logistics
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Meet Uber’s newly promoted chief product officer, Manik Gupta
Manik Gupta got his first taste of solving logistics nightmares when, fresh out of college, he was delivering Palm Pilots around Singapore. He’d started a precursor to Groupon called BuyItTogether. “We were a full-stack marketplace where we were also delivering the goods. That’s what caused us to not have good profit margins. Actually, zero profit margins,” he recalls with a laugh.
His new gig isn’t earning profits either. Uber lost nearly $1 billion last quarter. But the company sees Gupta’s experience with delivery and maps as crucial to building an app that caters to people’s every desire so they never stray and keep earning it money. That’s why today Uber announced that it’s promoted its VP of maps and marketplace Manik Gupta to become its new chief product officer.
“We look at ourself at Uber as the starting point of all your transportation needs” Gupta tells me. “Here’s a company that’s causing this interesting change in user behavior. With my own knowledge and capability, I thought I could help the company get to the next level of understanding the real world, which is very different from digital habits.” His first big projects will be augmenting GPS for more accurate pickups and making Uber’s new rider and driver loyalty program work in every market.
From entrepreneurship to the massive supply chain of HP, to the top of Google India and now at Uber, Gupta is one of those technologists who lives to eliminate frustration. He framed nearly every question I asked him in the sense of problems and solutions. In the messy physical realm of clogged streets, that mentality goes a long way.
“I grew up in India and things weren’t always very structured” Gupta says when asked where that philosophy came from. “I learned to manage uncertainty and the importance of having a Plan B at a very early age. I faced a lot of real-time micro-problems needing micro-solutions and I guess I’ve honed this skill over time.”
Back in 1999 with BuyItTogether, there were no logistics networks. “We couldn’t get the retailers to do the delivery themselves. So we had to do it,” Gupta remembers, seeming like he’s still a bit exhausted by the experience. He eventually sold BuyItTogether to a Norwegian company called CoShopper and spent a few years bringing the service to Europe. “That was my first foray into doing things in the real world and being focused how we can move things from point A to point B as fast as possible.”
Manik Gupta’s first startup, the very 1990s “BuyItTogether”
From there he joined Hewlett Packard as it struggled to match Dell’s direct-to-consumer sales model, which he says “required building tons of muscles for HP.” After getting an MBA, he joined Google India in Bangalore. “My first week, my manager asked me what are the things I’m interested in, and told me ‘There’s something called Maps that no one seems to be owning. Do you want to work on that?’”
That opportunity would set him on the path to Uber. He launched Google Maps in India and managed MapMaker, the crowdsourcing tool that gave Google feet on the ground in tiny towns around the world. Gupta moved to Mountain View in 2011 to oversee Google’s push to make its own maps, which after seven years at the company set him up to join as Uber’s VP of maps and marketplace in 2015.
Now after nearly three years, and spending the last five months filling in since Uber’s VP of Product Daniel Graf left, Gupta is in the top product spot at Uber. Its previous CPO Jeff Holden who’d focused on flying cars left in May. Gupta is humble about the new gig, repeating “I’m here to help,” rather than to lead or become some tech luminary. He seems happy leaving that to Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
Knowing that Uber is spread across so many culturally distinct places, Gupta wants his teams to build what’s right for the world around them rather than trying to make Uber the same everywhere. “One of the things I learned back at Google is that you really have to empower teams that are locally situated.” For example, the India team was fully responsible for the development of its new Uber Lite app for emerging markets with slow connections and old phones.
One thing I hope he develops a coherent cross-border strategy for is helmets. With Uber’s bikes and scooters proliferating, people around the world are increasingly hopping on and hopping off. But the spontaneous nature of the experience means many riders aren’t wearing helmets. If that practice continues, major injuries will stack up. Not only is it a moral imperative that Uber develop a helmet solution, like something collapsible or that attaches to the vehicle between rides, but its relationship with local governments will depend on keeping citizens safe.
As for Gupta’s personal roadmap, he’s concentrating on rolling out the Uber Rewards rider loyalty and Uber Pro driver loyalty initiatives. “Both of these programs are just getting started, so I’m focused on getting them installed in the communities we serve.”
Drawing on his Google Maps experience, Gupta is developing a new way to make sure drivers and riders can always find each other. “We’re rethinking GPS to solve a major pain point for riders and drivers: pick up location. These locations are particularly tricky for GPS to find when they’re in “urban jungles” or areas with a lot of tall buildings” Gupta explains. “The technology we’re piloting in a handful of cities improves GPS performance in these cities by using maps and satellite signal strengths to help drivers find pick up points more easily.” The means you might not have to run across four lanes of traffic to get to your ride.
But knowing Uber’s history of culture issues, Gupta wants to ensure his team lives by Dara’s new mantra of ‘Do the right thing. Period.’ “This is a super important topic as well. I believe that the way you set culture starts at the top. Dara has been a phenomenal agent of change within the company. Over the course of this year we have attracted excellent talent for the product team — from the Facebooks and Googles of the world. We have this melting pot of people from all different backgrounds.” To build for everyone, he knows each of those voices must be heard.
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Uber is developing an on-demand staffing business
Uber is reportedly developing a short-term staffing business to offer 1099 independent contractors for events and corporate functions, the Financial Times first reported. Dubbed Uber Works, the service would provide waiters, security guards and other temporary staffers to business partners, a source close to Uber told TechCrunch.
Uber has been working on the project for several months in Chicago, after first trialing the project in Los Angeles. Uber already has a vast network of drivers — all of whom have become familiarized with the process of filing taxes as an independent contractor — who may be looking for additional work. However, Uber’s current pilot program does not include active Uber drivers.
Uber Works falls under the purview of Rachel Holt, who stepped into the role of head of new modalities in June. Holt, who has been with Uber since 2011, is tasked with ramping up and onboarding new mobility services like bikes, scooters, car rentals and public transit integration.
In a job posting for a general manager to lead special projects in Chicago, Uber says, “our business is based around providing a flexible, on-demand supply for our business partners – it’s imperative that we have intuitive and responsive account management to support for our business partners in addressing their needs promptly.”
Uber declined to comment for this story. But as the company gears up for its initial public offering next year, Uber is clearly trying to diversify its business. In the last year, Uber double-downed on multi-modal transportation with the acquisition and deployment of JUMP bike-share. And in the last month, Uber deployed electric scooters in Santa Monica, Calif.
Whether this effort launches remains to be seen, but it’s certainly something Uber is exploring and positioning as a business-to-business service. In a similar vein, Uber is also working to create a pipeline to hire some of its driver partners.
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Deliverr raises $7M to help e-commerce businesses compete with Amazon Prime
When Amazon rolled out its membership-based two-day shipping service in 2005, e-commerce and customer expectations around fulfillment speed changed forever.
Today, more than 100 million people use Amazon Prime. That means, 100 million people are fully accustomed to two-day shipping and if they can’t have it, they shop elsewhere. As The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims recently put it: “Alongside life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you can now add another inalienable right: two-day shipping on practically everything.”
Only recently have Amazon’s competitors begun to offer similar fast delivery options. About two years ago, Walmart launched its own free two-day delivery service for its owned-inventory; eBay followed suit, establishing a three-day or less delivery guaranteed option for shoppers in March 2017.
To power these Prime-like delivery options, Walmart, eBay and the Canadian e-commerce business Shopify are relying on a little upstart.
One-year-old Deliverr helps businesses offer rapid delivery experiences to their customers. Today, the company is announcing a $7.1 million Series A led by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, with participation from Zola founder Shan-Lyn Ma, Flexport chief executive officer Ryan Peterson and others.
The San Francisco-based startup uses machine learning and predictive intelligence to determine which of its warehouses to store its client’s goods.
Currently, Deliverr operates out of more than 10 warehouses in Texas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey, among other states, though co-founder Michael Krakaris says that number is growing every week. Its customers typically store inventory in three to five different locations based on Deliverr’s predictive algorithms.
Unlike Amazon, which owns more than 75 fulfillment centers, Deliverr doesn’t own its warehouses. Krakaris describes the company’s strategy as a sort of Uber for fulfillment.
“Uber didn’t change the physical infrastructure of cars. They didn’t build their own taxis. What they did was create software that could connect excess capacity drivers,” Krakaris told TechCrunch. “Most warehouses aren’t going to be full. We are going in and filling that extra space they wouldn’t otherwise fill.”
One of the startup’s tricks is to use brand-neutral packaging so any and all marketplaces could theoretically power fulfillment through Deliverr. Amazon, of course, sticks a Prime sticker on all its outgoing packages. And because Amazon’s fulfillment service is used by some eBay sellers, eBay items are known to show up at customers’ homes in Amazon-branded packaging. Not a great look for eBay.
“You need an independent fulfillment service that can handle all these different fulfillment channels and be neutral,” Krakaris said.
Deliverr plans to use the investment to scale its team and ink partnerships with additional online retailers.
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BloomThat pauses on-demand flower services
Following an acquisition by FTD Companies earlier this year for a reportedly small amount of cash, on-demand flower service BloomThat is pausing its services as it works “to figure out how to best integrate BloomThat as part of the FTD portfolio of brands,” the founders wrote to its customers a few days ago.
“Before we go, we want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of our loyal bloomers,” the founders wrote. “Over the last five years, you’ve brightened many lives with a simple, thoughtful gesture. Thank you for entrusting us with your most important moments – we’re honored to have been a part of a truly special movement.”
In February 2016, BloomThat launched its flower delivery service nationwide. But instead of offering delivery within a couple of hours, BloomThat guaranteed next-day delivery, which effectively moved the startup into the territory of 1-800-FLOWERS and FTD.
BloomThat will continue to fulfill orders through September 28, 2018. Those who are interested in continuing to buy flowers after the end of this month are being directed to FTD or ProFlowers.com.
Prior to the acquisition, BloomThat had raised $7.5 million from investors like Rothenberg Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Sherpa Capital and others, with the most recent round in April 2015.
I’ve reached out to BloomThat and will update this story if I hear back.
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Logistics startup Freightos raises $44.4M Series C led by Singapore Exchange
Freightos, a marketplace for logistics providers, announced today that it has raised a $44.4 million Series C led by Singapore Exchange. Returning investors including General Electric Ventures (the lead investor of Freightos’ Series B extension last year), ICV and Aleph also participated in the round, which brings Freightos’ total funding so far to $94.4 million.
Launched in 2016 as a price comparison service for freight forwarders—the agents that organize shipments from a supplier or manufacturer to their final destination—Freightos now also lets users book, manage and track shipments with more than 1,200 logistics providers.
In an email, founder and CEO Zvi Schreiber said its online freight marketplace will continue to be Freightos’ flagship product, but the company also wants to find ways to make the industry more efficient by building a global digital infrastructure.
The company claims to process more than one million instant freight quote requests each month using its patent-pending routing and pricing engines. Its database of global shipping rates also underpins the Freightos Baltic Index (FBX), an industry-specific index created to provide more pricing transparency.
Developed in partnership with the Baltic Exchange, a market information provider for the maritime transportation industry, the FBX tracks freight pricing from 12 major routes around the world and also combines them into one index to serve as the freight industry’s equivalent of the S&P 500.
“Nearly every major global industry, from jet fuel to livestock, leverages dynamic pricing based on real-time metrics to make smarter, automated decisions. We’re excited to explore how our global freight index, the Freightos Baltic Index, can reduce pricing risks and improve stability, and are already exploring implementation with major multinational corporations,” Schreiber said.
He added that Freightos is also looking at more ways to connect airlines with logistics providers to sell cargo space on passenger flights.
Freightos will partner with the Singapore Exchange, which owns the Baltic Exchange, to develop new financial instruments. It will start by launching daily reporting on the FBX, which is currently updated weekly.
In a press statement, SGX head of derivatives Michael Syn said, “Freightos is at the forefront of a new wave of solutions for price discovery and digital marketplaces in global freight – an industry at the heart of the global economy. SGX is excited by the potential to develop risk management tools and services and build on Singapore’s unique position in the trade ecosystem, to bridge the physical and financial markets.”
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Uber fires up its own traffic estimates to fuel demand beyond cars
If the whole map is red and it’s a short ride, maybe you’d prefer taking an Uber JUMP Bike instead of an UberX. Or at least if you do end up stuck bumper-to-bumper, the warning could make you less likely to get mad mid-ride and take it out on the driver’s rating.
This week TechCrunch spotted Uber overlaying blue, yellow, and red traffic condition bars on your route map before you hail. Responding to TechCrunch’s inquiry, Uber confirmed that traffic estimates have been quietly testing for riders on Android over the past few months and the pilot program recently expanded to a subset of iOS users. It’s already live for all drivers.
The congestion indicators are based on Uber’s own traffic information pulled from its historic trip data about 10 billion rides plus real-time data from its drivers’ phones, rather than estimates from Google that already power Uber’s maps.
If traffic estimates do roll out, they could make users more tolerant of longer ETAs and less likely to check a competing app since they’ll know their driver might take longer to pick them up because congestion is to blame rather than Uber’s algorithm. During the ride they might be more patient amidst the clogged streets.
Uber’s research into traffic in India
But most interestingly, seeing traffic conditions could help users choose when it’s time to take one of Uber’s non-car choices. They could sail past traffic in one of Uber’s new electric JUMP Bikes, or buy a public transportation ticket from inside Uber thanks to its new partnership with Masabi for access to New York’s MTA plus buses and trains in other cities. Cheaper and less labor intensive for Uber, these options make more sense to riders the more traffic there is. It’s to the company’s advantage to steer users towards the most satisfying mode of transportation, and traffic info could point them in the right direction.
Through a program called Uber Movement, the company began sharing its traffic data with city governments early last year. The goal was to give urban planners the proof they need to make their streets more efficient. Uber has long claimed that it can help reduce traffic by getting people into shared rides and eliminating circling in search of parking. But a new study showed that for each mile of personal driving Uber and Lyft eliminated, they added 2.8 miles of professional driving for an 180 percent increase in total traffic.
Uber is still learning whether users find traffic estimates helpful before it considers rolling them out permanently to everyone. Right now they only appear on unshared UberX, Black, XL, SUV, and Taxi routes before you hail to a small percentage of users. But Uber’s spokesperson verified that the company’s long-term goal is to be able to tell users that the cheapest way to get there is option X, the quickest is option Y, and the most comfortable is option Z. Traffic estimates are key to that. And now that it’s had so many cars on the road for so long, it has the signals necessary to predict which streets will be smooth and which will be jammed at a given hour.
For years, Uber called itself a logistics company, not a ride sharing company. Most people gave it a knowing wink. Every Silicon Valley company tries to trump up its importance by claiming to conquer a higher level of abstraction. But with advent of personal transportation modes like on-demand bikes and scooters, Uber is poised to earn the title by getting us from point A to point B however we prefer.
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Lori Systems is launching a service with the Kenyan government for last-mile haulage from railroads
For Lori Systems chief executive and co-founder Josh Sandler, deals like the one between his company and the Kenyan government to solve last-mile solutions around the national railroad are about far more than just logistics.
Sandler, whose family battled apartheid in South Africa as social workers, township doctors and (more dangerously) as financiers for the Spear of the Nation (the armed wing of the African National Congress), looks at logistics as an economic cornerstone for building more stable and democratic societies in sub-Saharan Africa.
His parents had immigrated to the U.S. in 1990 when Sandler was still a young child to escape the violence that accompanied the negotiations to dissolve South Africa’s apartheid state. Sandler’s father had worked as a doctor in township hospitals, while his mother was a social worker who was setting up a support network for abused children.
“A lot of the family was getting arrested and the country was breaking up and people feared a civil war and my dad got a fellowship in America and moved to Florida,” Sandler says.
But South Africa remained the touchstone for Sandler’s family life and he would often return to visit those activist relatives who remained to help shepherd the country through its early years as a democracy. It was during one visit to the country — when Sandler was working in a refugee camp — that the need for better economic solutions to the region’s problems became clear.
In the aftermath of the economic collapse of Zimbabwe and the long-simmering civil war in the Congo in 2008, refugees from the region were flooding into South Africa — and it triggered a response in the country’s citizens. Xenophobic violence resulted in rioting, looting and the murder of immigrants at camps — and Sandler had gone to volunteer at the shelters that were caring for these refugees.
“I had been debating between investment banking and the peace corps and went with investment banking because there needs to be a macroeconomic solution for this,” Sandler said. “Finding the core challenges from a macro perspective and preventing this from occurring by establishing strong systems and an economy that can prevent… all of these crises.”
So Sandler studied development economics. His work focused on supply chains — specifically working with the Kenyan government to analyze what went into the dramatic cost increases that are attendant with the sale of every good and service in the country. “When you buy a mango on a farm, it’s half a penny and then in the supermarket it’s 80 cents,” said Sandler.
From Kenya, Sandler moved to study Nigeria and worked on problems with supply chain management in pharmaceuticals. “I did a lot of trips and treks back to the continent and what I kept seeing is challenges in the supply chain — part of it is middlemen and part of it is haulage.” Sandler said. “That’s a big issue that’s due to a lack of flexibility and coordination in the system.”
After seeing the elegance of the marketplace model that Uber had set up for ride-hailing and given the penetration of smart and feature phones in Africa, Sandler thought he could do something to create a marketplace for the trucking industry.
“Before, providers were managing individual trucking companies with a difficult marketplace and no transparency,” says Sandler. “By driving that through our system and having more pricing visibility we’re able to bring down the cost of bringing bulk grains to Uganda by 17.3 percent.”
Lori Systems first launched in Kenya and started working with a network of trucking companies. Around that time the company also came to the attention of TechCrunch.
Yes, Lori Systems has been on a TechCrunch stage before — as competitors (and eventual winners) of our inaugural TechCrunch Battlefield competition in Nairobi.
Since appearing on stage at our Nairobi event, Lori has grown quickly. The company counts 70 employees on staff — up from 20 — and now has 70 cargo operators responsible for a network of 2,500 trucks using its service.
The staffing changes at Lori include some big new executive hires, including Andrew Musoke, who has come on board as director of commercial products, and a former director of Maersk, Mehul Bhaat, who will be running operations in East Africa for Lori, Sandler says.
Lori has also expanded internationally — working with fleets in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa while also increasing the types of cargo that its fleet operators are transporting. “We went from just doing grain and fertilizer to now we do all freight bulk,” says Sandler.
Not everything about the TechCrunch experience was positive for Sandler and the company. After their victory, Lori, and Sandler, were subjected to criticism from some African press. “There were really bizarre implications with the underlying tone being white male privilege,” says Sandler. “It’s an important conversation to have around white male privilege… [but] it was coming out on a very personal level on a gossip column.”
The accusations aside, Sandler said the victory in the Startup Battlefield Africa competition validated the company with potential new hires.
As for the opportunity, Sandler says there’s $180 billion in hauling income across the African continent, and very little of it has been optimized with software. Ultimately, if Lori succeeds it will mean lower prices and increased spending power for consumers across Africa.
“If you’re earning a dollar a day and 40 percent or 60 percent is going to logistics that could be going somewhere else, that’s a problem,” Sandler said. It’s exactly the problem that Lori is setting out to solve.
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Crater rebrands as Shyft to focus on helping global nomads move
After finally settling on a new apartment, packing your last box and rushing out to pick up your moving van for the measly three hours you could book it — have you ever taken a moment to think, “Wow, this is so easy?”
Nope, and neither has anybody else. But Shyft, a logistics platform company based in San Francisco, is hoping to change that.
Originally named Crater, the company announced today a re-brand of its name and mission to focus on helping improve the corporate relocation process for millions of movers per year. The company is bringing with it three years of experience developing software and technology to help moving companies provide better estimates and service to customers.
“We spend hours thinking about these global citizens who are moving everyday and literally shifting their lives,” Shyft CMO Rajiv Parikh told TechCrunch. “They’re moving to new communities, they’re finding new schools, they’re finding new opportunities. It’s a monumental and pivotal moment in someone’s life.”
The process works two-fold. First, Shyft is continuing its partnerships with moving companies and selling its software to them in order to help update their portals and make the process as seamless as possible for their existing customers. As part of these partnerships, Shyft is able to create a reliable network of moving companies and services that it can utilize in the second part of its service — connecting with corporate Fortune 500 companies to help their transferees easily and intuitively complete their moving process.
Through the platform, employees planning a move can fill out information like how many boxes they’re moving, what their housing needs will be and even what kind of food they like and dietary restrictions they have. With this data, Shyft will help direct them to the services they need and work to help them best integrate into their new communities.
Shyft works with corporate companies’ lump-sum funds to help employees find the best price possible for their move. And transferees can use the services for free (or be reimbursed the difference).
“A traditional moving company is focused on moving — dollars and cents — [and] they want the largest and the biggest moves out there,” Shyft CEO Alex Alpert told TechCrunch. “From our perspective, we’re agnostic to that. If it’s in someone’s best interest to sell their sofa and buy a new one, we want to help facilitate that.”
In a recent collaboration with eBay, the company says it has seen large increases in the number of employees using its portal instead of trying to figure out logistics on their own.
“We have monitored the use of Shyft in our lump sum program and have seen a marked increase in the willingness of employees to engage with Shyft to identify the best solution to their moving needs,” eBay Director of HR Global Mobility Eric Halverson said in a statement. “Shyft is helping our employees optimize their lump sum allowance with a variety of moving solutions geared to their personal needs and circumstances.”
Alpert says that Shyft is now focusing on growing and refining its service, and this summer was accepted to join Moderne Venture’s summer Passport Program. The seven-month industry immersion program is designed to help companies refine their go-to-market strategies and network with others working in the real estate, finance, insurance and home-services spaces.
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Lowe’s Ventures backs Moved, a startup that makes moving less stressful
Adam Pittenger knows that moving is tough — after all, he said he’s moved eight times in the past seven years.
Pittenger said that there are several reasons why the process can be stressful, like the fact that most people aren’t experts on moving, since they don’t do it as often as him (seriously, eight times is crazy). Plus, there’s just an enormous amount of planning and coordination required, whether it’s hiring movers, buying packing materials or putting your things into storage.
So Pittenger decided to make the whole process a lot easier by founding Moved. Moving, he said, “doesn’t have to be that stressful,” because with Moved, you get “a personal assistant coordinating all the aspects of your move.”
Moved is announcing that it’s raised $3.2 million in seed funding from Lowe’s Ventures (the early-stage investment arm of the home improvement giant), FJ Labs, AngelPad, Real Estate Technology Ventures and others.
To sign up for Moved, you fill out a questionnaire about where you’re moving to and from, and what kinds of services you need. Moved (available via desktop web or mobile app) will then reach out to movers and provide you with multiple quotes from which you can choose.
And while, as Pittenger put it, “the immediate thing you need to do is book the movers,” Moved offers a broader range of services, like ordering packing supplies, helping you donate stuff you don’t need anymore, finding a storage unit, updating your address, finding painters and more.
Moving can also be expensive, so the company has announced a partnership with Affirm, where Affirm’s financing will allow you to break up the moving costs into monthly payments.
To be clear, Moved isn’t doing the moving itself — instead, it’s basically connecting you to a marketplace of movers and other service providers. Pittenger said the company is “very strict about the suppliers and the vendors” and will remove them if customers aren’t happy with their experience.
Moved is managing all of this through a real, human assistant who can help you figure out what you need, handle the scheduling and serve as a “consumer advocate” who ensures that you’re not getting ripped off.
Pittenger said the service is free for consumers, with a fee charged to vendors at the time of booking. And it’s available throughout the United States.
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With Lime teaming up with Uber, can rival Bird afford to go it alone?
Yesterday, we learned that 18-month-old, Bay Area-based electric scooter rental company Lime is joining forces with the ride-hailing giant Uber, which is both investing in the company as part of a $335 million round and planning to promote Lime in its mobile app. According to Bloomberg, Uber also plans to plaster its logo on Lime’s scooters.
Lime isn’t being acquired outright, in short, but it looks like it will be. At least, Uber struck a similar arrangement with the electric bike company JUMP bikes before spending $200 million to acquire the company in spring.
There are as many questions raised by this kind of tie-up as answered, but the biggest may be what the impact means for Lime’s fiercest rival in the e-scooter wars, 15-month-old L.A.-based Bird, which several sources tell us also discussed a potential partnership with Uber.
Despite recently raising $300 million in fresh capital at a somewhat stunning $2 billion valuation, could its goose be, ahem, cooked?
At first glance, it would appear so. Uber’s travel app is the most downloaded in the U.S. by a wide margin, despite gains made last year by its closest U.S. competitor, Lyft, as Uber battled one scandal after another. It’s easy to imagine that Lime’s integration with Uber will give it the kind of immediate brand reach that most founders can only dream about.
A related issue for Bird is its relationship with Lyft, which . . . isn’t great. Bird’s founder and CEO, Travis VanderZanden, burned that bridge when, not so long after Lyft acqui-hired VanderZanden from a small startup he’d launched and made him its COO, he left to join rival Uber.
Lyft, which sued VanderZanden for allegedly breaking a confidentiality agreement when he joined Uber, later settled with him for undisclosed terms. But given their history, it’s hard to imagine Lyft — which also has a much smaller checkbook than Uber — paying top dollar to acquire his company.
Where that leaves Bird is an open question, but people familiar with both Bird and Lime suggest the e-scooter war is far from over.
For example, though Uber sees its partnership with Lime as “another step towards our vision of becoming a one-stop shop for all your transportation needs,” two sources familiar with Bird’s thinking are quick to underscore its plans to expand internationally quickly and not merely fight a turf war in the U.S. (It already has one office in China.)
That Sequoia Capital led Bird’s most recent round of funding helps on this front, given Sequoia Capital China’s growing dominancein the country and the relationships that go with it. Then again, Sequoia is also an investor in Uber, having acquired a stake in the company earlier this year. And alliances are generally temperamental in this brave new world of transportation. In just the latest unexpected twist, Lime’s newest round included not only Uber but also GV, the venture arm of Alphabet, which only recently resolved a lawsuit with Uber.
Another wrinkle to consider is the exposure that Lime receives from Uber, which could prove double-edged, given the company’s ups and downs. Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, appears determined to steer the company to a smooth and decidedly undramatic public offering in another year or so. But for a company of Uber’s scale and scope, that’s a challenge, to say the least. (Its newest hire, Scott Schools — a former top attorney at the U.S. Justice Department and now Uber’s chief compliance officer — will undoubtedly be tasked with minimizing the odds of things going astray.)
Lime’s arrangement with Uber could potentially create other opportunities for Bird. First, by agreeing to allow Uber to apply its branding to its scooters, Lime will be diluting its own brand. Even if Uber never acquires the company, riders may well associate Lime with Uber and think, for better or worse, that it’s a subsidiary.
Further, Uber does not appear to have made any promises to Lime in terms of how prominently its app is featured within its own mobile app, which already crams in quite a lot, from offering free ride coupons to featuring local offers to promoting its Uber Eats business.
Consider that in January 2017, Google added to both the Android and iOS versions of its Google Maps service the ability to book an Uber ride. Uber might have thought that a coup, too, at the time. But last summer, Google quietly removed the feature from its iOS app, and it removed the service from Android just last month. If there wasn’t much outrage over the decision, likely it’s because so few users of Google Maps noticed the feature in the first place.
Lime’s arrangement could prove more advantageous than that. Only time will tell. But everything considered, whether or not Bird flies away with this competition will likely owe less to Lime’s new arrangement with Uber than with its own ability to execute. That includes making its own mobile app the kind of go-to destination that Uber’s has become.
Certainly, that’s what Bird’s flock would argue will happen. Yesterday afternoon, Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia and a Bird board member, declined to discuss the Lime deal, instead emailing one short observation seemingly designed to say it all: “Travis [VanderZanden] is far more customer obsessed than competitor obsessed. That is a quality we look for in great founders.”
A Bird spokesperson offered an equally sanguine quote, saying that Bird is “happy to see our friends in the ride-sharing industry coalesce on the pressing need to offer a sustainable and affordable alternative to car trips.”
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