Bird (company)

Bird is a B2C company providing dockless short-term e-scooter rentals. The company was founded in 2017 by Travis VanderZanden. Bird aims to provide affordable and environmentally friendly transportation option in cities worldwide. As of March 2019, Bird is operating in 75 U.S. cities and other cities worldwide such as London, Tel Aviv, Vienna, and Madrid. Its headquarters is located in Santa Monica, California.



Service

Bird works by putting their scooters in locations called Nests, that you can find through their mobile application. Customers can unlock an available scooter with their application. Since Bird does not provide helmets, customers are urged to bring their own. When customers wish to end the scooter rental, they can use the mobile application again. All the scooters are equipped with Bird’s own hardware so they can reduce a scooter’s speed as well as track the location of the scooters.



Funding

Since its founding year, Bird has amassed $415 million in capital through five funding rounds, with its latest one a Series C held in June 2018 and raised $300 million. As of March 2019, the company has 21 investors, with 5 lead investors. Some venture capital firms that have funded Bird are Greycroft, Simon Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Hinge Capital.