Sure, there's a lot wrong with Silicon Valley, but this article (I understand it's an opinion piece) is "an example of everything that's wrong" with Business Insider.<p>> And what about winter? Not much of a consideration in Santa Monica. But riding scooters in Chicago in February? Seems like a hazard.<p>> How about using a scooter to get anywhere that is more than a short distance away? An hour's commute? In the rain? Traveling with one or more friends? Carrying groceries? Taking your kids to soccer practice?<p>> Those considerations make scooters more of a novelty and a niche than something that every person will use regularly, like a car.<p>Aside from carrying groceries, all of these points are completely fruitless when talking about how these scooters could take of. All of the same can be said of bicycles yet bicycle commuting is growing year over year in metro hubs: <a href="https://bikeleague.org/commutingdata" rel="nofollow">https://bikeleague.org/commutingdata</a>
There are two main points in the article: 1) incredulity that the company is attracting investment, 2) incredulity that anyone thinks it's a good idea.<p>I don't know anything about the former, but I would think the right way to analyze it would be to do napkin math on what revenue yield might be.<p>I do know something about the latter. Bird positions itself as a last mile type opportunity; you take a bird two miles to get the train or bus you were always going to get; you take Bird if you're a college student and you need to get around campus. This dismissal of Bird is a little bit like "I own a car and I'm not a big drinker and I don't travel, why would I ever call an Uber?" No one gives half a shit if you'd call an Uber. The question is whether you have the imagination to suppose there is someone else who might call one. Then it ends with the laughable idea that "Scooters are cheap so if there actually is any use for them, which there isn't, people should just buy some". The whole point with Bird is that you don't need to worry about the scooter being stolen or parked. Most of the controversy around Bird is cities complaining that what's convenient for Bird users is inconvenient for anyone else -- it's hard to observe that while simultaneously complaining that Bird offers no convenience.<p>Disclaimer: I've only ridden a Bird once and I crashed it badly and got cuts up and down my leg and arm and ripped my pants. Apparently I don't have very good balance. Either way, Bird isn't for me. But I'm not an idiot watching dozens of people go by me on Birds and yelling at clouds about how they're making the wrong decision.
I think large companies and industries outside of Silicon Valley waste money internally on projects that never see the light of day. I think one of the big differences with SV is it's all on show for the world to see exactly how the money is being bet.
> The VCs have an answer to all of these obvious drawbacks. "Genius is the only way I would describe it," Jordan Nof, an investment partner at Tusk Ventures who flew to Santa Monica, California, to convince Bird to take his money<p>Sounds like an over-the-top scene on a comedy show. Really
> "It has the opportunity to fundamentally change the way people get from point A to point B," Nof said.<p>Perhaps I'm showing my age, but wasn't the same said about Segway?<p>That aside, $2 B for a hardly new and hardly original idea / model?<p>Yeah. Something has gone sideways.
Writing from Oakland, where I have a suspicion that many of the scooters taken off San Francisco streets for their permit monitoriom have ended up.<p>Point being that there’s a LOT of these scooters around. I think they’re great. I keep wondering where the people complaining about the carelessly left scooters are living, because the majority of the scooters in town are dropped off considerately, and don’t take up more space than bikes.<p>I think the backlash against the scooters is driven by people who don’t like tech, and by people who believe transit solutions should be driven (and owned) by the government. The scooters solve a problem, are dirt cheap to use, are available to anyone with a phone, and are environmentally friendly. The externalities are nonzero but not larger than bikes. There’s a lot to like.
A company's value is still the present value of expected future cash flows to investors, right? For 2 billion and 15 yrs horizon, that's about 130 million in dividends a year. Profits still a bit higher to account for capital needs of the firm. That's quite the trajectory.<p>Another thought: are VCs and funds transparent about in what round they invest their own and the funds money? Can they sell their own series A investment in subsequent rounds with / without disclosure?
I personally would love to see more such companies (more innovation) but unfortunately Bird scooters seem to be having legal trouble in my city Milwaukee:<p><a href="https://www.cbs58.com/news/bird-scooters-in-milwaukee-are-illegal-to-use-says-city-attorney" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbs58.com/news/bird-scooters-in-milwaukee-are-il...</a>
Gotta say, it’s been amazing not having these all over the place in SF.<p>Hope they don’t come back. Or if they do, they’re confined to the GoBike areas or a very limited number per company.
I'm not a "capitalism is always the best" guy, but in this case I think capitalism can handle it just fine.<p>If it's a stupid idea the VCs lose money. If a VC invests too often on stupid ideas they might go bust. Why should anyone else worry or care?