The Micromobility Podcast

This week, Oliver interviews Kevin Talbot (@Talbot), a General Partner at Relay Ventures, a VC firm based between the Bay Area and Toronto, who are investors in Bird, Populus and Bird Canada, among others. It is a great interview with Kevin about how they’re thinking about micromobility investments and the wider context of venture capital in this Softbank dominated world. Specifically, we dig into...

This week Oliver interviews Sanjay Dastoor, one of the founders of Boosted Boards and subsequently Skip, who operate a shared scooter service in DC. Sanjay has been around this space longer than pretty much anyone, and has a wealth of insight and experience that were a joy to unpack. Unfortunately, the audio cut a little for Sanjay right at the beginning but we kick off right where it picks up. Sp...

This week, Horace joins Oliver on the podcast to talk about hype cycles, capital formation and transport funding patterns historically, and what we can learn from them about the micromobility space now.  Specifically:  The parallels between the hype cycles for MP3 players, the internet and personal computers vs. micromobility. The perils of ‘being early’ in large scale technology adoptions.  The h...

This week, Oliver interviews Joe Kraus, President of Lime.  Lime are the largest players in the shared micromobility space globally, and this episode has been a long time coming. It was awesome to get Joe on to talk about their history and plans, the state of the industry and business model, regulation, the challenge of climate change and where micromobility can assist. Joe is an awesome guest, an...

This week, Oliver interviews Emily Castor Warren, one of the first employees at Lyft and then Lime in the policy space. We have an amazing conversation about the history of rideshare and micromobility, especially as it pertains to regulation, and where operators are getting it right and wrong. Emily is currently working with Fontinalis, a VC firm investing the future of mobility. She has some of t...

In today’s episode Oliver interviews Assaf Biderman, CEO of [SuperPedestrian]( https://superpedestrian.com/ ), about his background founding the MIT Senseable Cities Lab and then Superpedestrian. Assaf has been thinking about micromobility longer than most anyone we’ve had on the podcast - this was a fun and very illuminating interview. This conversation convinced Oliver that the ‘intelligence’ th...

In today’s episode, Taco Carlier, CEO of Vanmoof joins Oliver to talk about building beautiful e-bikes, the role of design and how to get the next billion people on bikes in our cities across the world. It’s a great discussion with someone who’s been in the space for a long time (Vanmoof was founded 10 years ago!). Taco is also the first Dutch guest we have had, and so we also dig into Amsterdam a...

In today’s episode, Felix Jakobsen and Enrico Howe from Unu Motors join Oliver to talk about the Global Scooter Sharing Market Report (for clarity, we’re talking mopeds), a recent publication on the state of the shared moped market globally. It’s a great discussion about the expansion of a space that often gets overlooked compared to it’s more well funded kick scooter cousin. Specifically, we dig...

On today’s podcast, Oliver interviews Bharath Devanathan, SVP, Growth at Bounce Mobility, about their moped sharing business in India. They recently raised a $150m round to expand their operations across India. It’s an amazing conversation - one of the best so far about the potential of shared micromobility to change transport systems for good in fast growing and highly constrained urban environme...

On today’s podcast, Oliver interviews Sam Baker, COO of Wunder Mobility, about their software platform that underpins a number of carshare, carpool, Micromobility  and other services players in Europe, and is about to expand to the US.  Specifically we dig into:  - Wunder’s early success in carpooling, and how their strategy differed from Oliver’s experience watching commuting products being built...

Today, Horace and Oliver talk about the newly released SAE Micromobility Standards, the Cybertruck announcement and Horace’s latest thoughts on the boondoggle of autonomy.  Specifically, they dig into: - Why the new SAE Micromobility standards matter, what they’re competing against and why definitions like this default to lowest common denominators. - The Cybertruck announcement, including discuss...

Today on the podcast, Oliver interviews William Henderson, CEO of Ride Report about micromobility data and mobility-as-a-service systems. Ride Report is the reporting dashboard for over 50 cities globally for their dockless shared micromobility operations, and William's team work very closely with regulators and operators globally to build trust among all the different parties. William also has a...

In this episode, Horace and Oliver talk though the flood of news post-Berlin, and how the micromobility is being circulated around by the giants of automotive and large tech, as they work out how to best participate.  We also explore:  - the parallels between feature phone experimentation and the extensive discussions over form factor experimentation we’re seeing in lightweight electric vehicles (...

In today’s episode, Oliver interviews Mark Frohnmayer, CEO of Arcimoto, a new 1100lb+ electric trike that has just gone into production in Eugene, Oregon. Arcimoto is aiming to a hit a US$12k production price point for a vehicle with 70+ miles of range and able to conform to all roading infrastructure, including highways. We unpack why this is a disruptive solution to the market.  Specifically we...

In this episode, Oliver interviews David Hyman, CEO of Unagi Scooters about the market for premium, lightweight owned micromobility. David’s background is in software and marketing, having previously been the CEO of Beats by Dre. Unagi has really nailed the owned scooter brand experience, and it’s a great discussion.  Specifically we dig into:  - Features and tradeoffs that they made in order to d...

In today's packed episode, Oliver interviews Dmitry Shevelenko, CEO of Tortoise, an autonomous scooter software company about the potential of self driving scooters in clearing clutter, improving economics and unlocking the suburbs for shared micromobility.  Specifically we dig into:  - Dmitry's background at Uber leading business development in micromobility, and how that led him to coming across...

In this episode, Oliver interviews Frank Reig, CEO of Revel, an e-moped sharing system in NYC/DC that has just announced a $27.6m raise to expand to 10 new cities.  It’s a fascinating interview as shared e-mopeds have a number of key operational improvements over the more popular kick scooter/electric bike shared systems that we’ve seen.  Specifically we discuss:  - Their recent raise and plans fo...

In this episode, Horace and Oliver host a live podcast recording at The Drivery, an incubator in Berlin in front of an audience. They discuss the upcoming Micromobility Europe conference, disruption of the German car industry and what will disrupt micromobility itself in the future. It was a great conversation! This week we discuss: - Germany’s micromobility explosion and why it’s different from o...

In this episode, Oliver and Horace talk about cost-per-mile calculations for micromobility, and the implications of the recent blogpost that Horace published on the Micromobility.io blog ( https://micromobility.io/blog/2019/9/9/the-cost-of-a-mile ).  In short - what happens when the marginal cost per additional km collapses towards zero with Micromobility. We think there are lots of lessons we can...

In this episode, Oliver interviews Martin Mignot, a general partner at Index Ventures and panelist on our ‘Capital in Micromobility’ panel at the upcoming Micromobility Europe conference in Berlin. Index Ventures were early investors in Bird, and have a long history of investing in the micro and macro mobility space over the last 15 years.  Specifically, we dug into:  - His thesis around investing...

In this episode, Oliver interviews Jeff Russakow, CEO of Boosted Boards, makers of the famous electric skateboards and now scooter. Boosted focuses on vehicle-grade owned micromobility, which provides a refreshing counter to the hype around shared models. It’s one of our best episodes to date--highly recommend checking it out! Specifically we cover: - the origins of the company, and how it proves...

In this episode, Horace and Oliver run over Horace’s insights from his recent research using UN data into city-level potential for micromobility markets globally. We run through the most interesting growth trends in 1800+ cities. Specifically we look at: - Contextualising the rapid growth in car-based urbanisation as part of a 5000 year trend - Why Africa is one of the most interesting potential m...

In this episode, Oliver interviews Lawrence Leuschner, CEO and co-founder of Tier, one of Europe’s largest scooter operators with over 6 million cumulative rides to date. Specifically, we cover: - Lawrence’s background as a successful entrepreneur and his motivations for starting Tier - the landscape for micromobility adoption in Europe, and why Europe is better placed to adsorb these transport in...

In this episode, Horace and Oliver discuss Donald Shoup’s work, The High Cost of Free Parking, and why micromobility offers such a compelling counter to the dominant mindset that has existed around parking for the last 70 years.  Specifically, we cover: - the financial and spatial impact of parking minimums in the US - The Catch-22 of parking legislation - parking creates sprawled landscapes that...

In this episode, Oliver interviews Sampo Heitanen, CEO of MaaS Global/Whim on their mobility as a service subscription model they have in Helsinki and a number of other markets.  Specifically we cover: - How MaaS Global came to be started - The unique context of Helsinki’s regulatory environment and the enabling factors that made it a great first market - The challenges and opportunities of scalin...