ROAD KILL

BIRD'S ELECTRIC SCOOTER BUSINESS HAD ALL THE MAKINGS OF THE NEXT

- JASON DEL REY

Like many professionals working outside of tech, Edward Fu was skeptical when he first heard about venture-backed startups focused on a quite mundane business: scooter rentals. But when one of them, a company called Bird, offered him a job interview at its headquarters in Santa Monica, a city Fu had never visited, he was curious enough to go see what the fuss was about.

"I decided on my way to the interview that I ought to ride one of these things," Fu, a former corporate attorney with a computer science degree, told Fortune. "When you're in Santa Monica on a nice summer day, that's an amazing experience. It's transformational." He was sold.

Fu wasn't alone. Back in 2018, fascinated city dwellers and tourists from Santa Monica to Dallas were flocking to a new phenomenon of "dockless" electric scooters. Months earlier, a former Uber and Lyft executive named Travis VanderZanden had launched the Bird scooter company, with 10 consumer-grade vehicles available along the balmy Pacific coast. Competitors popped up across the world.

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Customers were dazzled by the ability to instantly locate a two-wheeled ride with a phone's GPS, start up the scooter with an app, and ditch it anywhere afterward. Bird's pitch of less-traffic-congested streets and more environmentally friendly transportation was another plus. Maybe most important, the scooters were just darn fun.

Within eight months of Bird's launch, the startup boasted of surpassing 1 million rides, often in cities where government officials hadn't expressly approved its arrival. No matter. A couple of months later, venture capital investors valued Bird at $1 billion, marking the fastest valuation ascent for any company at that time. Uber for scooters was a unicorn.