Disrupting the micromobility sector
Madison Rifkin walks us through her entrepreneurial journey in the e-scooter sector
Bienvenido de nuevo !
In today’s issue we will explore how a cool micromobility startup is rapidly expanding, in the crowded and competitive space of e-scooters. But before we properly introduce Mount, let’s rewind for a bit.
Micromobility can play a significant role in decarbonising the passenger road emissions in big cities and even in smaller towns across the globe. But, why is decarbonising the road transportation sector (so) important? Well, because it is one of the major CO2 contributors. In fact road transport (passengers and freight combined) alone makes up to 15% of CO2 emissions. The electrification of that space is accelerating in every single transport category, and in our view even long-haul freight is very likely to be part of the “electrification-of-everything” revolution (vs other potential contenders like hydrogen-based alternatives).
Zooming in at the city level, one of the best ways to decarbonize the transport sector is to provide the end-consumer (let’s say you, the driver) with options to NOT take your ICE (or even electric) car at all when you’re exploring a city. We, as society, must prevent, abate and mitigate CO2 emissions as much and as fast as we can. Having access to e-bikes or in this case an e-scooter in strategic places (maybe in your next Airbnb as we’ll find out with Madison) can help in this endeavour. The e-scooter revolution may have put Bird and Lime in unicorn status and favoured the growth of several other companies, but not everything is as good as it looks.
This fast growth overpopulated cities, brought more chaos to traffic and pedestrians, caused thousands of injured and angered locals. Shared e-scooters have become a symbol of indolence and it is common to see a pile of them tossed on a corner. There's even a famous instagram account called @birdgraveyard documenting vandalised and abandoned scooters. Not to mention that their useful lifetime is very short so they end up being thrown away in landfills very rapidly. One is left to wonder how green really the e-scooter market is.
So with all of the above in mind, we had a great chat with Madison Rifkin, the CEO and founder of Mount, an e-scooter and bikes provider in short term vacation rental properties around the world. Mount is disrupting the micromobility sector by giving the e-scooters a chance to redeem themselves in a more sustainable and eco-friendly business model. Madison and the rest of Mount’s team have proved that their business model works and they have experienced great growth. In order to keep up with their momentum, they decided to launch a Wefunder campaign (www.wefunder.com/mountscooters) to enable investors to get in earlier on slightly better terms before a future larger raise is on the horizon. Once the Wefunder hits its goal this opportunity goes away (so if you’re an investor check them out - and remember capital is at risk). Investors can get in for a minimum of $100.
In any case, it was great fun to chat with Madison, below a condensed version of our conversation and if you prefer to listen to it click (and follow us) in the latest episode of the ClimateTech Talks show:
(This interview has been edited for clarity and length purposes).
What's up everyone? This is Daniel Arráiz, co-host of the ClimateTech Talks show, today we have Madison Rifkin. She's the founder of Mount. Welcome to the show, Madison.
Madison: Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
I'm sure this is going to be a great conversation. Why don't we take it from the beginning? Who is Madison Rifkin?
Yes. Well, I am the current CEO and founder of Mount, where we launch electric scooters and bikes at short term vacation rental properties around the world. Currently I am a 23 years old young entrepreneur, on my journey to learn more about entrepreneurship and hopefully help the climate along the way.
Wait, you said 23? That's awesome.
Yeah, it's very young, young in my journey.
When did you start your entrepreneurial journey then?
I started it at a very young age, actually, when I was 12 was the first time I was inventing bike locks. And I was lucky and fortunate enough that my middle school had an invention competition program, where I got to basically spend the whole school year in one of my classes developing a bike lock and pitch it at the end to a panel of judges. It was a huge competition for the school. And I ended up winning a patent from that competition. So fully funded, which I got when I was 15. That was kind of the spark, that’s when I was like: ‘Oh, my gosh, this is like the coolest thing ever’. And I don't know if I ever want to leave this industry, even though I was that young.
That's great. It's also in your family, or is it only because of your relation to the school?
I would say first the relation to the school. But yes, both my grandfather's were entrepreneurs back in their day, starting various companies and actually working with each other along their career path. And I got to see that and hear amazing stories from their perspective. So I grew up in an entrepreneurial world and I was able to live it first-hand as well.
Fascinating, so how did you start with Mount?
Yes. So the idea for Mount actually stems from what I was building when I was 12 and 15. The whole concept started about five years ago. I started designing this bike lock, where I had an idea of what I was doing when I was little. Now I had the kind of skill set to make it something real. Me and a few college students designed a bike lock that we learned wasn't good for the bike market, so we decided to design something a bit too convenient, and not very theft proof. But it could turn into a tracking device. Essentially, it had GPS and a few other flashy new technologies. That was right around the time scooters started popping up out in California with Bird launching, I think 20 scooters in Santa Monica, and people were like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’ I had a hunch that a lot of their vehicles were already getting stolen, they didn't have locks, and back then there wasn't even a lock for a scooter. So I thought maybe that could be somewhere where we might be able to fit and grow with this very early stage market.
Thus, three years ago, I jumped headfirst into that market and started talking to people from Bird and Lime, really when they were in their infancy as well, to learn what they needed in a lock. And really it was 1) to stop theft and damage but 2) to help the longevity of the scooter because back then Bird and Lime would put a scooter on the streets and it would last a month and then it was damaged beyond repair or stolen and it was ultimately thrown into a landfill and it was causing a lot of waste.
That was something, as Mount, that we didn't like to see because scooters are inherently supposed to be helping the environment. They're an electric vehicle, so they reduce carbon. But if they're getting tossed into a landfill every month, are they really doing their job? That was the first problem we identified within that space. Then we spent the next year and a half, honing in on that, building a lock that was perfect for that market that could reduce theft, but also track the vehicle, really helped their operations, and got to a point where we had this lock that had a fleet management system, so it could optimize how many vehicles you needed, where they were supposed to go.
But to that point, Bird and Lime were now global companies with 1000s of employees, unicorns in the sense of a startup, and they had just surpassed us to not need our technology anymore. Nor was that their focus. Their main focus was launching 1000s of vehicles and that still is their focus around the world. But what they're not focused on is in the operational aspect. They still lose 1000s of vehicles and unfortunately they're still putting 1000s of vehicles into landfills.
They still have these weak links, where 1000s of scooters are missing, or mistreated, and so on. Right?
Exactly. And it's this endless cycle that seems to not stop. And we still had this amazing product. So we actually decided to purchase a few scooters, station them at the COhabit Hotel in Avon, Colorado, simply to test our technology. And the guests could use the scooters, the hotel was super excited to have this new amenity. And it really wasn't designed to be anything else than a pilot. But what we learned was that the hotel really benefited because they got this brand new amenity that didn't take up a lot of space. And the guest was benefiting because it was a new experience, they could just easily rent the scooter. And that was at the end of 2020. Right around September, December timeframe. And we realized we might have stumbled on to this new market within hospitality where we could bring micromobility into it in a new way and make it a lot better than what you see today.
You're aiming to get clients like Airbnb and businesses like that, so the end user is not ordinary people walking on the street. Is that right?
Yeah, that's exactly right. We will station the scooters at Airbnb properties, give the host everything they need to run their fleet and then the guest would come, download an app, get special access to those scooters. And then it's basically there for their state so they can use it, take it wherever they want. But they do have to bring it back to the property to end their ride. No one else has the access code to use these scooters, so truly is their unique amenity while they're staying there.
Who's paying for the service, the Airbnb host or the user?
The Airbnb host pays an upfront fee, basically for the package where they get scooters helmets, the lock, the system, and then the host actually is keeping a percentage of the revenue that's generated so they can make their money back and then also make a profit from the scooters.
I think it's a great model. I haven’t seen it before.
Thank you, we are definitely on the newer side of things. It is interesting, because we weren't sure how we were going to fare in this new type of Airbnb industry. We ended up signing up 100 properties within two weeks of a very small sales cycle, which is kind of funny to see.
Have you managed to get Airbnb on board?
We didn't get Airbnb as a company on board just yet. That's definitely the goal. We're just working with property owners and individual hosts at the moment.
That would be like the next step once you raise money, right?
Exactly. The goal is to prove out the return on investment for the host, meaning that they actually can increase their nightly booking fee, because now they have scooters. But also they're increasing the occupancy rate per month because they have this added extra amenity, people are going to want to go to their place over someone else's. If we can share that, show that return on investment, it's a no brainer for Airbnb at that point to station scooters in all of their properties or all of their hosts properties, because they'll make more money.
How many scooters do you have on operations right now?
We have about 20 in operation right now. And over 500 on our waitlist. So we are, as you mentioned, raising our seed round to do that.
500! you're growing fast
Very fast. Yes. It's hard to keep up with demand. It's great. We're trying to capitalize on this product market fit.
For sure, How do you see growing in this context of COVID-19. Have you seen an increase in bookings from your clients or it's even more difficult right now?
No, I'd say Airbnb is one of the industries that fell relatively well during COVID-19 because I think people realized they didn't want to stay too long in a hotel and interact with 300 guests, but instead could stay in Airbnb and have their own kitchen. I think bookings are starting to rebound. Which is actually why we want to get out so many scooters, to prepare for that travel boom that's going to happen in 2022. As people are getting vaccinated, COVID-19 is diminishing. We want to have as many scooters out there as possible so that tourists can hop on. And we can capitalize and really knock out revenue for that year.
How big is your team right now?
Our team has recently grown and I want to say there's six or seven of us at the moment off the top of my head. Hopefully I didn't forget anyone. And we have a board of advisors as well. We took on advisors from Airbnb itself, Margot the CEO of Hostfully has been amazing and super helpful in our journey, as well as a whole slew of advisors from the micro mobility industry. So Swift, Mile, Uber, and Lyft. We've quite a family growing up.
You have a big board of advisors from big companies, how did you manage to get them, to reach them?
I'd say that's one of my sneaky hidden talents, it’s just the ability to find people on social media. Reach out, entice them to have an intro meeting and then I can hook on them. And I'm like, let's do this journey together.
So basically, you started cold-emailing everybody.
Not emailing. I actually was using, most recently, Clubhouse of all places. I found it very helpful. LinkedIn is another one, Instagram. So as opposed to the cold emailing, they're getting a cute little message on one of their social media platforms.
Great! Clubhouse is really useful, by the way.
Definitely, the ability to just find people grouped by specific industry and then hear them talk is invaluable. I've learned so much so far. It's a cool platform. Whoever dreamed that up. It's not a novel, but it definitely works.
What are you reading at the moment to help you figure out how to grow your business?
I am reading a lot of books about the sales cycle, because that was something I needed to learn a lot about. Then also just a lot of Airbnb hosts or super hosts have written books about how they did it and how they became profitable. So I've been reading a lot of that. The million dollar host by Julie, I found her on Clubhouse as well, has been super helpful. She's an amazing woman who did a ton of things within the hospitality Airbnb industry out in, I want to say Australia. So that was super helpful. And then I'd say more than reading. I just like talking to industry experts and learning from them. Allie Padgett is another one I've learned a lot from. She's an incredible property manager, Airbnb, all that type of stuff out in Phoenix, Arizona
What about Mount’s next step?
Great question. We're currently raising that seed round of funding purely so we can get product to our customers, we have a 500 scooter waitlist going right now and it increases every day. We'd really like to be able to roll out as much product as possible. And to do that we need capital. That's what we'll be raising and also want to grow our team. But really, the goal is in the next 12 to 18 months we would want to be live in about 30 different states and locations as well as in 4 to 10 different countries. We really built a model that can be drop-shipped to any Airbnb property in the world. Nothing really has to change other than the shipping address. So we are just excited to expand, bring on a lot of hosts onto our platform and hopefully grow as much as possible.
What would be then your ideal partner or VC? How is this person you're looking for?
We are looking for that strategic lead, who is a VC that has invested in either real estate, tech or prop tech or someone in that hospitality industry that has a portfolio of either companies we could learn from or potentially partner with. For example, there's a VC that invested in Sonder. I think Sonder could be a great partnership for us, as they have a lot of vacation rentals on their platform. It would be a no-brainer to put scooters in them. So VCs where they could benefit from our growth, but also their companies they're already invested in, they can also benefit from our product.
If I understood well, do you manufacture the scooter?
Yes. So we work with a few scooter manufacturers, really any scooter that has an IoT device we can use on our platform. So we don't manufacture the scooter. But we then built the lock device that is that fleet management extra system to go on the scooter. That's really our secret sauce and the ability to really optimize a fleet way past what anyone else can do right now. So instead of launching 500 scooters in a city, and not even breaking even, probably losing money on that fleet, we can go into a location, like Phoenix, Arizona, our breakeven point is 11 scooters, and then we're profitable after a few months. So we really don't need a lot of quantity. It's more a high touch.
It's more about the location as well, because you need the tourism. Right?
Exactly, which is the other unique aspect of Mount. Bird and Lime are focused on large cities. And we're focused on little vacation towns. And most of the time Bird and Lime actually aren't allowed into the vacation towns, the little beach towns and so we enter into a market where basically our scooters are the only ones.
Do you think local people from this kind of town are receptive about it? Imagine if Mount grows up and then you find 100 scooters in your town? Do you think they are receptive about it?
I think so because one of our missions at Mount is really to connect travellers with the local community. And that's really what the mission is behind Airbnb as well. We built out a scooter tour platform, where the host can actually go in and input local restaurants, local foodie spots, local historical spots, anywhere that maybe a tourist might not know where to go. Then the guests can actually log on and see exactly where they should take that scooter and potentially get a small discount (at a local spot). instead of driving big business, we're actually connecting those tourists to the local spots.
I think that Mount's branding image is going to be the fact that we actually connect the tourists to the local shops and promote small business.
Yeah, you also connect all other businesses through the application. That’s an added value.
Yes, exactly. And so that's our hope. And we don't want to be the company that's just littering the streets with scooters, which is why they're stationed on private property. we're hoping to alleviate some anger in the stigma of that scooter, just kind of being left in the middle of the sidewalk.
Awesome. I wish you a lot of luck. I think you're going to grow fast.
That's the hope.
Our recommended reading for this week:
Have a look drone pictures from huge e-bikes piles dumped in China
Seasonal energy storage in aluminium for 100 percent solar heat and electricity supply?
If you want to send us an idea or a tip, a #ClimateTech company that we should have a look at, or if you have any questions, please reach us at: davidcongeof@gmail.com or arraiz.p.daniel@gmail.com.
Some of the music we’ve been listening: