Movements | July 2nd, 2018
Issue #5! brought to you by Michal Naka and Adam Feldman. If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox every Monday morning, you can subscribe here. Here’s what happened last week…
Big News
Apple is rebuilding its map stack from the ground up, collecting all of its own data. The end goal is for Apple to not have to rely on 3rd parties for any of its basemap, business, access points, LIDAR, imagery, POI, traffic, or road network data. This is a big strategic shift for the industry and it also shows just how hard it is to build a high quality, constantly updating set of map data that first and third party applications can rely on. | TechCrunch
Sequoia led a $300 million Series C investment in Bird with Index, CRV, Upfront, and more. Upfront VC, Mark Suster wrote: “Forget the valuation — I think it’s quite possible that Bird could be the fastest growing company to reach a billion dollars in run rate revenue.” One important note: Sequoia is also an investor in scooter manufacturer Ninebot, the supplier of choice of Bird, Lime, Spin, Lyft & more| Bloomberg
Alphabet and GV bet on Lime and join their $300 million funding round| Financial Times
Micromobility
As scooter companies look to differentiate themselves, Skip introduces the world’s first fully integrated ‘retractable lock-to’ system for scooters. | Skip
How Segway-Ninbot Became the Go-To Scooter Maker for Rental Startups. It’s important to note that Skip is basically the only one with a really differentiated offering at this point. | The Information
Lime surveyed scooter riders in San Francisco | Lime
- 60% of respondents said that their Lime-S ride replaced a trip by car (personal automobile, taxi or rideshare.)
- 3/4 of people said protected bikelanes would increase their likelihood of riding on the street.
- 93% believed the San Francsico scooter cap is too low.
Mapbox hires a new navigation PM, Tarani Duncan, with extensive background in bike-share services like JUMP and Motivate | Mapbox
Motivate is using the impending L train shut down as an opportunity to launch 1000 peddle assist bikes in NYC | Citi Bike
Parking app Spot Hero is in talks with scooter companies to help provide off-street parking and give drivers quick access to scooters. “Lawrence said some commuters want to drive into the city, park somewhere, and book a scooter the rest of the way to their destination.” | Business Insider
Zagster launched a ‘universal, secure and smart parking’ system for dockless ‘lock-to’ scooters and bikes. The bikeshare company joins Jump and Skip as supporters of vehicle ‘lock-to’ requirement as cities navigate the growing problem of micromobility parking | Smart Cities Dive
The Autonocast interviewed Bird’s Chief Legal Officer, David Estrada, who gives an inside look into the hypergrowth company. “We view ourselves as an electrice vehicle company, not an electric scooter company.” | Autonocast
Bird launched in Dallas, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Oakland, Arlington, Milwaukie and San Antonio in the last 7 days. Related - Lime released early data 5 days after their Indianapolis launch: 3700 unique riders, 6000 trips and a median trip length of 1.3 miles | Bird Launch Tracker
TNCs
Lyft claims it has 35% market share in the U.S. with a booking run-rate of $7.7 billion | Fortune
Why Lyft is trying to become the next subscription business | Wired
Next target for startups: reinventing bus travel | The Information
Uber wins 15-month London operating license extension | Axios
Uber appoints Rachel Holt to the position of Head of New Modalities, signally just how important this emerging area is to their business | TechCrunch
A peek into Citymapper’s Smart Ride service in London | Chris Messina
Product Launches and Updates
Deep dive on why routing is hard and getting harder in a world of dockless things | Coord
Cubic is working to integrate transit ticketing across numerous services into a single app that also provides multi-modal trip planning: “By designing an app that takes the scramble of organizing different payment methods and the gamble of guessing bus and train arrival times out of the equation, he hopes that soon transit will feel as seamless as hopping in a car.” What Cubic lacks in consumer product chops they make up for in their position as the fulfillment and payment vendor for some of the largest transit systems in the world | FastCompany, Cubic
Cities
Excellent interview with Seleta Reynolds of LADOT, covering their evolution into a mobility service company. Give it a listen!| The Autonocast
New research shows that Uber and Lyft eliminate racial differences in taxi service | UCLA ITS
Investments and M&A
Mapfit raises a $5.5m seed round| GeoAwesomeness
Lyft raises $600m Series I at a $15.1 billon valuation. The round could expand to $1 billion with a ‘strategic investor’| Axios
Go-Jek is raising $1.5b to take on Grab after Uber exits SE Asia| The Information
Spin is closing a $125m token offering | Axios
StreetCred, founded by the former Mapzen team, raises $1m for a blockhain-based marketplace for POI data | Techcrunch
