Urban Sharing’s new business developer Luis Aldana will help bring our smart rebalancing tool to the world
Luis, a bicycle enthusiast from Guadalajara, Mexico, is here to help bring our predictive rebalancing and supervisor tool to the world. Like Urban Sharing, his background in micromobility was born out of bike share operations. He says this is the secret ingredient to creating the tools that customers actually need.
What brought you into micromobility?
Luis: It started with my passion for bicycles. In Mexico I used to move around everywhere by bicycle. It was kind of an act of rebellion, almost revolutionary, since the streets were so dangerous and hostile for cyclists. The cycling community in Guadalajara was quite close and I met a lot of people, including the guys from BKT. They had been working with urban furniture and then started a new company dedicated to public bike-sharing systems.
When they won the contract to run Guadalajara’s new system I was studying urban planning, so joining them was a perfect match, and we started to work together on the planning and implementation of the system. Once we launched, I took over management of the logistics and distribution team, which was my main role. But we were a small team, so I had the opportunity to explore every single aspect of the operations, including technology, bicycles, stations, government contracts, and even how the payments were executed on a technical level. Building the system was all new for us so we had to do everything from scratch — that was really exciting.
What were your key learnings from that experience?
Working with the fantastic BKT team was one of the best experiences I have had. I would say working with them taught me about the complexity of the rebalancing challenge. In the beginning I was impressed by how few options there were for tools to manage operations. We tried some different ones but still had to do a lot of things manually. So I learned how big the problem was, and how even people working closely with public bike share systems can underestimate the complexity and the degree of the things needed to do operations well. For example, the local government just sees a light vehicle like a bicycle and they think, “How hard could it be? They’re just bicycles, you’re not dealing with trains or airplanes.” But it’s not like with trains, which move in a straight line. The nature of bike sharing is that it’s a network, and that exponentially complicates things.
Where did that discovery lead you?
I co-founded a company called Brick in 2017, where we developed Clinker. The idea was to create a detailed and automatic tool that could solve vehicle redistribution and all other operations aspects of the micromobility industry. This is one of the biggest challenges in any micromobiility operation, no matter what vehicle it is. It usually consumes up to 60% of an operator’s budget. What we were creating evolved to become an operator suite, a product called Clinker. It is a tool for redistribution, but also for station and bicycle maintenance; for the user of a vehicle; for customer service; for governments and third parties; and other players involved in the operation.
Between 2017–2018, we worked on the concept. In 2019, we dedicated the first part of the year to developing a prototype, which was a fully functional tool. This was amazing for us since we did it in such a short period of time. In September I met Kristian (Urban Sharing’s VP of Strategy & Business Development) at the NABSA conference in Indianapolis. He asked me if I would consider continuing my work as part of Urban Sharing and I was like, “Yeah, let’s go to Oslo!”
Tell us about your new role at Urban Sharing. What do you hope to achieve, and what knowledge are you bringing?
I’m joining the business development team as someone who, while talking about the product, also has a very granular understanding of what’s needed in the market, and what the practical needs of the operators are. A lot of companies that are doing similar things have built their tools from a lab. They have never experienced shared mobility operations first-hand and on a daily basis. We’re not guessing, or imagining how things are for operations teams. We know how things are. There are so many small details to consider. For example, when changing or introducing operator tools, you think it looks easy on the app, but for those using it, changing an entire way of doing things can become a huge challenge for the operations teams. I’ve learned that you have to consider this at all times. That’s what makes a really good product. I have that experience, and so does Urban Sharing. I believe that’s what differentiates us.
How will this benefit our customers?
Our solution reduces costs for our customers and partners because we’re not experimenting. We’re an extremely experienced team, so there is not going to be trial and error. One of the things I want our customers to experience is this sense of “Finally, there is a product that can really tackle what’s going on.” For them, operations are very rigid structures, so even just testing things can be extremely complex. Transitioning from one tool to another could take months, so we take it really seriously that they should be able to start running with it once they choose our product. And the way we honor that decision is by giving them an extremely reliable product.
Another important thing is that the tool has to make a lot of sense to the final operator, which is the person driving the truck, or doing the maintenance. That is the person who knows better than anyone what is needed, and they’re often forgotten. We’re creating a bridge of understanding where we know both sides of the story.
We’re so excited to have you as a full-time team member at our headquarters in Oslo. What are your first impressions after moving here?
The first thing I noticed was that the quality of the air here is fabulous. It’s so clean and fresh, and the sky is so blue! I love the cold weather. I’m also excited to learn Norwegian. I think the Scandinavian culture is amazing, and I especially love the aesthetics of the city, and how everything is so well thought-out and organized. It makes you feel super comfortable.
Finally, what is your overall vision for the future of urban mobility?
We’re quickly realizing that cars — personal cars especially — are the disease of the century. I hope that we can rapidly start to take action on that knowledge. We know that around 70% of trips in cities are only one mile in length, which is perfect for micromobility. In five years, it would be ideal to get to a place where 20–30% of urban trips are being made by micromobility. When thinking about the future, these short trips should be made by shared vehicles, because it doesn’t make sense owning anything if you can share it instead. Right now, in general only about .5% of trips are made by shared micromobility vehicles. I think the opportunities for the future of urban mobility are immense, and this game is just getting started.
