City licensing can erase scooter-market economics

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 36:12

   I really appreciate it. You and Airbnb. It's your fault. Anyway, let's get back to… No, no, no. Hold on. Hold on. The era of 21 is super interesting, though, guys. I don't believe it was a physical versus digital thing. I believe it was a moment in time in the COVID ZERP, massive money going in. We hadn't seen inflation yet. It was all of that happening. And the investor class was basically deciding, we're going to look two and three years forward on your current growth.

2. 36:42

   And it wasn't one year forward. It was like two or three years forward. And that's where these crazy valuations got weird so if you went from zero to a hundred you know if you went from a hundred to three hundred million dollars in the last year they'll play that two three years forward and go oh yeah you're totally 20 times bigger we'll pay you for that now yeah that's where it got weird it got weird hey bird scooters was valued at two or three billion they were doing micro mobility and you're just trolling them jay i'm no we're giving everybody their flowers for incredible investments and even even the mighty sacks could trip up did you sell those shares yeah no no we don't do that uh it was a series a we did i mean look we we got it right in the sense that it was a total phenomenon yeah but then the cities just cracked down on it and killed it

3. 37:30

   look if the cities had leaned into it yeah look if the cities had reacted differently if they had leaned into it if they had created let's say a scooter or like a small ev lane it could have transform cities i mean it would have been a lot easier to get around but instead they banned it they limited it they didn't create designated areas for it and then the the coup de grace was basically when they would take a city where bird already had like 80 dominant market share and then they would say that well we're going to choose four operators and give them each 25 of say a thousand scooter allocation that just killed the economics for everybody yeah there's no market anymore there's no market yeah yeah there is no marketplace network effect right when they're basically just picking the winners and deciding the market yeah you can't you can't compete

4. 38:16

   and splitting it even so then yeah there's no there's no competition you can't drive value regulatory capture at its worst guys like we should watch for this in the in the autonomous car space too cities make it cute and start doing things like that and and what they did on scooters they could do on cars oh that's a really good point yeah you're right instead of just letting the market play out they say well we're only going to have x number a thousand autonomous cars new york is literally doing this right now they're doing it in new york and boston and then the prices go up the innovation doesn't get realized consumers don't benefit no one benefits basically you've deleted the market yes and anyway just to wrap up this story on the the shoe company they're