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by mulmen
1578 days ago
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The fact that scooter companies are focused on “winning markets” makes me think they are a negative. For this to work the price has to be low. That means competition. In my neighborhood both Comcast and CenturyLink provide service. When the CenturyLink installer showed up he explained the install would take longer than estimated because he couldn’t use the line directly in front of my house. That’s a “Comcast line”. Apparently Comcast techs will literally cut competing lines off theirs. I wonder what the scooter van equivalent is. Is there someone leaving competing scooters in the middle of the sidewalk as a psy-op to disrupt competing marketshare? |
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To your point about ISP competition, the original company in the space I was at was developing generic operations software. Our main (large) client decided to inhouse instead of continue the contract, and a smaller competitor bought us. Sharing platforms isn't really in the cards; the best you'll get is MDS[0] or GBFS[1], but those initiatives are typically led by municipalities or their vendors. The former is usually restricted to regulators, and the latter isn't always reliably implemented unless the market specifies it. These are also moving specs (markets want different versions, ofc), it was great fun!
As far as "winning" vs other motivations, remember that (afaik) none of these companies are profitable yet and the VCs aren't dong this for fun. The people I worked with cared very much about the mission, but the board doesn't always agree.
[0] https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-spec...
[1] https://gbfs.mobilitydata.org/