It’s worth starting with a comment that I am terribly risk averse, and therefore… not much fun. When Ford micromobility subsidiary Spin first launched a fleet of electric scooters in my hometown of Pittsburgh last summer, my immediate instinct was very old-man-shouts-to-cloud.
Young people took over the streets and sidewalks, racing through downtown and the North Shore on the orange scooters. In the more hilly parts of the city – just in case you don’t know about Pittsburgh, that is most of the city – they were a stationary threat, left on sidewalks, under bridges and in the middle of alleys.
I wrote off the Spin scooters as an inevitable consequence of city life and vowed to avoid the cursed means of transport. Around the same time two things happened: I started editing a lot Rebecca Bellan‘s contributions to businesskinda.com, and I started dating a guy who swears scooters are fun.
Micromobility startup founders have provided many good arguments for why fleets of electric scooters and bicycles make sense. First of all, they are not cars, which is great for improving air quality and improving rush hour traffic. They can help solve the “last-mile problem” – getting people from the last stop on the subway or bus line to their home or work. They’re theoretically more affordable than owning a car or even hailing a cab or an Uber, and solve obvious equity problems for low-income earners.
I didn’t believe it – they struck me as dangerous, rickety and untenable on several levels. Venture capitalists disagreed and dumped millions into Bird and Lime, among others.
If you’ve read businesskinda.com, you know what happened next.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.