[ganeumann]

Responding solely to the 'moat' question: think railroad price wars in the late 1800s in the US.

Industries with capital expenses relatively large compared to contribution margin tend towards local monopolies. When faced with a potential new entrant the incumbent can lower prices to where the entrant's assets can't return their cost of capital. The incumbent's capital is already sunk so they can afford to bring prices close to the marginal cost of providing the service. This threat of a price war is usually enough to deter entry.

This also leads to agglomeration in local markets both to avoid duplicative assets and to add credence to the price war threat.

[lpolovets]

(Hi Jerry!) That is a good point. A few thoughts here:

1) Bundling could help new entrants with existing platforms. E.g. if Uber comes into a local market and offers a free scooter ride for every car ride, that could really hurt a company like Bird -- even if Bird is the incumbent when it comes to scooters.

2) I view these capital expenses as being relatively small. If it's $1m-$2m to cover SF in scooters, and if scooter costs are similar across players, then I don't see why a new entrant couldn't also offer services at cost until the incumbent gets tired of running at break even.

3) The price points are so low here -- often $2-$3 for a ride. If that's the case, I wonder if consumers will care about someone shaving 30 or 50 cents off their price to provide scooters at their marginal cost, or if they will care more about scooter proximity or safety or comfort or something else.

[xapata]

You forgot the $10m advertising campaign to get folks to install the app and register.

[yazr]

Is $3/ride really that low ?

On my personal ebike, i do 2-4 rides a day and it has almost entirely replaced my car.

So really, anyone in SF or NY who spends $50/month will surely consider getting his own?

3$ and even 2$ seems in fact un-sustain-ably high for mass market adoption (I live in a small European country. Salaries about 2/3 of US).