
Shock as $140m bike-share startup CEO goes AWOL ahead of impending collapse - schakraberty
https://www.techinasia.com/bluegogo-bluegonegone
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revelation
As I see it, these guys took US$60 million from VCs and used it to donate
350000 perfectly robust bicycles to some parts of the world most in need of
modern transportation (SF).

They are goddamn heroes. If you gave the same money to the SFCTA they would
probably build a mile of highway facsimile.

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tstyle
> (Bluegogo) holds tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits
> from its approximate 15 million users, which many now fear cannot be
> refunded.

These guys took millions from users in the form of deposits.

~~~
tinus_hn
So as a user you should take one bike and hold it as leverage. If they don’t
return the deposit you sell the bike.

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jurassic
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden. I have
seen rows of bike share bikes sitting parked taking up useful space that could
have been allocated more usefully as public parking for people riding bikes
they own.

I assume there must be some aspect to this business I’m not understanding if
they are able to talk cities into giving them valuable street space and
investors into backing them to the tune of $50M+. I’m not seeing what value
they add by centralizing ownership of what is already a very inexpensive and
democratic mode of transportation. What is the play here?

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden."_

One person's noticing or not noticing bikes being ridden is a poor way to
judge the effectiveness of a city-wide program.

I know I've seen plenty of bike-share racks mostly empty of bikes. I could
assume from that that these bikes are currently being used. But that's a poor
way of judging too, because I don't know if they were ever full, or how many
bikes were stolen or lost, etc.

The real way to judge is from data collected by the agency in charge of the
bike share program itself (assuming they keep such data and that the data can
be trusted), or to have some independent third party keep track of all the
bikes and their use.

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tossaway1
"staff this week told salary payments will be delayed until February 10, 2018"

For real?? What sane person would continue working for them at this point?
Might as well say February 10, 2028...

~~~
tyingq
I guess I would come in and solely work on finding my next job until I either
landed it or got fired.

Then there would be the off chance I'd get paid later for the search.

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valuearb
It’s hard to imagine why they found this shocking. Many startups with
questionable business models end up bankrupt, no matter how well funded.

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shusson
In Sydney you're required to wear a helmet, and there are not many people
willing share helmets...

~~~
synicalx
At least the helmets don't have people's junk and a __sweat on them all the
time. Whole thing is pretty gross when you think about it.

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thisisit
Why is it "shocking"? That is never explained in the article.

From the looks of it their two revenue models were advertising and flat user
fees.

So the fees would have been super low to get as many customers on the platform
and the ad dollars were not exactly rolling in.

~~~
londons_explore
Their revenue was _deposits_ made by users to use the service.

If every user has to pay $60 refundable security deposit to get started, and
you can attract a million users to try your service a couple of times, you can
quickly pay for a few thousand bikes.

The vast majority of users will then forget to reclaim their deposit.

OBike for example reminds users who try to refund their deposit that if they
want to sign up again there will be a fee to pay. That discourages users from
claiming the refund because they think "huh - I might want to use this again
in the future, and if I do, I don't want to pay a fee".

