Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/13/bird-flipped.html
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Xenied…
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I never thought this was going to be a viable business. Not only are our sidewalks saturated with Bird scooters, but with those of their competitor, Lime, too. Just do the back of the envelope calculation on their possible profit, and you can’t possibly justify the valuation. There is another risk: some cities are getting tired of this crap and are starting to pass restrictive laws that crimp their operations.
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Man, I could live well off just the interest from 2 million for the next 50 years. What’s the deal? Strippers and coke?
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FYI: Anyone who wants to read the source article can bypass the paywall by clicking on the link from their HN comment.
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I think it’s funny that the headline says “stay afloat”…
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Also a problem for them
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It’s pretty normal for companies founded on dubious ideas to run out of runway; but the metaphor feels way weirder when they are named “Bird”.
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So - who owns this monstrosity?
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Interesting that people who use this hack lose the ability to stop the scooter. My neighbor witnessed an accident in LA caused by someone who wasn’t able to stop their scooter, so they jumped off of it just before it ran into an intersection. I despise these things.
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And they were still able to get hundreds of millions of dollars. This points to a bigger problem - there is a crazy amount of money out there looking for places to invest in. Corporate debt is really high, safeguards on that debt are very low because if you try to place limits on the company borrowing from you (called a “covenant”), they will just go shopping for money somewhere else.
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Me neither.
Then again, I knew cell phones were going to fail. After all, we spent most of our lives complaining about constantly being interrupted by phones… An now you want to build a business of people paying a lot of money to be constantly interrupted? Hahahaha.
And smart cell phones? Don’t be stupid. The idea of trying to fit ones life into this teeny-tiny screen? Ridiculous. People can hardly handle computers, which at least have enough real-estate for a decent interface…
And throwing literally billions of dollars of investors income away in an effort to make the modern version of mail order viable for the population as a whole? It’ll take investors 3 months tops before they start demanding that Amazon actually make money for the billions they gave Bezos…
Or not.
Sooo… at least I have given up trying to even guess what will make a viable business. 95% of all business fail, but what fails and what succeeds is hidden even to those who make their living trying to guess these things. Pretty hard to tell in advance what looks like a scam and what turns out to be massively successful.
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I am pretty crappy at prognostication, too. Amazon has been able to defy gravity for years, running at a high valuation despite losing money. They have enough money now that they can keep losing some for quite a while. Their stock has done quite well. But most companies with negative cash flow fail.
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I tried these out when I was visiting Tampa. They were an awesome way to get around if you did not rent a car in the heat of the day/night.
My takeaway from the whole thing was that I need to buy one if I end up commuting downtown again. Not that this business should come to more cities. Seems like it mostly makes sense in resort towns.
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I only need 2 million to stay afloat.
I remember myself laughing at the idea that people would buy bottled water.
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Send a bunch of-em up to my remote forested mountain village. We’ll use-em, for sure. Anything to escape the bears and dogs. Pumas are something else – maybe we’d need bigger batteries.
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We already have this in my very weird section of South OC Ca. The neighboring city is a “Leisure World” retirement community that incorporated into it’s own city some years back, and it’s not at all uncommon to see golf carts zipping by into nearby shopping centers. The sidewalk in one area is this ridiculously wide two lane mini-street/sidewalk with “watch for pedestrians” signs (like I’m going to trust the eyesight and reflex speed of the 70+ crowd… I avoid walking on that particular sidewalk.).
We’re already living the reality of your comment, and it generally isn’t pretty. (except the one cart that I see repeatedly that’s decorated in a pirate theme, and the old lady that drives it seems always to be leaving the local CVS on an alcohol run when I see her. Go pirate grandma!).
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No, we don’t want them either. (We successfully chased them out of town last year.)
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