to install their CEO in the CEO role of the purchasing company.

Presumably a C-level is expected not to be satisfied with stepping down to a 'lesser' position, especially if those in charge of hiring at bigcos are the types who aspire to C-level status and thus see a rejection of C-level status as a rejection of their whole philosophy.

There might be at least the perception that the CEO will spend most of their tenure plotting their next startup (and quite possibly poaching employees and intellectual property on the way out). Think Anthony Levandowski.

Are there any well known cases of startup CEOs who were wildly successful as employees in another company?

>Are there any well known cases of startup CEOs who were wildly successful as employees in another company?

Wildly might be a high bar, but otherwise it's pretty much majority of acquisitions.

My impression is that the CEOs often (typically?) leave as soon as whatever vesting periods are defined in the acquisition have passed.

But now you mention acquisitions, it could be argued that NeXT CEO Steve Jobs did OK as an Apple employee…

I'm not arguing with the rule, but one notable exception is Kevin Systrom who stayed with Instagram for years (growing it from 30 million users when the acquisition was announced to over 800 million). He discusses the choice to stay, and the reactions from others in the company, in this interview: https://tim.blog/2019/04/25/kevin-systrom/

Direct mp3 link, since Tim Ferriss puts a wall of text before his actual content: https://rss.art19.com/episodes/6c7b3008-cf08-4aae-93f8-d3fde...

Andy Rubin was a President/CEO/Founder of Android and then was at Google for a decade. Maybe he wasn't C-level though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin

Difference is, Google acquired his startup - he din't apply to Google solo after an Android "exit".

Yes, I agree that this is a very successful case.

Big corps usually want people who do what they are told to do. An employee with startup experience has shown that, a lot of founders are probably not good followers.

In Paris, the private bikeshares seem to have been entirely replaced with scooters and a smaller number of e-bikes.

The publicly sanctioned bikeshare is in shambles after an operator change.

The only thing keeping the public system alive is it’s offerings outside the city’s core.

The Parisian one is the only one I’ve used and it was much better 5 years ago compared to 2 years ago.

I make regular use of bike share -- I have 2 bus options to take me home, one drops me off 2 blocks from home, one drops me off 2 miles from home. When I take the farther bus, I usually use a bike-share bike for those last 2 miles (the route is on a dedicated bike path).

Works great for me and apparently someone uses the bike in for their commute in the mornings since the bike is usually gone in the morning when I get to the bus stop.

In my city (Milan, Italy) bike-sharing is an extremely common solution.

I feel like the business model is the main problem. Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat.

Every few years a new startup can enter the marketing with a better bike. The incumbents have to improve their or risk losing the entire market in a matter of weeks.

>Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat.

the story of the sharing economy right there. I seriously don't know how bike / taxi / scooter rental companies have become a favourite of tech investors. It seems like some Robin Hood scheme to distribute money from investors to customers

Can you help us understand why bike-sharing is popular in Milan? For example, why wouldn't someone just buy a bike?

Seems like a subscription to their BikeMi system costs 36€/year for unlimited free rides (up to 30mins/ride), so quite cost competitive with bike ownership. This is becoming common in main European cities (I know of Brussels, Paris and Lisbon).

It's genuinely less hassle. Where do I park my bike? How do I prevent it from being stolen? It got a flat tire, what do I do? These seem like simple questions but bike sharing provides such a simple solution to them, plus more: you caught a ride to the park but don't want to pay for a taxi back? Missed the bus? Need to get to a meeting a few blocks away but don't want to arrive sweaty from a run? The answer is there's a share bike already within sight of you that you can rent for (literally) pennies in seconds.

(They're also pretty heavy for anything but short distances and not always in great condition. And at least in Berlin where I lived you can get your own bike for $50 or so, which I had. But I still like the idea.)

> why wouldn't someone just buy a bike?

I live in a crowded European capital city (Bucharest) and one of the big reasons for me not buying a bike is that I don't have enough available place. I personally live in an one-bedroom apartment (before that I used to live in a studio) and yes, I could probably fit a bike somewhere around the place but that would be pretty inconvenient. I also live on the 8th floor and a regular bike doesn't fit in my building's elevator, so that would mean me having to carry it 8 floors up and down each time I wanted to ride it.

My gf does have a bicycle but for the reasons I mentioned above she decided to keep it at her office, which is at walking distance from where we currently live (about 10-15 minutes).

For example, why wouldn't someone just buy a bike?

If you buy a bike you lose some flexibility. With bike sharing I can take the bus to work, take a bike to my meeting and then decide whether to take the bus or bike home depending on the weather and my plans. I can also do things like take the bus into town and then take the bike from the bus stop to the place I'm going, or bike into town and take the bus home with all my shopping.

I live in Denmark and I see 10-15 people ok bikeshare bikes each time I commute. They either use the government ones or rent from private companies.

I've pondered that question too. Something like Uber or Lyft works partly because of the cost and burden of car ownership. It's attractive to use someone else's equipment if you don't have to buy, maintain, finance, fuel, insure, and store (park) similar equipment yourself, to the tune of thousands of dollars per year.

But then you look at bike ownership. I almost want to put "bike ownership" in quotes because even the mere phrase makes it sound so much more serious and demanding than it is. It's so easy and cheap, it seems obvious you would just do that. Or put it this way, I don't find myself going "I just don't want & can't handle all that responsibility of a bike!" It's like, boy you better not get any houseplants then, that much responsibility will stress you right out!

Interestingly, a thing about Uber/Lyft is that the number of cars is limited because they are based on converting existing private cars to hired use. So Uber/Lyft don't eliminate private cars. The number of bike shares that can be pumped into a city is limited only by the capital that can be pumped in.

Are you sure nobody specifically buys or leases a car to do Uber / Lyft gigs?

I'd be shocked if the economics made sense, but not all investments produce a return.

Uber had (probably still has) it structured so that if the investment fails, it's the driver that suffers, not the company.

Judging by a billboard that I pass reasonably frequently, Uber is more than happy to "help" potential drivers without cars get them and start driving for Uber [0]. In theory, the number of cars available to Uber is also only limited by the capital that can be pumped in.

I don't know if the prices are currently subsidized, but there's no reason they couldn't be.

[0] I'm assuming it's this program: https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/

For me, the use cases are very different. I use rental bikes mostly as a complement to public transport - a metro/tram/bus line might take me 90% to where I need, then I'll get some bike in the area to make the 10% left rapidly. I also own a bike, but I mostly use it for local trips or pleasure rides. Plus, unlike the rentals, it's not electric.

Every bike I've ever had has gotten stolen.

Out of locked, "secured" garages.

It gets expensive after awhile.

This is why I always keep my bike inside my living space.

Where do you keep your bike when you are going other places?

Well, I meant overnight. When locking it out, I use a U-lock and a chain. No guarantees that's going to keep it from being stolen, to be sure.

> Something like Uber or Lyft works

Neither of them is making a profit though!

> But then you look at bike ownership. I almost want to put "bike ownership" in quotes because even the mere phrase makes it sound so much more serious and demanding than it is.

Well, depends. Bikes take shitload of space inside the house, which in a city is often a low double-digit m² flat for singles, or slightly larger double-digit m² for families. Unlike cars, you can't keep bikes outside for too long, as they can get stolen quickly. Then, unless you know how and like doing it yourself, you'll end up bringing it into a repair shop for checkup and maintenance just as often as you would a car. At least you don't have much insurance paperwork.

Overall, bike ownership is still a hassle.

The 'problem' you're looking to solve is not the hassle of bike "ownership" but bike access. If I take the car or bus to work I can't then take my bike to meet a client. If I take my bike into town I can't then take the bus home if the weather turns bad or I have a lot shopping to carry. If I take my bike into a 'bad' part of town to go to a bar I have to worry about the very real chance that it won't be where I left when I want to go home at night. Bike sharing solves all these problems.

> I have to worry about the very real chance that it won't be where I left [it]

On the other hand, a personal bike that is only half as shitty as the typical bikeshare will be extremely loyal and never leave you for another rider.

But I get it, it's the public transport freedom which people who never experienced it rarely understand: if you always return to your personal vehicle having to do so feels perfectly fine. But when you got accustomed to ad-hoc modeswitching itineraries, being confined to returning to your personal vehicle feels strangely limiting, despite all the "wherever, whenever" of your own car/bike/boat.

If you take the bus home because of bad weather one day, and leave your bike at work, it's there for you to go meet a client the next day! :P

No but seriously. Sounds like your transit agency doesn't have bike racks on the buses. That's what enables the integration with transit. Around my area you can take a bike on the bus or light rail.

All the other problems have pre-existing solutions though too:

Groceries to carry → Get panniers, and don't buy more than they can hold (you can always get more tomorrow, and it'll be fresher).

Rain → Wear rain gear.

Bad part of town → Own a modest bike and a good lock.

The extreme mode flexibility you mention sounds nice, but I've never found I've needed it. With a little advance planning and the extra bits above, you can just commit to one mode.

You'd be surprised. Here's a cool visualization from a bike share in Boston. It's from 2015, and it's grown a bit since then:

https://twitter.com/ridebluebikes/status/634459070200680449

As others have stated, it's not about renting vs. owning a bike, but it's about having the bike option when/where you need it.

Like many of the other people to reply, I can only say that here in Helsinki the local council operates a scheme which is very very popular.

It costs €30 for a "season", and that gives you 30-minutes free ride from the bicycles you'll find all over the place in their stands. You can pay a small fee to get more time, or you can do what most people do which is to ride to a stand, and swap your bike for another.

The only problem with the scheme is that it only runs around the summer, but I guess fewer people are interested in cycling in the snow/ice-heavy part of the year.

More details here:

https://kaupunkipyorat.hsl.fi/en/helsinki/products

I used the Boris Bikes in London 249 times last year, theres an annual pass that costs £90. I commute into the city by train so its a lot easier than using my own bike. In London at least the scheme seems fairly well used with around million hires a month in the summer months http://content.tfl.gov.uk/santander-cycles-quarterly-perform...

The main problem with bike shares is the ridiculously short time limit. If you could check one out for a few hours they’d be more useful, instead most are time limited to about 30 minutes. My sister used one once to bike by a lake front and she said she was stressed the whole time about not making it to the next station to reset the time limit before it expired.

They only charge an extra dollar or two to keep the bike longer. For most people it's not worth getting stressed about. I've used bikes shares in a several cities for 3+ hours and it was never a problem (although riding one of those crappy bikes for a few hours is kind of torture).

What, you don’t like pedalling a tank on 2 non-pneumatic wheels when you have to get somewhere?

The main Dutch bike share system doesn’t have silly time limits. It has a fixed price of €3,85 (about $4,35) for a day. That allows you, for example, to cycle from a train station to a business meeting, park the bike there for a few hours, and cycle back to the station in the afternoon.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OV-fiets.

It also features halfway decent (for the task at hand) bicycles.

Both are good for consumers, but I don’t think such a system makes venture capitalists happy.

was that in Chicago? I felt the same stress

> I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them.

Used them all the time in London and Paris, and visiting other cities. They were great. Loads of people used them in the cities I saw.

I think there are a sort of people who will only use cars for everything, and don't really notice anything not car related.

> i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them

As a datapoint, i almost crashed into someone riding one in London an hour and a half ago. The front lights on the Lime bikes are evidently not very reliable.

Oh no. My girlfriend and I recently rented some Lime bikes in Calgary.

The brakes on hers weren't reliable enough to go down hills, let alone stop in an emergency. Mine weren't much better.

We left appropriate reviews, and were able to tell the next rider which to use, but they really need a quick maintenance survey, even just for brake shape, and perhaps a "flag bike as dangerous" button.

Also found the e-assist awkward, particularly at low speeds around pedestrians.

Would ride again, but just double check the brakes/mainteance.

"they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is seeing a new colour of bike"

Is that not the best marketing? Actually paying for inner city marketing is probably expensive, online marketing is probably going to reach more people that this isnt relevant to. If you're seeing the bike you probably are the target market and can see its a somewhat legit company (in the sense that they do actually have bikes at least).

In London it's hard to find a free bike around the rush hour. They are all gone in case of tube strike or other public transport distraction

I don't know. I see a lot of people on "Citi Bikes", but Washington is a big tourist destination.

I see the Santander Cycles used in London all of the time (not calling them by their slang name because #politics) - it flies in the face of the notion that you have to be dockless to succeed in bike sharing.

Honestly, I hate the litter these dockless sharing companies have spread across the city.

There's a definite network effect... its hard to justify riding a shared bike somewhere if you can't be reasonably sure there will be one for you to ride back when its time to return. Maybe you could cobble a trip together with multiple vendors in cities where there are competing systems, but thats more hassle and makes it difficult if you're buying a yearly pass or some other monthly discount.

If you want some real data from a large program with good public support, CitiBike in NYC publishes open ridership data: https://www.citibikenyc.com/system-data

The tl;dr is that the system is very popular, and they're constantly expanding it - currently averaging around 62k trips per day on 12k bikes across 750 stations.

I own my own bike, but I'll use a Citibike for a one-way trip or to bridge a gap when I'm already out away from home without my bike. There is also a ton of utility for people who ride more casually, or don't want to carry bikes up stairs, or don't have room in their apartment, etc, etc.

I live in Montreal, where it all started, and they are everywhere.

Edit: I'm an idiot. Ignore the below.

This article is about a company that was building bicycles to sell directly to consumers, not a bikeshare company.

Most of the article is about why the consumer business failed because the sister company tried to do bikesharing

You are not an idiot :)

I've seen tons of people riding the CitiBikes in NYC. They seem fairly popular.

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