Bird Is Laying Off 23% of Its Staff
dot.la
dot.la
How did these companies overestimate demand so much? Surely they could have seen that the demand from the pandemic years was an anomaly and not a sustainable "new normal"?
This means that these companies expected they would get a constant inflow of fresh cash.
You have 1000. You borrow 1000, you pay back 990, now you have 1010 and your capacity to borrow has increased.
You borrow again.
Infinite money glitch.
However, 1 month ago, the glitch was fixed. So, the "crisis" comes.
I can see an argument for taking advantage of near zero real rates to hedge inflation: borrow 1000, buy assets, sell assets for 1080, repay 1001.
At its core, Bird creates hype by creating a product or a service, this hype has some value.
Investors believes they can increase and benefit from this hype so they decide to bring new cash.
This new cash is supposed to be used generate new revenue, which in turn is increasing the hype, and this hype helps to bring new cash.
At the end of the cycle, the point of fast growing private equity fund is to carry and grow hype until a potential IPO which is the time the retail investors or the general public are going to be left holding the bag (Airbnb, Uber, Coinbase) or to the point where the company becomes profitable and distributes future earnings (e.g. Microsoft).
Which means, as long as there is hype, there is new money coming in.
The reason money comes so much is because investors are nudged to spend their cash (e.g. negative interest rates also means that people who have cash and not equities are punished, as they have to pay interests!). Also, the retail investors have had this incentive but don't anymore.
Remember, during the corona, a lot of people didn't know what to do with their money because no restaurants, no travel, etc. So playing with cryptos and stock market on Robinhood.
-> The expected inflows of cash are going to decrease because retail investors that will hold the bag eventually won't be so keen to invest as they need their money (higher inflation).
-> The cash is more expensive, so there is a mechanical reason for the decrease.
-> There is uncertainty
Overall:
-> We need the company to survive so the pyramid doesn't collapse.
-> Rationalizing by reducing our cost base is the most reasonable solution to protect all the investors and the employees who invested their time and sweat.
I hope it makes sense.
I've been out of touch with the startup world the last few years, but something seems to have changed where otherwise mature companies with low-mid four-digit employee counts still work as "startups" (complete with the lack of profitability).
hiring new people is often decided at the department level. hiring freeze and big layoffs come from the very top. two weeks ago the department heads had probably no idea
The issue is low interest rates + helicopter money -> high interest rates + fed sell off.
Bird did not overestimate consumer demand, they overestimated how easily they could finance a cash flow negative company.
Many people stopped taking public transportation in favour of these alternatives
As a result, 2021 income: 205M, expenses: 425M
Essentially, this is the business of selling for 0.50 USD something that costs 1 USD to produce.
The VC wave is over, and so is "growth & engagement". Now the only way to survive is to actually make money from selling your product/service and saving that money instead of burning it on expanding the engineering playground where complexity was considered a feature.
VCs often tell companies to hire like mad. The idea is that revenue growth is more important and will catch up. Additional runway is found with more and more funding rounds. So you can happily grow at ridiculous rates and lose money for years and years all the way to IPO.
This strategy stops working in a dramatic way if you cannot keep raising VC money. Suddenly, the funding round isn't coming to save you and your bank balance is draining fast. The only solution is to slash costs.
Nearly every metropolitan mobility sharing system we’ve had so far operates at a loss and is heavily subsidized by the city or local government.
The pricing is also out of whack compared to the cost of a scooter as after about one month of daily commute use you get to the price of a scooter and in some places even faster than that.
This company aggressively shmoozed local politicians over here to change laws and their demise would be welcome.
The great fire of London literally reduced the city by so much that practically the entire city was rebuilt; that was only 350y ago (not making the case that you’re wrong about it being old, but 2,000 years is unfortunately wrong)
Anyway, urban design is not set in stone.
It’s interesting to look at the evolution of Los Angeles as an example of a city that already exists being radically changed, entire blocks of buildings were demolished to make downtown roads so wide.
I'm not sure giving LA, one of the poster cities for how not to do urban design, as an example, is a great idea.
Paris did the same thing, only in a much more measured fashion, in the 1760s under Haussmann and Napoléon III.
However destroying parts of a city which is thousands of years old just to increase the size of sidewalks would be to destroy historical monuments for minimal gains. If anything, making most small streets pedestrian and bike only sounds smarter.
(and i was trying to correct the notion that the city of london has not had radical changes in its urban design for 2000 years)
If scooter users stayed on roads i wouldn't have a problem. But the technology lends itself to abuse by people with no knowledge of safe road use.
No. It is not. I even had work colleagues modifying their scooters firmware to do up to or over 30mph
Your colleague, and others, breaking the law and driving dangerously does not mean we should get rid of a means of transportation that is legally and safely used by others.
Drivers operating cars 100% legally are a bigger threat to pedestrians than reckless scooter users.
Here in London at least, scooter journeys are mostly impractical by private car due to lack of parking. Logically they are replacing bus journeys, walking, taxis and cycling.
aside : i'd like to see this world of yours where cars are operated 100% legally -- even very responsible drivers tend to violate some road laws on a fairly common basis.
about as useful as "Taxes? Wait until you hear about death."
there can be many bad things at one time, this doesn't mean we can't discuss the smaller problems, too.
It is underlining that lots of people are focusing on conflicts between scooters, bikes and pedestrian have to use walkable areas and fringe of streets/roads for moving and parking.
But overlooking that probably 90% of the space is dedicated to cars (driving and parking) and that is not up for debate.
Both are a pain but cars are much more regulated. Parking a car on the sidewalk or in front of a door of any major city -> you're towed in the next 30 min. Park 5+ escooters in the middle of a busy sidewalk and you'll have to wait until someone decides to throw them away, nobody will get fines, nobody will lose his vehicle for XX hours, &c.
People who use vehicles they don't own are extra reckless and less careful about what they do and where they park, it reveals how many people actually don't give a single fuck about living in organised communities and have absolutely no regards for their neighbours
E scooters would be a dream if every Nth car parking spot was reserved for them and people were forced to park on these spots. You could even have them part of the city transportation subscription that way you wouldn't give money to tax dodging US companies.
That is reserved for children.
That they can use (block) the sidewalks as free ad space for their business seems to be a loophole that is just not patched yet.
They use public space for private gain and block sidewalks, I have no incentive not to screw with them.
https://taz.de/Berliner-Aktivist-ueber-Falschparker/!5760190...
The recovery is probably more expensive than a small paint job though...
So just to be clear, I'd never do this! But people who feel quite entitled to destroy property (OP's example of moving is mild, many people brag about throwing them in rivers/trash, etc.) tend to also get extremely upset about some random person keying their car.
Moving a scooter that is parked in the middle of the sidewalk is more constructive than destructive, because it unblocks other taxpayers without destroying anything. The scooter is still functional and shiny, just not parked prominently anymore.
I've seen a scooter that was thrown on a car's windshield, but that's something else and definitely not mild.
Well it sounded to me the like the OP is not only attempting to harm the company but also unrelated third parties. A scooter in the street sounds much more dangerous besides.
This is completely wrong. Scooters are a fantastic method of getting around a city, particularly in hotter months, and somehow I find even riding in winter a much warmer experience compared to biking. Personally I prefer using my own scooter, but often take the scooter-share anyway because I am worried about mine being stolen and it's very convenient to be able to grab one anywhere and go directly to where you're going, especially when combined with a metro trip.
I am curious where you live. It seems surprising that a city that's well-off enough to have scooter ride shares has a legitimate risk of theft of said scooters from public parkings.
I could just be biased though, I've had my bike stolen while in Amsterdam.
It got better when the city finally started designating scooter parking areas on the streets last year, but they were too spineless to remove parking spaces in business districts so it was still a problem in those areas.
IMO the scooters would be great if we could designate parking areas on every busy block and have a system to strongly encourage parking there, but until then (as someone who doesn’t drive in the city) I don’t miss them that much.
I have to constantly get off my bike during summer months to move them away from the bike lanes, not only for myself but due to the danger to others less agile than I am. I even had a close encounter to one strewn across the ground right after a blind turn (due to summer vegetation) on a bridge crossing, if I didn't react quickly I'd have simply blasted over it going 20+ km/h... It'd be dangerous to any old person going downhill from the bridge.
It's a fucking disgrace that people feel they can just dump them on bike lanes, I can't educate everyone to set them in a proper place and I never had issues with bikes strewn across the pavement before, so electric scooters are a new danger on the road for me.
And I hate cars.
The road outside my house is about 3x car widths across, there are private cars parked on either side (2/3rds of the total road space) for the full length of the road. Only one car can fit down the road at once, and pedestrians have limited pavement.
Why get so upset about a few scooters on the pavement, when there are cars literally everywhere in the way
This is where they are not.
Instead, scooters are in the ultra dense city center where you anyway have the choice between: bus, metro, light-rail, bikes and other modes of transport.
This is where everyone hates them.
This is the situation in Germany at least.
Absolutely, but that is contradictory to those companies' business model. They try to maximize use, a single commuter taking the scooter from their home to the train/subway station 2 times a day is very little use. Owning or long term renting makes more sense for that use case, and there's little a startup could bring there.
For the metrically challenged, that's a top speed of less than 9mph. It's not even the top running speed of the average person...
Note, are we talking about Vespa style scooters or kick-style scooters? For the second, yeah, if capped at low speeds, should be fine on sidewalks.
I think scooters can be a great addition, but definitely not on the expense of pedestrian safety.
Where I live, in a city in Portugal, every single one of these companies (who somehow managed to get deals to place their scooters around) has turned the experience of walking or driving around much more miserable.
While walking, you constantly find these scooters thrown to the side, fallen and just overall misplaced. It is not uncommon to have to go around a bunch of scooters, thus stepping into the actual road and risking being run over. Back where I used to live, some idiots used to leave 3 or 4 of them just on the floor at my apartment's doorstep. No one cares, it's just more of a tool for loitering. And don't get me started on kids riding them down slopes while they have that annoying "you're not paying BEEEEEEEEP". Horrible noise pollution in parks where cars don't create such problems (because they don't GO in these parks). You are also sometimes unexpectedly just scared or intimidated by people using these scooters on the sidewalk at scary speeds. Our sidewalks are not built to handle scooters and people. I mean we can barely handle bikes in this city, how would we handle unregulated speedy scooters?
As a driver, these things are the bane of my existence. They are driven mostly by kids or irresponsible people. They should not use the road, but they do. They don't really follow the rules appropriately. Traffic either goes too slow behind them, which frustrates drivers and creates more traffic, or it goes too fast and risks everyone's lives.
Ever since I saw the first "Lime" scooters in my city, I have despised these things with all my soul. They have brought nothing but problems to me and those around me.
Maybe it's a cultural thing and we are just horrible people with no respect for others. But, as it stands, with lacking infrastructure and obviously lacking morals, I also sincerely hope these things disappear off the face of the earth (or, rather, _my_ earth -- my city).