The Mobility Tech Investor Landscape — Interview with Stonly Baptiste
By Anant Majumdar
Mobility tech is a robust and expanding vertical for many urban-focused venture investors, though the space can be tough to navigate given complexities in the regulatory environment. I recently had the chance to catch up with Stonly Baptiste from Urban.Us, a venture fund focused on startups solving city problems, to get his take on how venture investors are navigating the mobility landscape. The discussion has been edited for length and clarity.
Anant Majumdar: Which part of the mobility ecosystem do you see as having the most opportunities right now?
Stonly Baptiste: There are a lot of things around safety, particularly personal safety, as people diversify their mobility options and there become more options than just cars to get around, including micro-mobility. When this happens, lots of risk factors are increased — you can think about being on a kick scooter or bike without helmet as an example. There are also old problems like public safety on public transportation, particularly for people who are more likely to be targeted.
We also still have a large need for infrastructure tailored towards non-gas-guzzling options — like charging, parking, and docking infrastructure. And we also need systems to manage all of the new options that are out there to optimize for passenger speed and comfort. Thankfully, though, people are increasingly cognizant about their ability to have a positive environmental impact through better mobility options, such as electric vehicles or using micro-mobility options.
AM: How do VCs assess the cost or risk of current or anticipated regulatory barriers?
SB: We tend to avoid regulatory ambiguity, but some risks are hard to anticipate or avoid. We tend to look for opportunities that are underappreciated where there are already regulatory tailwinds. We look for situations where regulations are already established or moving in the right direction in the future. Usage-based tolling in roads is one example of a very positive partnership — the company Clear Roads is helping cities charge usage-based tolling as opposed to fixed tolling. As a seed stage company, fighting regulatory battles is generally not a good use of time, and almost all of our investments are companies not running into regulatory barriers.
AM: What about situations where regulatory boundaries are still evolving?
SB: Future Motion, which makes the OneWheel, still had to help push regulations in their favor a few years into the company because their device was being lumped into a group of several others devices, including hoverboards, which were causing problems. Another example is the the drone space, where there was a lot of excitement about what drones could do, but regulations had to catch up. We could be more aggressive on the regulatory side, and there is definitely an opportunity to grow companies quickly where there is potential on the side of winning the regulatory battle. We look to work with cities.
AM: Beyond just the “core” technology like self-driving cars, or ride-sharing apps, or e-scooters, what enabling technology is needed to bring about more widespread automated and shared mobility options like AVs, on-demand apps, etc.?
SB: We invested in a company called Park and Diamond which makes helmets for micro-mobility, bike share users, and really anyone. Their key differentiation is that their helmets are made out of a new material and are shaped and designed to look and feel like hats. A lot of the bottleneck of people not using micro-mobility and bike-share responsibly is that it is very inconvenient to have a giant bulky helmet to lug around.
AM: Safety and other adjacent components of the ecosystem seem to be a big theme here. Can you talk more about how increased adoption of new mobility options is creating novel opportunities?
SB: There is also going to be a need for new types of insurance for the new forms of mobility, as well as a need to manage all the options and help people navigate when to switch from one option to another (Coord, which is a Sidewalk Labs spinout, is tackling this). Another example is that as you have more consolidated and autonomous vehicle usage, you have less of a need for parking lots, and so there is a question of what you should do with parking lots. We invested in a company called Campsyte that turns parking lots into private-use home parks for outdoor co-working and events, where we’re re-capturing that land for a usage that is overall better for the people living in a city and solves the “what do you do with parking lots” problem.
AM: From an investment perspective, how do you think about a solutions total addressable market (TAM) when you’re dealing with cities?
SB: TAM is case-by-case and dependent on the solution. In this space, there is no universal formula for TAM other than thinking about unit pricing and number of units. Or, you can think from a top down perspective about how much is being wasted and could be optimized as far as a dollar value. As a proxy of growth, we like to get some understanding and conviction that the solution has the potential to be in 100 cities within 5 years.
