Metro Magazine, November 2020

23 NOVEMBER 2020 METRO MAGAZINE COM Spin tions show unit economics working out once scooter density is achieved yes larger fleet sizes theoretically balance out the spikes in ridership time and location demands eliminating the need for active rebalancing But the projections fail to mention that like any land grab strategy the most financially viable in this case the densest neighborhoods were hit first It is hard to increase scooter density without sufficient population density to use them The model simply does not scale a new model is needed to ensure long term viability HOW DISRUPTIVE TECH IS SIMILAR To venture a guess as to what shape the third wave of micromobility will look like I looked to the ultimate disruptive technology revolution of our time the internet An ocean analogy is apt as we have witnessed both the cyclical up and down waves of creative destruction and the long term high tide of the internets growing influence in all parts of our lives AOLs 10 hours free CD ROMs were the gateway drug for many into the world wide web so I marked 1993 as the start of the first wave Yahoo IPOd in 1996 marking the beginning of the second And in 2002 Friendster launched the beginning of the third The first wave came in the form of walled gardens AOL Compuserve Prodigy tightly manicured and controlled environments that brought together features like chat rooms real time information such as stock quotes and email But another contender with a better value proposition proved to be the winner open access to the internet but in a highly curated manner Netscape Navigator Navigator broke free from the walled garden approach and offered the entirety of the world wide web to the masses the browser to the world but in a more graphically consistent and intuitive format With a clear winner the first wave ended and ushered in the second The first wave companies simply died out except for AOL saved by leveraging its ridiculous stock valuation to gobble up media giant Time Warner before the wave came crashing down The second wave came in the form of search engines Yahoo Excite AltaVista Webcrawler and Ask Jeeves Much like AOL Yahoo emerged as the early favorite by focusing on intuitive and functional website design Yahoo utilized its next level UI to neatly organize information by interest and categories and the web portal was born Yahoo became the next media giant with its market cap approaching 125 billion at its peak But a dark horse emerged one that had been working behind the scenes for years providing search technology for these other companies Like Navigator before it Google opened the internet in a highly organized manner through its next level search technology PageRank While Yahoo Excite and the like declared search was dead and attempted to build media entertainment portals PageRank offered the best the world has to offer by making search results more relevant and authoritative so that Suddenly a search for Honda turned up Honda com instead of say a site that had copied the word Honda 50 times in invisible type at the bottom of the page Mercury News This was the beginning of the end of Yahoos dominance and the entertainment portal strategy The third wave played out in a similar fashion early pioneers Friendster MySpace and The Facebook built controlled digital worlds where users would own and personalize their room page But a re branded Facebook led others such as Pinterest LinkedIn Instagram and Twitter to build open platforms that were curated not by the companies but by users and their shared interests Participants know that their political rants should go on Twitter personal transformation moments work best on Facebook and cute kitchen cabinet posts have a home on Pinterest The winners of each wave were able to increase access but in a smartly curated manner And each successive wave grew larger as the market grew with it THE FIRST WAVE OF MICROMOBILITY Now back to micromobility With all respect due to Amsterdam white bikes of the 60s the ad agency led approach started by JCDecaux and Clear Channel started the first wave of micromobility They offered free bike share in exchange for exclusive and lucrative street furniture contracts when in practice the advertising was the real story and bike share was little more than the newsworthy add on But cities were quickly left with buyers remorse as a free bike share promotion requires purchasing exclusive and proprietary parts software licenses and consultants to operate Ryan Rzepecki of Social Bicycles the precursor to JUMP which eventually got acquired by Uber provided a great post mortem of how it felt to finally achieve profitability in the first wave only to have the second wave come suddenly in the form of dockless bikes seemingly everywhere and all at once It was as if they were thrown out without regard to profitability or permissions because well they were Ofo Blue GoGo and MoBike the Chinese funded bike share companies figured they would throw bikes on the streets and achieve mass adoption quickly enough to force city planners to Scooter charge racks placed strategically where operators want them to start each day helps eliminate daily rebalancing while resolving their need for charging