Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Bird Seeks $200M For Warchest For Fight With Lime Over Scooters

Santa Monica-based Bird appears to filling its war chest for a massive battle with San Francisco-based competitor Lime, and is looking to raise $200M in funding, according to regulatory filings by the company this week. The news comes as Lime apparently is raising $250M of its own, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). The two are in the rapidly expanding fight for the streets, as they deploy on-demand, electric scooters which users can unlock and use with their smartphone, for "last mile" transportation in dense urban environments. Bird's CEO and founder, Travis VanderZanden, was COO at Lyft, and also had been at Uber; for its part, Lime's new backer, GV, was one of the primary backers of Uber. Both Bird and Lime--as well as a number of other competitors--have been using an Uber- and Lyft-like strategy of deploying their electric scooters to city first, and then grappling with the inevitable backlash by public officials as their scooters clutter up city sidewalks, rather than asking for permission for deployment.

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