Description
Bird Rides is a micromobility company based in Santa Monica, California. Founded in September 2017 Bird operates shared electric scooters in over 100 cities in Europe, the Middle East, and North America with 10 million rides in its first year of operation.
History
Bird was founded in September 2017 by Travis VanderZanden, formerly an executive at Lyft and at Uber. It had its Series A round of funding in February 2018, raising $15 million led by Craft Ventures; this was followed by a Series B round in March for $100 million, led by Index Ventures and Valor Equity Partners, and a venture round in May for $150 million from Sequoia Capital, becoming the fastest company to ever reach the $1 billion "unicorn" valuation. In June 2018, Bird raised an additional $300 million, valuing the company at $2 billion.
In September 2018, Bird claimed 10 million rides.
In October 2018, Bird announced its Bird Zero vehicle. The Bird Zero was designed for ride sharing with "more battery life for longer range, better lighting for increased visibility, and enhanced durability for a longer life-span."
In November 2018, Bird released the Bird Platform, a program based on the company's mobile app and Bird Zero vehicles that allowed independent operators to use Bird's infrastructure to run their own fleet of shared, branded electric scooters.
In January 2019 Axios reported that Bird was raising $300 million in new funding led by Fidelity as an extension of its C funding round. Bird did not confirm this report.
On June 12, 2019, Scoot Networks was acquired for an undisclosed value as a wholly owned subsidiary of Bird. The deal was expected to be valued at around $25 million in a combination of cash and stock. The acquisition was to allow Bird to operate shared electric scooters in San Francisco.
In July 2019, Bird was said to be valued at $2.5 billion. In July 2019, the company was raising Series D funding, led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and CDPQ. This funding was intended to help the company become profitable and also continue to do further research and development of the vehicle. In October 2019, the firm successfully closed Series D funding, raising $275 million and reaching 2.8 billion valuation. This new funding was expected to help the company to upgrade its fleet with a focus on a more sustainable Bird Two model.
In November 2019, Bird launched the "Helmet Selfie" safety feature to incentivize riders into wearing helmets when using Bird vehicles. Users can submit a self-portrait photo of themselves wearing a helmet through the app, and receive future ride credits.
In January 2020, Bird acquired rival Berlin-based scooter company, Circ.
For March 2020, Bird had planned to launch in Austin, Texas after the Austin City Council approved a "dockless" bike-share pilot program in February 2018.
Bird initially responded to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic by increasing cleaning and sanitizing efforts in March 2020. Later that month, Bird scaled down operations (reportedly even suspending them within all markets), and terminated around 40% of its then about 1060 employees in a group Zoom meeting. The company halted operations in six US cities (San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Portland, Miami, and Coral Gables), as well as European markets, including Annecy, Antwerp, Barcelona, Berlin, Bordeaux, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Krakow, Lisbon, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Munich, Paris, Rimini, Sevilla, Stockholm, Torino, Verona, and Vienna.
