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.
> (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.
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?
"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.
> I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden.
Then come to NYC and spend 60 seconds standing on a corner of an avenue in Manhattan. You'll see tons. Bikes are everywhere, and by my eyes about half are Citibikes.
Depends on where you live and the target market. I found the bike share (Bay Area Bike Share, since sold out to Ford) convenient but the bikes too clunky and heavy. I see dozens of them daily on my commute, in and out of SF. They get plenty of use here.
I have no idea where you are, but I have seen many bikes ridden all the time in London, Paris, New York, Melbourne, Lyon. Maybe you should get out of your car more?
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".
They are goddamn heroes. If you gave the same money to the SFCTA they would probably build a mile of highway facsimile.