Our Investment in Wheels
The Next Evolution in Last-mile Mobility
Wavemaker Partners is thrilled to announce our investment in Wheels’ Series A round. The revolutionary last-mile mobility company will use the funds to bring Wheels’ first-in-the-world fleet of environmentally-friendly, shared electric bikes to a number of markets nationwide later in 2019.
The Market: The latest wave of innovation in the transportation industry has evolved around last-mile transportation through a new generation of bicycle and scooter companies, which have become ubiquitous in major cities all over the globe. The continued trend of urbanization (55% of the world’s population — a whopping 4.2 billion people — live in urban areas) underscores the importance of last-mile transportation. Pioneering companies have started to tap into the tremendous latent demand by providing easy, cheap, and flexible last-mile transportation solutions.
The Problem: Despite the hyper growth of scooter and bike startups, it is apparent that several key issues persist. Many consumers are not comfortable riding scooters, their overall instability make them more prone to crashes and accidents, and companies are experiencing high failure rates.
Wheels’ Solution: Wheels has identified a major opportunity to better serve cities with a sustainability-first approach to dockless electric mobility. By offering a custom-designed electric bike, Wheels’ revolutionary form factor opens up a whole new segment of the market that is not being served by existing solutions. It also extends distance traveled per trip through a more comfortable travel experience.
Our Take: Led by proven, repeat entrepreneurs in Jonathan and Joshua (the founders of startup Wag), Wheels is well-positioned to capture a significant share of the growing last-mile mobility market thanks to several core innovations. First, the Wheels e-bike is modular in design. Unlike other competitors, Wheels has not white labeled an existing product from manufacturers. Instead Wheels has taken early learnings from the flaws and challenges competitors have faced to design a custom modular bike from day one. The second key differentiation is Wheels’ form factor. Due to it being an e-bike as a opposed to a scooter, the Wheels product opens up a whole new segment of riders, beyond the traditional 18–34 demographic early players have targeted. Scooters require significant coordination and are difficult to control, whereas the Wheels e-bike is easy-to-control and stable.
Welcome to the Wavemaker portfolio, Wheels!
Originally published at wavemaker.vc on February 19, 2019.
