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Comment by slovette | Hacker News Reader

This whole model is such an obvious failure it’s shocking it ever got off the ground.

Leaving the easy business reasons aside, I was in Denver and the amount of these scooters littered around the city pissed me off. They where everywhere.

It’s just a matter of time before the city has enough and either bans them or just regulates them out of business viability.

This is one of those things that had this business been forced to stand on its own 2 feet with early revenue survival and not been gifted life by investors it would have met its doom naturally without the waste of billions of dollars.

It’s a great example of how the new “start-up” method of business building can be toxic and unproductive to the betterment of society. It allows bad ideas to have life because a few people wanted it to be so. Society would have killed this quickly.

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I'm a Denver local and like them a lot. So much that I bought my own premium model for $2500. Cars, even if they are in designated parking spaces, are even worse litter to me. They are everywhere and get a free pass.

As for the waste, it's not like Bird is funded by people's personal retirement accounts. Nobody invested is getting a fast one pulled on them. The money didn't vanish. The VC goal is to take a massively scalable idea and see if it is possible to find profit in it. This is clearly scalable, so they're testing it out and seeing if they can find a formula. For better or worse, VCs are members of society.

The fact that you bought your own for $2500 means their business model is a failure.

If you spent $2500 on Bird subscriptions and rides then that means that the business model is successful at least in your case.

Your comments directly prove the previous poster's thesis.

EDIT:

And yes, Bird has realized the failure in their previous business model of renting scooters, and will be SELLING scooters directly (which in my opinion is a much better business model)

https://shop.bird.co/pdp.html

Alas, "Delivering in US and Europe summer 2019" means that they have lost out on $2500 worth of business from goobynight (and from the market segment represented by goobynight).

Me dropping cash on a scooter was just an interesting aside. I'm one of two people in town I've seen on a personal e-scooter.

Most people don't want to own. It's less useful for bar hopping and you're on the hook for maintenance/repairs/charging/storage. I'm more handy than the average person that rides these. The average person living in downtown Denver likely doesn't even own a set of tools.

A rental business is much more attractive to VCs, if they can make it profitable. Has a niche retailer has ever received VC attention? Honest question. That doesn't feel like it scales like nearly on demand rentals.

  less useful for bar hopping and you're on the hook

People using motorized scooters for bar hopping (inebriated use) is a specific concern.

Agreed, but insert an equivalent hop without alcohol and you'll see what I mean.

> The fact that you bought your own for $2500 means their business model is a failure.

Rubbish: they can be successful because not everyone wants to buy a scooter. Also commenter still probably uses Bird, for example one way trips or when it is just more convenient.

Both of these are true. I can't believe anyone thinks that my hobbyist purchase affects the transportation business model of Bird. That's like thinking cars are putting buses out of business in Chicago.

I've also rented a couple Lyft scooters out of convenience, as you said. They certainly feel worse, now that I'm spoiled, but the convenience of just dropping them off is a huge win.

Yep. My use case for scooters is when the bus will take too long to get me to/from work, or running errands, or when I'm too tired/it's too far to walk. I decide that I need it at the spur of the moment, and don't want to plan to have it with me.

  running errands

... is exactly the kind of use case for which these shared scooters are ill-suited.

You stop for your first errand, come back outside afterward, and bam! someone else took it. What if there are no others nearby?

Mm, good point. My use case is usually that I'll walk up to 40 minutes 1 way if I need a cable or something like that (non perishable, semi urgent) etc, but am not willing to walk 40 minutes each way. I end up ubering otherwise.

+1 yeah, I don't get that argument either. does the fact that someone bought a car mean the car rental business model is a failure? does the fact that someone bought a house mean AirBnB's business model is a failure?

One can buy a scooter at home, and then still rent scooters when traveling to other cities.

In Denver as well and agree completely. There are too many cars as is. I've never been more than two blocks away from one of these scooters, and they're fun to ride. I don't use them often as I have a bicycle. The general concensus among my peers is favorable or neutral on scooters.

Funny enough, because in Austin it's the absolute polar opposite. Sentiment there seems to be to fear and litigation. Even worse in Nashville. Southern, car-dependent cities prioritize the private car-owning driver above all other forms of life.

Overall sentiment among my peer group in Austin is neutral to somewhat positive. My biggest complaint is also probably their biggest asset: they're wildly popular amongst people who would otherwise take a car (basically, non-cyclists) - so there's a lack of understanding around how to operate in this middle ground between being a pedestrian and being the operator of a 2 ton motor vehicle.

What's this based on? It's funny to me that you draw a "Southern" line when Denver and most of the west is as car dependent as Austin. I agree with my sibling's (twalla) comment, by the way.

lots of VC money does, in fact, come from retirement funds (e.g. Calpers, the CA pension fund) and from university endowments.

No way is it the bulk of the funding and I bet VCs do well on the aggregate, which is why they are using their services. These institutions would all abandon ship.

Until the CA pension goes bust due to VCs, I'm still OK with what they do.

I was in Denver and the amount of these scooters littered around the city pissed me off. They where everywhere.

This is subjective. I live in a city that has at least five brands of scooters, and I work downtown where they are most densely clustered. (Not only that, it's a popular area with tourists, so it's an eternal September of scooter use.)

Some people here feel exactly the way you do; others think they're great. Some people consider them a nuisance to pedestrians; I walk on the same sidewalks and rarely experience a need to step around or over them. Some people feel terrified and menaced by them; I use the same streets and sidewalks, and for me, scooters barely register next to the danger posed by cars. Some people think they take up an inordinate amount of space; I think you could fit all the scooters in the entire downtown area into half a block's worth of street parking. You think they're toxic and don't improve society; I think they decrease the number of car trips and (in combination with Lyft/Uber) make it affordable for a lot of young people without tech jobs to live in expensive cities by making car ownership less necessary.

How do wheelchair and pram users feel about it? Elderly people navigating the sidewalk?

On the margins of downtown, where the sidewalks are narrow enough, I've seen the sidewalk blocked by a fallen scooter, because pedestrians are only allotted a tiny strip of concrete between the roads and the parking lots. But you don't see people with physical disabilities trying to navigate those neighborhoods on the sidewalk anyway. Want to make those areas more accessible? Reclaim some space from cars. Provide an array of attractive alternatives that induce more people to get around without driving, and then you can have reasonably sized sidewalks.

Downtown, where pedestrians are more than an afterthought, I see people with physical disabilities using the sidewalks every day. (There's a homeless shelter not far away.) I don't see them having problems with scooters. There's plenty of space.

Honestly, I don't see many fallen scooters at all downtown. Considering how easily they fall over from being jostled (which should improve in future models) I suspect a lot of people care enough to take a second to put a fallen scooter upright. When you think about all the ways people can be shitty with scooters, you have to factor in that people can be pretty nice, too.

Of course people aren't always considerate. In my own neighborhood, sometimes people block the sidewalk with their cars when they don't pull forward far enough forward in their driveways, forcing people in wheelchairs to go into the street. That hasn't caused the world to end, and neither will scooters.

Do cars in that city often drive on a sidewalk, like scooters?

Not often, but when they do drive onto the sidewalk and kill someone, you can count on the police department to say things like, drivers should "stick around and deal with the minor consequences," and pedestrians should "get your face out of your phone" because "you need to pay attention to what you’re doing, cause it can cost your life."

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/driver-arrested-after...

Denver local here, similar to sibling commenters. I definitely hear you about the scooters littered around. They're constantly left in the middle of sidewalks, randomly on the Cherry Creek trail (I ride that to/from work so I see it a lot), in people's lawns, etc. I realize this isn't the company's fault per se, but rather because some of the people riding them are inconsiderate jackasses. Still, it is super annoying.

That said, on balance I'd rather have some annoying scooters rather than a whole crapload more cars, streets, parking, etc. And I'm hopeful that over time the culture around scooter usage will improve - particularly since the early users seem to be skew towards drunken barhoppers.

Of course what I really wish is that people would just sack up and ride bikes. Even better for the environment, better for your health, etc. But it's pretty clear that many people will never sign on for that, so something between that and a full-on car is welcome IMHO.

Taking an idea from cycling advocates, I encourage people to ask, when they encounter reckless or inconsiderate scooter use, "Do I want this jackass in a car instead, being just as inconsiderate or reckless?"

It's tough because people take cars for granted. They aren't ordinarily conscious of how big and dangerous cars are and how far we go out of our way to accommodate them, so it's hard to sell them on the value of mitigating that cost.

People said the same thing about both horses and cars around cities.

If we can replace some of the cars with scooters it should be a net gain for citizens.

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