Can Bird build a better scooter before it runs out of cash?
LOS ANGELES - A year ago, Bird Rides Inc. was flying high - and Silicon Valley was betting that it would keep on climbing.
Thousands of the Santa Monica start-up's signature black-and-white scooters appeared on street corners across the world, bought with venture capital and rented to smartphone-toting riders.
Investors saw how quickly riders took to the new mode of transit, and visions of Uber-size growth and revenues flitted through their heads. In March 2018, just six months after the first Bird hit the pavement, venture funds poured in $100 million. In June, they dumped an additional $300 million. Bird's valuation soared to $2 billion in a matter of months.
But today, facing a crowded field of competitors, pushback and fees from local governments, and fundamental questions about whether any company can make money by releasing electric scooters into the wild and charging per ride, staying aloft is proving harder than it first appeared.
"Growing from $50 million to something like $2 billion in eight months has never happened before, and is probably not supposed to happen," said Bradley Tusk, an early Bird investor and former Uber advisor known for
