InnerCIRCle: An Event Series on Mobility

E-scooters are everywhere. Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t deny their efficiency. But stiff competition among e-scooter providers is forcing micro-mobility companies to quickly differentiate themselves, fighting tooth and nail to win and retain customers with price, design, and innovative key features.

Fascinating and oh-so topical, micro-mobility is on the tips of everyone’s lips. So on the evening of August 8th, Goodpatch joined forces with Circ and & Bumble Bizz to ignite a conversation about how technology is shaping the future of micro-mobility and Circ’s journey building a large-scale, real-time, user-centric consumer service. The first edition of what will be an ongoing series on mobility, we started the evening with talks by Circ’s CTO, IQ Sayed, and Markus Müller, Head of Product.

Sayed, who previously led Lyft’s autonomous driving team in Munich, spoke to Circ’s incredible growth and strategic differentiators, which include partnerships, their passion for product, and obsession with safety and the environment. He also walked us through the design of the Circ e-scooter and how each, individual feature is developed to improve the e-scooter’s safety, reliability, and durability.

While the long term environmental implications of e-scooters are still up for debate, these personal light electric vehicles (PLEV), are in many ways the perfect antidote to the traffic and caused by automobiles. By working with authorities, Circ plans to reduce city air pollution, traffic pain points, and make mobility more accessible. They also welcome the collaborative development of meaningful policies to create regulation without suffocating innovation and negatively influencing a fair, competitive marketplace.

Müller, who built N26’s product team from the ground up, continued where Sayed left off, speaking to the benefits of micro-mobility and Circ’s five focus areas: convenience, affordability, enjoyability, safety, and sustainability.

Müller ended his talk by quoting Jeff Bezos, who urges us not to ask, “What’s going to change in the next years?” but rather, “ What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?” Some things will never change and our desire to move around our cities in a way that is affordable, reliable and safe is one of those things.

After the talks, we headed outside to demo the new Circ e-scooter. For many guests, including Goodpatch Managing Director Boris Jitsukata, this was their first time on an e-scooter. After putting on helmets, a brief lesson, and a safety talk from the Circ team, riders rode through our office courtyard and out onto the street, following a 1km loop around the block. Each guest was given 40 free minutes, so many traveled all the way home on their new, favorite means of transportation.

Watch the full event recap below:

To learn more about Goodpatch and our work in mobility, visit us here.