Bird Goes Bankrupt. What Company Will Blink Next?

(upbeat music) - All right, welcome back to Ride On. I'm James Gross, and we have an emergency podcast on our hands based on some of the news coming out around birds, chapter 11 bankruptcy. And with me, I have, what I think is the very best person who has written about shared micromobility for many years now, both from a long form sense, but also just breaking down the financials of all of these companies. And that person is Pervine Joel Jones. Pervine, welcome to the show. - Thank you, thank you for having me. - Absolutely. So Pervine, a little bit on your background, you're a multi-time entrepreneur founder, currently the founder and CEO of Matin, which is a mobile mobility technology company based in Brussels, of course, where you are HQ'd. You're also a co-founder of FreshCart, Healthy Meal, Doolary Venture, and over the years, you've played critical roles in companies like Emotion Labs, Kite. You're also the CTO bond mobility back in the days, which was a company, of course, or my partner was part of. So, need this to say, you've got your hands in a lot of mobility companies over the last many years. And again, on the side, I think as to something that might come out of your curiosity, you've done almost a relentless job of keeping track of all the shared mobility companies and how they. So, that brings us to today. Today is Thursday, December 21st, and we have quite a bit of news that has come out this week around BERT, the ones high-flying shared-micromability company, headquartered in California, but of course has a distribution all around the world. So, maybe just catch us up on what's happening for being. What has happened to BERT as of today? - Yep, so news came out that yesterday, BERT filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. We anticipated it, I mean, it had to happen, but finally they filed yesterday. So, just to give some clarity around Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it's not the end of BERT. It's a way for BERT to restructure and potentially come out of it. It still depends on the judge. There was supposed to be a hearing today, which is supposed to be tomorrow, so we'll have some outcome tomorrow. So, the idea is if everything goes well, then BERT would have time to restructure some of their debt and potentially come out similar to how Marvel did in the '90s. - Okay, so as you said, what you said there is basically, you've known for some time, BERT would ultimately file for Chapter 11, why is that? What did their financials look like where you could add it conclusively say that? - Yeah, so if you look at Q3 end of Q3, they had very limited cash left, right? So, you know, generally, BERT would need about 20, 25 million every quarter for them to survive. And when I was writing about Q3 numbers, I did mention saying that they have to raise cash for them to survive, right? But in the meantime, they did something else, which is paying 10 million to tier to take over spin, which I mean, there could be different perspectives about why they did that, but not the right timing. Or, you know, when you're running out of cash, taking another 10 million from mid cap financial and then paying for a spin at that time, it probably wasn't the best move, right? And everything put together, so it was, it was written that, you know, it's gonna happen break, break. - All right, Prin, so with the acquisition of spin from tier, you said that wasn't timely, what about it? What about that wasn't timely? Like, what was, why was that kind of a strategic blunder? Other than it sounds like they didn't have cash, but. - Yeah, I mean, so the main issue was the cash, right? And if spinners are profitable business, I don't think tier would let go of that business, right? So essentially, it's a cash burning business, right? So when you have very less cash in the bank, why do you have to acquire that business, right? I did ask this question to Michael, the interim CEO at the conference, at the micromobility conference, and he told me that one of the reasons is probably to get the swapable battery scooters, right? So if you look at the birth center fleet today, most of it is non-swapable scooters. And he also kind of admitted on stage that it wasn't the right decision, right? And your buying spin would give them access to probably thousands of swapable scooters. - Okay, and so intraday, you know, that's good point. So Prin was on stage with a bird CEO all of the two months ago now, I'm just exactly to the day. And at that time, did you know they would file chapter 11 in that interview? Did you feel like the business was basically done as it was currently running? - It wasn't, I mean, not that Michael would explicitly say that, but we knew they had to raise significant cash or file for chapter 11, right? They had only two, they had probably three options in front, one is raising a lot of cash, or chapter seven, which is just liquidating and then falling down, watch chapter 11, right? And chapter 11 is the best part forward there. - Gotcha. Okay, so we are, let's zoom out for a second. We're roughly two years from the top of the NASDAQ, the top of what was the top of the bull market that lasted through COVID, and towards the, through the zero interest rate phenomenon and all of that. So we're two years out, and in the shared micro mobility space, it is a, you know, it's a bloodbath. It's a, it's a graveyard of companies. Bird, it's the most recently, but as you mentioned with the tier spin model, that wasn't really working out. You have, hellbiz, micro mobility.com very recently. Well, actually, I think this week was delisted from the NASDAQ. What is the state of shared micro? Outside of just what happened with Bird here. And yeah, just give us a sense of that. Where we're just, where does shared micro sit as a, as, as business models and as potentially investment opportunities? - So shared mobility, mobility, might probably, yes, we know it, especially eSchool sharing. Like you mentioned, it does feel by, you know, all the crazy VC funding the last couple of years. But what we know right now is that it's not a VC fundable business, right? So it's a, it's a, so this, however, I mean, Jocross, what it very beautifully at the conference, it's a high volume low margin business, right? So high volume low margin businesses are not normally VC fundable. It's, it's probably for a primary query, because at the end, yeah, probably you might have five, six percentage debit. Can be a big business, but then it takes so many years to get there, right? And even if you get there, it's not that you probably, you would have eight extenics multiples, you would sit at, say, three exs or 3.5 ex multiples, right? Yeah, so it's not VC fundable business, and it is, it is pretty evident right now. And even if you look at the Y, Y's valuation, their, their investor is valuing them at 3.5 ex, which, I mean, I don't think it is realistic if you, if you, if you talk to investors, they would probably say maybe they would value it at 1 ex, which is super low for the amount of cash that they've raised, right? And so the, the current state is that I think VC funded businesses, which have a bloated organization, they're going to have a tough time moving forward, right? Any business that did not raise so much cash, but then are super, super lean, there are a couple of businesses, I can name some from Europe as well, that probably will serve it, right? The rest if they, if they don't, you know, push a reset button, it's going to be very, very difficult, right? Just take the example of bird, right? So shared micromobility doesn't have a revenue problem, right? So I was looking at the tweet, Twitter, you know, messages, the last couple of days about bird. And, and, and a lot of folks were like, oh, I mean, nobody uses that, you know, nobody's going to pay for them. But if you think of it, the last year, bird generated 224 million, right? And, and, and Lyme is, I don't know, 400 million, tier 300 odd million. If you look at the dot, they double their revenue to 60, 70 million. So, you know, people are paying for it, right? Any city that you go to, you do see, you know, them being used, right? So, so they don't have a revenue problem, but they have a cost structure problem. Take the example of bird, 2022, the GNA was much higher than their revenue, right? So, you know, you, you, you cannot run a business where you do generate 200 plus million revenue, but then your GNA is like, you know, much more than that, right? And unless that changes, it's going to be very, very difficult. - Okay, so let's, let's, a couple of questions I have for you. So I think you made a couple of really cool, interesting statements there. One is, basically, these are not, these are high-balling, low-march businesses. This is the, the synthesis of what venture capital has generally been, I agree with you. I think that is the correct assessment. Under that, a correct assessment though, if you think about capital structure, any business that took venture capital in the last, let's say, five years in the shared migrant village space will ultimately die because the capital, the incentives of the capital in that business is incorrect. It, do you believe that is true? So that would say, 'cause I think it's basically a poison pill at this point, based on what you're saying. So that means any company that took BC funding in the shared space, you know, will die. If it, you know, of course a lot have already died, but will the rest actually die? - I wouldn't generalize saying they would all die, but companies that don't come to realization that, you know, the model that they invested in too are the returns that their investors are expecting is absolutely unrealistic. They're gonna lose cash, but not, you know, maybe zero, but it's gonna be crazy down, and do a hard reset, they would survive, right? But for the rest who are, you know, still about the clouds, they would definitely fall down. - In a traditional VC model, that isn't, you know, high volume low margin, but it is really just, you know, for most of our high margin businesses. There are, there are power laws to return. It's meaning like, the VC understands, hey, for the 10 bets, only one will work out, but it will work out so significantly that it, it doesn't matter the other, those other bets. If I hear what you're saying, you're saying some of these might actually work out. In that case, I might just say, well, this sounds like VC power laws, and this sounds like, well, of course, all 10 would work out, but one will work out fantastic, which I think you're still holding out hope for, where, where I'm trying to potentially push you is like, I think you're right, these models are ultimately wrong for the way they raise capital. I don't understand how capital does, is inflexible generally like that. Capital needs to work in the way it does how to work. And therefore, I only, the only, the only conclusion is a poison pill versus like one really working out, which would be, in many sense would be like, okay, that's the VC model actually working that. - Yeah, see, I mean, just, you know, breaking that down a little bit, to see an investment did work out, it has to give some returns. Either 1x or 10x or, you know, something in those lines. Let's take the example of y, right? So y raised probably 600, 500, 600 million, if I put together all the debt and equity, right? They value at 1 billion at the peak. And right now, they value at about 300 odd million. That's what VNV values, realistic value valuation, probably if you put 1x of their revenue, it's gonna be 100 million, right? So they have to, you know, 10x from now, for them to at least get 1x for the folks that invested at the latest stages, right? So it's not that, you know, it should be written down to zero. Most of the investors probably will take a haircut and some of these companies will definitely so, right? Just that it's not gonna be that, you know, all the investors that put cash would get 1x plus returns. That's a point that I'm trying to make. Okay, and then yeah, just let's needle on this point of like some will survive because I do think it's important. It sounds like a lot of what I've seen right and you're talking about even today is, so many of these companies were upside down because of like their G and A spend is out of control and you know, just like they were running like they were software companies with software margins when they're hardware companies with worse than hardware margins. And in a lot of cases, what makes you confident that these companies can change and, you know, given that they're okay. Now their capital structure doesn't work. The cultural structures they set up doesn't work. That's a lot going against you. Like why not just say, hey, they're, you know, politely they're all gonna die? - Yeah, see, do I have so much confidence that, you know, all the venture back companies that are out there today will survive and will they, you know, can they completely reset into a new model where the cost structure is very, very lean? I doubt it. Probably, I mean, I haven't read lines financials yet. They did say that they are a bit positive and you know, for this year, I believe, they probably would survive because, you know, they have the scale, right? But for the rest, it needs a complete culture change, right? And then probably that's what bird is struggling with as well. I mean, if you look at what happened after Michael, you know, became the interim CEO, GNA went from 110, 120 personish to 70 personish. So if you look at the first nine months, it's 70 person. So there's something happening, right? But that's not enough, you know, it has to be cut even further, right? Which needs a complete culture shift. I don't want to be, I don't want to offend people who work at these, you know, companies, but then what wouldn't happen is that most of these folks will have to move on, right? And founders should be a bit generous saying that, you know, let them keep the shares, have, you know, have it accessible for even 10 years from now, and let them move on and bringing new folks with indexed salaries, with realistic salaries. I mean, I do look at salaries of these executives as well, and it's crazy, right? I mean, there's one specific company where CEO takes from two million a year. So, wow, yeah, completely under your lipstick. Yeah, okay, so yeah, they're okay. So let's maybe, because again, I think there's a lot we can go over that's pretty juicy, right? The CEO that is taking home two million, the other companies that most likely will, better public that we know of, that will most likely fall victim to, if not a similar fate to bird, something maybe worse than bird, with the idea that, of course, bird's just in chapter 11 and can still, you know, can change up their capital structure. If you were to start a company, a shared micromanability company today, let's just say kind of, for being, you know, you start to come clear, you're not gonna raise funds, it sounds like, if I understand you're, what do you think works correctly? What do you think it takes to win today? 'Cause what you said there that I think is very important, and again, is very misconstrued by the media, is this idea that scooters, in general, are incredibly popular. The own scooters, numbers here in the US are, you know, great. And they continue to grow, and that's so positive growth. But the shared model is popular as well, as the revenue reflects. So yeah, how would you, what would you do to start a company today? And what would you attack? - Yeah, see, let me tell you why I'm bullish on this and then model, okay? So probably, then it would make much more sense. So if you look at, you know, all the tech reporting or tweets that you see here on Bird, it's like, you know, nobody's using them, Bird is dead, VCs are subsidizing, you know, the rights. But the real, if you look through the financials, what's very clear is that, gross profits are pretty good, right? So there's something that many don't talk about. Bird's gross profit for the first nine months this year, is about 53% age, right? Just as a comparison, I think Dodash is at 47, I believe, I mean, somewhere in the 40th range, same for Uber as well, right? So Bird isn't a different class, right? So 53% gross profit. The problem is 70% age of the revenue goes for GNA, another 10%, 10 or 12% age goes for R&D, right? And the depreciation probably, if you look at the nine months, I think it's about 20% age, right? So the cost structure is a problem, right? So can this business be turned around and can it be profitable? Absolutely, yes, right? So coming to your question of what would I do, if I start, I would start one right now. I would probably acquire, because, you know, if I would have to guess some of the folks that there are super ambitious, raised hundreds of millions of cash in VC capital, probably will give up at some point. I mean, I put out a tweet, I think a week ago, saying somebody has to blink in the next months. So somebody will blink, and that's an opportunity for somebody to come and acquire completely researcher and move forward, right? So, you know, what we shouldn't underestimate is that VC funding probably did not subsidize the rights. So if you go to any city, rights are not cheap, right? And I've been saying from the beginning that even if you race by 20% or 30% of people, it's too big, right? So, and yeah, so, you know, people, I'm not really sure what I was talking about. No, no, I'll say that. I'm not okay. So I think the idea is what you're not gonna start from scratch. You're gonna buy some assets, because people are most likely gonna give them up. But let's, so, okay, I'm just gonna set your business, right? For being, you get one of these businesses for pennies of the dollar, you know, you structure correctly, you, you know, in a good way, you get this, you get, you get a gross margin better than Uber, which again, we should speak to has become a darling on Wall Street, right? It has a company that's, you know, for a lot of the critics that it would never work, never work, never work, kind of, I don't say kind of, it looks like it's working, and it looks like there's a very clear path for them in the future. So, again, credit to you, I think you've always been a big believer in Uber, and now you've got a business potentially the better gross margin in Uber. Okay, excited. And you've got real demand, you've got, you've shown signs of road. I'm in potentially an inelastic customer, customer that would even pay you more. Let's talk about some of the other challenges with this business for being. And so, you know what, for being, what are you, you're going city by city, and you're getting permits. These permits seem all over the place. They seem to be at the whim of like whoever's in charge. How do you, like, how is this a predictably rational business at all? Great, you've got a gross margin. Now, let's talk about the human side of it, which doesn't seem to make any sense. Yeah, exactly. See, I mean, it is a tough business to be in. I'm not saying that it's an easy business. It's a tough business to be in. But if you say, if you have, like, just two or three players in a different, in a, if you say that, there are two or three global players, big global players, right? And city by city, if there's long-term contracts in place with sufficient number of vehicles, it can be a good business, right? So, I mean, of course, going city by city, winning tenders is difficult. But then, you know, look at Brussels. Tomorrow, I think, probably they would announce the results. For a couple of years, these folks are going to be in Brussels, right? And I'm pretty sure that most cities would not, not limited to just two or three years, but then much longer contracts, right? Because I think cities are also coming to, to reality that we need to have businesses that survive. Not just, you know, businesses that win tenders and then vanish after one year, right? So, you know, yes. So, it's, you cannot have, you cannot run a city with just 200 scooters or 5 of its scooters. It has to be sizable number of vehicles, right? Both bikes and scooters. It has to be sufficiently long duration as well, so that, you know, these operators can set their base, do a lot of optimizations, and then have a profitable business in the city. And testing them will last well, right? That can happen for seven years, yeah. - So, it sounds like maybe, I mean, I agree with you. I think the idea that you have like a pilot contract, these one, two, three year contracts. Like, again, in any sort of sales motion model, where the customer is big and slow, like, you've got to sign longer term contracts that assure you there. And again, maybe what I'm even hearing from you is like the, maybe the city model is actually a feature, not a bug, because in pure monopolistic senses, like if you win that contract and it's a long enough contract, you control your destiny for a while there. The revenue can become incredibly pretty. As you know, unlike other, you know, let's say, we're not going about a term free markets. Like, there's no new entry. No new entry allows you to, of course, extract, potentially, extract. Okay, that's a good counter. I appreciate that. How about, again, maybe just the last thing would just be cultural in the city level. I've talked a little bit about this with you, and I've seen this a little bit mentioned in Twitter by some people, I think, that I respect, that I understand the space well. For shared micro, to work, of course, there'd be on the partnership with the city that doesn't bankrupt you. There's like the idea that you have these assets that are out there on the street and how to protect them here in the US, and I, even though this is in Europe, but I'll speak to the US as I know it much better. A lot of the cities where scooter companies operated were going through periods over the last couple of years where they started to decriminalize a lot of crime, sort of misdemeanor-type crime. And even the press even celebrated a lot of this idea that like, hey, people are throwing scooters in the lakes or people are stealing scooters like, this is kind of funny, it's VC money burning up or something, but in all reality, there is a real challenge, which is like, if you're going, you know, these scooters work in urban areas. Urban areas are often run by progressives. Progressives have really been on the stance of like let's decriminalize a lot of crimes, but it seems so extreme with scooters. I mean, you know, I would go up to LA, you know, you would see them, you know, you'd see people taking them apart on the side of the street and you think like, you know, you know what's going to like go steal a car, I mean, people will steal cars, but like it's breath after art, right? You know, the felony, go to jail, like you, it seemed like stealing, vandalizing scooters was like completely fine. Do you see that trend changing? You know, again, I worry about your business. You have no, you have no funding. You know, I guess you have these long-term contracts, which are nice, but like, if no one's prosecuting crime, is that a concern for you? Absolutely, absolutely. So if you take all the cities, I mean, I don't remember who was talking about 10,000 cities and towns across the globe, that's kind of the market for shared micromobility. I don't think it is for every city, right? So cities where vandalism is high, I don't think in any of the operators would stay, right? Even if there's a tender process, none of them would stay, right? And that's a loss for the city, right? But something that we saw in Europe is that when an operator, say that it's a city which is getting East Coast sharing for the very first time, right, vandalism and theft is pretty high, right? But gradually it goes down. So this kind of known, I don't have the data in front of me, but I did tweet about it at some point, that in Paris, when Lyme and Dot and all these folks launched, they were losing a ton of scooters every day, right? But now, I mean, it was the end of Paris operations, that number went down. I mean, I have a LinkedIn post that I wrote with the data from Dot, right? So it does improve, but cities where vandalism and theft is pretty high, operators would walk away. I don't know if it was why or tear that walk away from Tel Aviv recently saying that vandalism was pretty high, right? But that's a loss to city and cities will have to, you know, do something about it. Will they do something about it? We don't know, right? But the market is, yeah. - I love the idea though, I love the, like I said, the market is play big, 10,000 cities are in your town. If you can easily filter for like, does the city respect law or, and if it's no, like we just don't go there, because like there's enough cities that will, again, there's irony in that. I think in that, or fate, I don't know what it is, but it's like the idea that I think you would, a lot of the early cities that were so pro-shared, were also the same cities that were so anti-wanted, the prosecuting crime. And so that just doesn't work. I hate to say that, but I look at the California cities that were pro-shared and then the inability for them to, you know, have any sort of law and order in place to do that. Like it was never gonna work out. And that's, I mean, I remember actually having a conversation with Super Pedestrian on crime. And of course they were saying, oh, it's not that bad, but I was like really. And then, you know, I guess just to speak of that, what they're, are they bankrupt as of last week? Or maybe they file for, what did they do? - No, I mean, I didn't come up, does any chapter 11 filing or chapter 7 filing. What we know is that they're just killing down and probably trying to settle Euro-business. But, I mean, that's, I mean, they, it's, - And the US businesses shutting down completely though, right? They're pulling out of all the cities. - Yeah, that's kind of what I understood as well. But it's interesting that two, two, two e-scro-sharing companies that took the non-swappable path, you know, isn't having the best week. - Right, I mean, if you look at a couple of years ago, yeah, a couple of years ago, it was Super Pedestrian and Bird. It was, you know, Super Bullish on non-swappable batteries. And then they were lobbying thing that, you know, this is the way to go, right? I'm not, I wouldn't fully discredit their arguments, but yeah, I mean, it's interesting to see that those two are not having the best week. - Okay, so, non, okay, so let's take it from the top right here. Per beans checklist, we've got no venture, no capital into the business. We've got a city's ever-spec lawn order of my 10,000-tam map of cities that I could go into. Long-term contracts, let's talk about contract real quick. How long should that contract be? Like what's the sweet spot there? - Seven years. - Seven years. - Seven years is very long. We never, I don't think we ever had seven year contracts, but I would say five to seven years is right here. Five to seven years, yeah. - And in your mode here, you're saying, you're saying, as well, the non-swap is a non-starter. - It's inconclusive for me. I mean, there's benefits to both. If you look at non-swap, well, one of the concerns that I have had is battery theft. Right, so let's put it this way. Why would somebody steal a scooter? What did they get out of it? Right, so early on, like I mean, five years ago, people did steal because it was a Xiaomi scooter, so you can just pick them up, rewire, pull the bird brain out, swap them up with a new module, and then you can use it as a personalized scooter. And there used to be a term which was very popular in 2017. It was called the domesticating bird. So, right, I mean, but now with the sharing scooters, it's very difficult. I mean, you cannot do that, right? So people steal it to extract the cells, the battery cells, which are, you know, pretty difficult to find right now, right? And in swapable batteries, if you have swapable battery scooters, it's super easy to just, you know, pull the battery back out and extract the cells, which didn't happen in Paris. So, line, I mean, their loss was, it's in the millions, I guess, if I'm not wrong, or at least in the hundreds of thousands, and I think wire reported similar incident somewhere in the UK as well, right? So that's kind of a concern, right? And any additional, you know, opening part that you add to a scooter, it's a point of failure as well, that you're adding, right? So if you put everything together, it's still in conclusion for me, which path to take, right? But just purely looking at the global supply, I would stick to swapable because, you know, yeah. It fits also with your narrative that like, you gotta go into places that potentially like, if something is stolen, there's prosecution, there's ability to basically get something back, just like you would, you know, you don't go into, I mean, you can go into a city as UPS and know that some of your vehicles might get stolen, but not like in the state of power, right? I don't think they generally make their vehicle decisions based on the idea of whether or not their fleet's gonna get stolen, right? So, if you're gonna share your fleet, it's not gonna get stolen completely swapable. Sounds like potentially the way to go. Okay, that makes sense. And also for the fact that SIGWE and Okai, they make swapable batteries scooters, right? And that's the biggest supply that we have right now. It's a question whether they'll stick around, but you know, that's the best solution that we have right now. Let's talk about Segway, okay? So these are another, you know, I think companies that you follow very closely on the public market, Segway, more, I know a little bit more about on the public market. How would they, those stocks fared? Well, of course, everything happened and shared. Those, their portfolios are diverse. They sell, of course, they sell all their, you know, they sell, they sell everything from dirt bikes, to mopeds, to the share of scooters, too, of course, but all own vehicles, too, you can go by one, you know, you can buy your kids hoverboards, things like that. How if they fared with all of this other news of public companies, you know, filing bankruptcy, et cetera? Has that business been heard at all by that? How important is the shared micro-village business to Segway and Okai? Yes, so there's also a question that I asked, Michael at the conference on stage, you know, to, I asked him if there's a risk, Segway and Okai folding, the reason being Okai, you know, we know Okai and where they are today, it's purely because of the shared business, right? I think it was tier one of these companies that signed a deal initially, and then, you know, they flooded the market, right? If you look at 2022 and 23 orders were super, super low, right? So imagine, think about the fact that, you know, they probably set up all the, you know, manufacturing units that is necessary, probably hardly humongous projections for the future, and I would bet that they probably are in trouble right now with all the investments that they made, right? So that's the Okai story. If you look at Segway, Segway is a profitable company, right? But if you look at the shared business, it's a very, very small portion. And I would also assume that it's a cash burning business compared to their owned division, right? And I don't, so it's very difficult to, difficult for me. If I'm running Segway, it would be very difficult for me to keep running that business for the next couple of years, if it's not generating any, you know, additional revenue, which, which it's not going to happen, because if you look at smaller companies right now, what they're looking at is, well, one of the larger companies fall down so that we can just take their assets, right? So rather than purchasing probably spare parts from Segway and Okai, you know, they're not going to please others for new scooters, not in the, you know, range of hundreds of thousands. Let's give the audience a sense of that shelf life. I mean, how long, you know, how long will, well, so these companies have been suffering for at least a year, right? So let's assume that no companies have been putting in bigger orders for at least a year. How long will that fleet last, based on, you know, buying 2020, 2021 scooters? - Yeah, so it's a very, very interesting question. So how do you define the life of a scooter or a vehicle, right? So is it the life of the entire vehicle, including all the components, or is it the life of the chassis, right? So let's, you know, for easy understanding, let's take an example of a bicycle, right? That are folks that keep the bicycle for 20, 30 years, but they will have swapped out all the components, right? Now, what's the life of that vehicle? Would you say it's 30-year-old vehicle, or would you say because it's swapped out all the components, it's just one year old, right? It's an interesting thought. So in, this is just my perspective, right? In my, from my perspective, the life of a scooter is the life of the chassis of the scooter. If you talk to the folks at, folks at dot who have a very good maintenance setup, they've swapped, they swap what every component that's in the scooter, right? Motor controller, you know, the VEs, battery, everything, right? But they make sure that the chassis lives on for a very long time. And even if there's a small crack in the chassis, they weld it and then push it, right? And if you talk to dot, they would say that, you know, right now, the life is about seven years. Which, which I would kind of agree. - Wow, yeah, so. - Well, actually, so my question for you on starting your business then would be, would you actually put kind of up there as a competitive advantage to you starting this business being like, you could, you could actually purchase, well, you could either purchase the old ones or you could purchase the brand new ones, 'cause one of the arguments we would make is, you know, these things have evolved like fruit flies. The meaning they've evolved, quick, like I, I was in year plus summer, I would not use that first or second gen bolt scooter. Like, I just found it to be decrepit, right? You know, versus some of the lime options. And so, you know, the argument now, of course, is like the scooters are way better. You see this in the private market, right? The Apollo's and the et cetera. It's like they're making scooters that are just incredibly comfortable and incredibly accelerate way safer, way smarter. Yeah, what would be your strategy there? would you buy up all this old componentry, like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the auto or would you say, you know what, I'm going to show the consumer something that's going to blow their mind versus what, you know, Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 3 of a bird, blind, etc. were. Yeah. See, if you look at, so if you look at the last couple of years, the evolution has slowed a little bit, right? The peak, the peak of the evolution was, I don't know if you remember the micromobility America conference 2000, was it 2019, 2020? 2019 I believe, right? 90. We didn't do one in 20, yeah. Yeah, it was 19. And I think end of 2019, probably was a peak, right? That's when you got the SIGV model max, you had the new Okai's at VC, you know, the ones that tier made popular, right? I think that's that's kind of the peak, right? I would, I would comfortably still pick any of those scooters if it's in the market, right? Not going back, yeah. It's not that I have to get the latest model of Okai, but if I could pick something from 2020, I would do, when if you look at Dot, the scooters that they had in 2017, they're still operational in some of the countries. Yeah, so Dot was one of the, one of the companies that didn't go through the years for scooters, you know, the, the, the, the, the scooter set, Y and the bird and all that used. They went in straight for something with the, with the strong, you know, chassis. Electronics wasn't so great, so they had to like, you know, swap with some of the electronics, but then chassis was super solid. And, and, you know, it's still in operation, I think in Poland or somewhere. Okay, into go, so kind of round the south, though, with Okai and Segway, you still think they'll, where it sounds like with Segway, you think there's, this is just not that important to them strategically as a big part of their overall revenue portfolio. Do you see them? Do you see those companies are bad dating the shared space in the coming years? Or do you think there's like, they see the opportunity like you do? It's a, it's a valid risk. Yeah, I mean, Okai, I would say, you know, it's because they don't have many, their own is not so big. It's a huge risk that the company can fall down. I mean, it's a risk. I don't know the financials. I don't know if it's a listed company, not a financial advice, but it can happen, right? For Segway, purely for the fact that shared is a very, very small portion. It's a very big risk. Of some, I'm curious, because again, I like this idea of starting scratch and one of the things you mentioned, of course, is that gross margin, not only the gross margin, but also the idea that the consumer most likely is pretty inelastic on the pricing model. What do we, what do you think about other modes, right? So we've, we've primarily just talked about the stand-up scooter right now, but clearly with Lyme, and of course, you know, going back to lift, to BBSC now, you know, the multi-modes was a big way to potentially diversify revenue, diversify the type of rider you might get. What is your thought in this new, at Probeanco, of doing e-bikes and doing sit-down scooters like we saw Lyme just announced actually very recently? Are these interesting modes to you or would you just focus on the stand-up scooter? No, I would focus on scooters plus bikes because any city that you go to, these two are tracked kind of different, kind of profile. I mean, even in Brussels, if I have to take a longer trip, I'm always taking the bike. It's a shorter trip, I'm taking the scooter, right? So bikes and scooters, absolutely. The sad part is that for e-bikes, we don't have a good solution yet, it is not so mature. I mean, we do have offering short walk-eye and segue, but I mean, not mature yet, right? But going beyond those, I mean, not at the beginning. So, for example, adding sit-down scooters, it's good, but then not from the beginning, you're doing that because you want to expand your time in the city where you are, right? The addressable market in the city, right? You can experiment, but then you have to get too much energy to do that, right? Otherwise, you're adding new vehicles, new complexities, right? Yeah. Okay, so let's, let's sound on the shared e-bike for a second, because you mentioned things that are important, but it sounds like they're just not as the model of vehicle hasn't been manufactured in a way that I assume the gross margin is not the same there in the e-bike sharing space, is that correct? The margin that the bird reports it's all combined, so I would assume it's kind of the same in the same range. Okay, so not a problem, not an issue where you'd say, like, oh, well, I want a favor of the scooter because the scooters give me. Okay, that's interesting. So, let's start there. Let's actually, why, why haven't we seen more of a prevalent e-bike shared market like we've seen the scooters? Yeah, one of the problem, that's multiple problems. One is, we don't have the right bike yet. So, anybody that buys, buys existing solutions, they've always had problems, and those problems are super expensive. I think it was why you're dot, if you read through that 2022 financials, they have a line, which is an income of, I don't know, 900k or a million, which is penalty. I hope payments from one of these companies, because these assets have problems. That's one. Second is, if you, if you take Europe, if you add all the import taxes and everything, it's probably like three times more expensive than a bike, right? So, you're looking at a long e-bike as three times more expensive than a bike. Yeah, exactly, but it's, it's not that it's going to give you like three. Yeah, it's not that it's going to give you three times more revenue. It's not that, it's not that, you know, scooters are like, you know, two rights per day or one right per day and bikes are like six flights. It's not that, right? Yeah, but why isn't the import taxes as severe on the e-scooter as it is on e-bikes? I'm not really sure. Not an expert, but for e-bikes, specifically, there's, there's, you know, there's a specific tax to to prevent products from China coming in, and then they have additional tax. Yeah, we went through that at bond. So yeah, so it's, I mean, if you look at the, the on-road price, it's, it's pretty high, right? And, and the reason why, why I would say I would also look at bikes is if we have a, if we have a good buy, right, that can stick around for like seven, ten years, it's a good model, but with, you know, bikes with problems, no, it's unfortunate. It's, it's very unfortunate that we don't have a solid solution. And the, the tough part is that none of the hardware companies from US or Europe can build a scooter or a bike because they wouldn't get the necessary funding. So why, why miss around with e-bikes? And on the shared perspective, why not just stay with these scooters and just, you know, focus their, you get your impotentary right, you get your cost down. Yeah, I mean, at the beginning, that, that's the best thing to do, but like I said, you know, adding an e-bike, if, if they are reliable, you know, expense a time like crazy, right, it's not a new set of customers. It is also, you know, like, what Horace says, it's mostly the job to be done, right, you know, what job you want to do, right, for example, if you want to go do a quick grocery shopping, you're not going to do it on a scooter because you have to carry a bag and probably you would pick a bike, right. So it's always good to have a mix of bikes and scooters. What can you tell us about, um, a lift in their financials as it relates to of course, they're, they're, uh, share e-bike and scooter business. Um, I'm not falling lift, so I, I wouldn't, wouldn't comment on it. Uh, okay. Yeah, because I lived as not in my watch list. Yeah, they've been, they've been, they've been, well, the rumors have been that they've been tried to, to, to, to invest it, right? They're trying to sell off the, uh, business as far as I know. Have you heard the same thing? Yeah, I heard the same thing, but like I said, I mean, I, I haven't spent a lot of time. Yeah. But if you, if you know something, please, we should, I mean, I would love to hear it. Because at some point, they, they didn't have like, e-school as well. They're right. That's, that's right. And again, it's just, it's potentially though another negative signal in the market, right? If they're, if the rumors are true, that what the mean is reporting that, um, you know, they're trying to sell it off. It's probably not a good sign. Now clearly, they kind of focus on their core business, et cetera, but you probably don't sell off a, a really tremendous asset in less, uh, well, less is not tremendous. Um, what else, uh, for being so, you know, we've covered, covered bird, a little bit, we've covered, um, uh, you know, of course, a lot of other companies, Boy, tier, et cetera. Um, what about, let's talk about some other public companies where you, you might have some more information based on the financials there. They're, they're, they're, one is the, um, infamous micromobility.com, which is not to be mistaken with us, um, formally of hellbiz. And then the other one would be Marty, who I think is listed on the, the New York Stock Exchange. What can you tell us about those two companies and, and where they're headed? Uh, but maybe before going into this topic, just to conclude, uh, you know, building my company or acquiring assets and building a micromobility company. Yeah, so this, this one, uh, rule of thumb that I have, which is 200, at least, you know, at the lower end, 200 million top line, uh, 50, 50 percentage gross profit, uh, 20 percentage GNA. So if, if, if I'm making 200 million, I should spend only 40 million on GNA, right? How do I do it? Uh, you know, that's up, that's, you know, you have to engineer it such that you go to countries where labor is cheap. I don't know, right? And, uh, our, indeed, should be around like 7 to 10 percentage. So if that's kind of the structure that you have to put in place for that business to work, but top line has to be 200 million. And like how long, what would be, what would be your forecast for how long that would take to build a business like that and get it to 1,000,000? There are businesses in the market. If they fall down, and if you, if you acquire them, it's EC 100 plus million, uh, uh, top line. So they can't be, just to give you an idea. If somebody would, uh, I put out a tweet today saying that, uh, tier should make a, make a 1 million offer to bird to acquire all the shares because it's like 7, 18 K market cap right now. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, big, big way. Yeah. And then, you know, offer 1 million. And, uh, if the board decline, the board can decline. I mean, the board can say no. But if the company goes down to zero, tier can sue because tier is the largest shareholder. So, you know, it's, uh, yeah. So if you, if you, if you, if you look at bird, somebody would acquire bird today. Uh, it's EC 150 200 million top line. Right. Uh, if you look at why 110, 120 million tier, I think you see 300, 400 million. So there are companies out there that you can, what does it have acquired? Uh, fish can, you know, why? So why isn't that, why isn't this happened? So like, you know, you've, you've tweeted a lot about, uh, Travis, uh, the, the founders of former CEO of bird and his secondary sales and, you know, his real estate portfolio. And, you know, he's clearly made, um, hey, you know, didn't do anything wrong as far as I know. Like all of it's very legal to do what he's done. Um, but why doesn't he swoop in and buy the company for a million dollars? Like build the ultimate Steve Jobs sort of story of taking the company, but I mean, even, even crazier. Like, uh, why, why do you, why do you think no one's done that yet? It depends on individual motivation, right? So, um, well, if, if, if I were in his shoes, something that I would think about is, do I make a million dollar offer to acquire everything, uh, and take the debt and all that together or wait it out and see where this goes, probably it might become a chapter seven case. And, and then you, you'd take over without any liabilities, right? And that's exactly what's happening across the world, you know, nobody wants to make a deal because, you know, uh, uh, companies merging should happen in the space right now, but nobody's merging because everybody wants to weigh it out. Like, why pay 10 million because, you know, in a, in a, why pay 100 million because in a, in a month's time, it could be 10 million. Yeah, sure. Okay. So that makes, and that makes sense. And so for your, for the Burbeen code that we're starting here, um, live on this podcast, um, you're, what, you know, what's the famous market saying, right? Like I can, um, I can stay, you know, based on history, you know, so how, how long can I stay liquid versus how long can you stay alive or whatever? Um, you know, that's, um, that sounds like that's what you're just, that's what you're waiting for. And because it's all, it's all going to fall down at some point. Yeah, I mean, at some point, there's, somebody has to blink, right? So, uh, uh, when somebody would blink and, and the person with liquidity would, uh, super everything, uh, everybody, right? Get, get everything. Do you have any sense of anyone doing this? Yeah, I, I definitely know that there are some smaller players, sub hundred million, uh, turnover players. I don't want to name them, but, uh, there are some of them that are just waiting, waiting. They know that they, they have the firepower to just stay alive, but they're just waiting. And, and, and if what, yeah, and if one of the big ones would fold, fold, meaning, not chapter 11, chapter seven or equal and elsewhere, it's a easy one. I mean, you just make a bid and, and pick it up for so, so cheap, without any liabilities. You get, you get a clean company. And why doesn't, uh, let's just sue Lime's numbers as good as they are. Why doesn't Lime just buy the entire thing? And just, you know, do what you'd want to do, which is have all the market sure you want. Why, why would they, I mean, two, two hundred million is two hundred million topline as good, uh, but, uh, you know, why do they have to take everything over with debt and all that stuff? Like, I mean, they, they, they have, but no, no, sorry. Why not just, but are they gonna, they're just waiting for everyone to blink and then they would swoop in because they don't, you know, you don't want to, it basically allows someone else to buy this for, for nothing, have, you know, what would be, probably a pretty incredible architecture and no debt and, you know, that, now you've got a very viable competitor. Other competitors right now are, look like they're dying. Yes, if, uh, for Lime, I would probably say they wouldn't make any move, uh, make any such moves, purely for the fact that I think if, if what this claims true, for example, I don't know, maybe like, low single digit debit right now, the best for them to do is just focus internally and get that company much better, much leaner, rather than, you know, merging with another company and, you know, in many cases, if you're merging with another company, right, uh, the end result is not gonna be positive, right? Why lose it all? That's one and second, you know, given how every country is like trying to stop M&A deals, you, you, you saw what happened to Figma and Adobe, right? If, if Lime comes in, which is backed by Uber, right? And, and tries to acquire one of the largest competitors, say, Bird, I'm pretty sure some of the, you know, geographies would, uh, we wouldn't like it. Yes, yes, that's, that is a good point, that is, that, that'll get headlines for sure. Um, that, and, you know, ultimately, and yeah, like, let's, uh, I mean, how wild coming full circle for being that the winner in Shared Micro is Uber. Um, you know, would you have, would you have predicted that three years ago? Maybe, well, I mean, I bet you would have, right? No, see, uh, I think what data did at that time, but jump, right? pushing that asset completely to, uh, to Lime, saving Lime, because Lime was a couple of weeks away from going bankrupt, right? Or, or, or at least, you know, going out of cash, that move was super smart. Right? Um, did I predict that Lime would become, uh, profitable? No, I, I mean, honestly, I didn't think about it. I mean, I, I, I know that Uber is packing, so, you know, probably they, they would survey the longest, uh, but you're very, very difficult to see at that time. You know, also given the fact that, sorry, uh, where does Uber value lie right now? Oh, I, I did put out, uh, tweet, uh, sometime, I think it's, uh, it's at, uh, uh, what was it? Was it 200 million, 300 million, something like that? It was either one night of their revenue or less than their revenue. For Uber, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's just a couple of hundred million here and they're moving, moving here and there, so they probably wouldn't care. It's, it's way too small for them. I mean, they're, their market cap is right now 120 billion. So, uh, and, uh, even among, among all the investments, uh, Lime probably is like a very, very small portion. So, yeah, they, they wouldn't care. And unless Lime has, I don't know, sorry, what do you think is the, let's just now zoom out again a little bit like what is, what do you see as the, what do you think Uber sees as a tam of shared micro? Hmm, that's a very interesting question. I think we had sad ones about it as well. Uh, very difficult to size, but I would go with what Horace was saying. The, the overall market is pretty big, but then, uh, the, the cities and towns that are viable. So, you know, where you can actually operate are very small, right? Um, it's, it's very, very difficult to size. I would, I mean, at some point, I think, but did projects, project that it's kind of, it's 800 billion. Um, I would put it somewhere, say 50 to 100 billion. Right. Yeah. It's, it's very difficult to say, I mean, don't, don't take my numbers on it. It's, it's just a, you know, ballpuck figure, but, uh, uh, very difficult to size. Yeah. Do you, okay, let's put your scenario out where, okay, everyone blinks someone rolls up all these assets. Do you think they go to Uber and they try to take, take Lime as well? Could you think the acquisition could happen that way? Oh, well, very, very, very difficult to take Lime away from Uber, right? I mean, if they are, if they are, if they are cash low positive, it's going to be very, very difficult unless the price is really right, right? And because why, why, I mean, if, if, if Uber doesn't have to spend any cash, uh, I think the, the whole 20 or 30 personages of Lime, if I'm not wrong, I mean, why, why would they bother just, just let it sit there? And nobody's going to offer, for example, seven X 10 X revenues right now. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. So even though they don't value it, we're really worth anything. Um, it's still spinning off cash that they can use. Um, okay, that makes sense. Okay. So there's no, I guess where I'm trying to go here is like, there's no, you don't see a world where there's just one player to deal with the governments, to deal with everything, all the challenges. And do you see it actually like really fracturing then with your Praveen Co model? Like, we're going to have, we're going to have thousands of these players, hundreds of these players. At, at some point, I, I thought that, uh, probably there would be two or three players that cover top tier cities. So all the tier one cities, tier two, tier three would be fragmented. Like, for example, if you, if you, if, sorry, how do you, how do you define tier one, tier two, two, three, just curious? So, so tier one, uh, say, you know, cities like London, Paris, you know, all the big ones, uh, with, uh, I think we're gonna use that. I'm trying to take it. So who does, who does has a classification? I think it's like 1.5 million or, uh, million plus inhabitants, right? Um, yeah. So, so those are tier one cities. So there would be like two or three big players that cover tier one cities, right? And tier two, tier three would be fragmented. Like, for example, if you go to a very small town, I think there's a still a viable business, uh, similar to how, uh, vending machine businesses or, or, you know, these laundry, non-dramar businesses are, right? Or our gas tank business, you know, um, sorry, gas station business, right? So these would be run by, run very, very lean by local folks, probably, uh, you know, borrowing tick from one of the big guys or one of the fleet management system vendors, right? Yeah. So, so tier three, there would be a crazy fragmentation, tier one, I think it's going to be a, be a two or three player game. Okay. That makes sense. And, uh, what do you, what do you say to all of these companies have scaled down significantly? Like, you know, we, we have, we read about layoffs basically on every day at these companies for the employees left of these companies. What's your, what's your message to them? Um, about their future and what they should do. Yeah. See, if you look at, uh, tier and a couple of these companies that hired very expensive folks, most of them move down, right? Um, the people who are left, uh, probably they are highly paid than market standards. And my message to them is, uh, yeah, I mean, they have to brace for the worst, right? So if, if, if one of the, if these companies have to survive, they have to reset or re-index salaries, right? So probably, you know, cut salaries, maybe give a bit more equity or let go of people with, you know, longer exercise period for the stock options that they have, right? Because I mean, we, we have to be, we have to get, give credit to these folks as well. In a short period of time, they build massive, build a massive business. And then they have to reap rewards of that as well, right? Yeah. But, uh, if I'm working in one of these companies, I would be extremely fearful. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, uh, the, a lot of writing is on the wall. It's hard to see in your, when I'm hearing, you know, what you've said, I think a lot of your incorrectly so is that the, you know, that there's, there's a lot of bleak in that needs to go down. And as part of that, it's, it's a little bit, you know, I don't know, it's actually the analogy, but it's, you know, it's, it's like dominoes, like, you know, you get fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, then that, you know, it stumbles. Dollos, no. Um, it's, so in, where, in your opinion, it's kind of still the beginning, right? Bird is, bird is one of many dominoes to come out. Yeah. Uh, I think we're going to hear about many. Um, I recently, I noticed today that why, you know, filing that, uh, you know, they're increasing the share capital, sorry, they're, they're, they're increasing the capital of the company, uh, because they're issuing new shares, which probably wouldn't mean that maybe they raise some cash or probably some of their, you know, existing lenders converted their convertible notes. I don't know that yet. Uh, but assuming that it's the first one, where probably they raise some cash, maybe they have some lifeline left. Uh, but, uh, if not, I mean, for most of the companies, it's going to be, yeah, very difficult. So for the per being co, how about this idea? We know, well, I don't, I don't say we know, but there's most likely a very, there is a correlation, a causation that occurs with people riding shared microability vehicles and then them having the, uh, I want to own something like this. I want to, I want to buy any bike. I want to buy an e scooter. Um, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I have heard countless stories, do you know, telling me that's how they, they, they came to purchase their ebiker e scooter. Um, what do you think about in this per being co model, actually going to owned microability companies and use, finding leverage that way potentially. Like, in, for these, for these own companies, like, this is, this can be advertising. Again, it's not good advertising when these vehicles are bad, but when these vehicles are good, which they increase good, it's a, it's a potential cost of acquiring a customer by getting them, you know, it's a, it's a try before you buy. It's a, it's a retail, almost like experience, potentially. Um, do you see any, anything like that happening? Would that be interesting? Um, to, you know, you go to, I'm wearing the electric shirt, right? Like, electric, you should fund some of this. Like, they're, you know, this is a great way to get, you know, you want to sell to millions of Americans, you got to give people a ride of ebikes. Like, that's the, that's the number one barrier to your business outside of like safety. Of course, other things that are tragic are like, you know, people just haven't tried it yet. So they don't know. Yeah, see, I mean, on the topic of, uh, somebody riding a scooter and then buying a similar model could have happened many years ago when it was years for, you know, the, the, the sharing model and the own scooter model was kind of the same, right? But now, uh, market is diverged, right? So, uh, what you see in the stores is not exactly what you see on the street for scooters, right? Uh, yeah. So, I mean, I, I don't think there's any, you know, link between those, but what I, what I do see is that if somebody uses scooters very often, they probably might end up buying, you know, something for 400, 500 euros, right? Uh, from the store, but it doesn't mean that they would completely stop using shared scooters, right? Yeah, I mean, it's rather they, they want to carry around a scooter every time. If they, if they are not, then they would, you know, jump in the news. But there is an opportunity, which, uh, probably, you know, companies like electric can utilize. So I'll give you an example where BMW went wrong, right? So BMW at some point had a, uh, a shared, uh, car service called drive now, right? Uh, so they, they used to have, you know, all this beautiful one series, two series cars across cities, right? And, and in Brussels, they had like hundreds of, uh, cars, which you can rent, right? What they fail to do is they didn't, uh, leverage their entire BMW customer base. So basically, you know, if, if, if they would have reached out to all the, you know, thousands of, uh, BMW customers saying that he, I mean, you own a car, but then you can also be a little bit more now, you get the access to so many cars in every city that you're traveling to, right? That's a model that I've never heard of and then nobody tried, right? So that, that could be some synergies there. Yeah. So it'd be interesting if you did see that if that was a way, um, because again, you also have, the company is naturally good at things like repairing, componentry, understanding, all the things that you talked about that are so important to, of course, driving it is very efficient model. Um, you can imagine they, they, they can have a leg up on a lot of that stuff. Um, yeah, that's, that's interesting. I've never heard of, uh, one thing that I, I, that could be interesting. So for a company like electric or, I don't know, you know, any company in those lines, probably they could also offer, uh, their customers some subsidy on, on a, on a monthly pass or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, you know, some micromobility pass. Let's, let's, let's take an example of a spin in California, right? So, uh, assuming that they have a monthly pass, if you buy electric bike, you get some subsidies on spin by scooters as well, right? So combining something like that, I mean, I, I strongly believe that owned and shared can go hand in hand, but nobody has found a good solution there yet, right? Like, you know, uh, in 2019, uh, the front of jump, Ryan was saying that, you know, what is missing in shared micromobility is business model innovation? It hasn't happened at all. There's so many other innovations, but not in business model. Yeah, you're right. You're right. It has, it has stayed, um, relatively, relatively the same. Outside of maybe, we got to give a shout out to our friends in Europe, um, pony in the, uh, the, uh, the, the model, of course, of, um, gosh, what's that call for? You know, you could buy fractions of the, the vehicle. I always liked what he was trying to do. Yeah, you could buy the vehicle and then of course, rented out autopony. So, you know, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you get a share of their revenues. Yeah. I think I still own two ponies. I, they make money, right? They still, unless they still make money, but I think I remember checking my account one point and I had made like, I could have made several hundred dollars, actually. Um, you know, like that was, uh, it was like my, you know, Bitcoin in 2012 story was my, uh, two adopted ponies that I purchased back. Did it get, get your money back? No. Well, I, yeah, I think it's in some account. I gotta look at it. That's a, that's a good question. I never, okay. I'd ever claimed my, uh, my, my pony wins. But it's a, but it's a good. All right. For being so. Yeah. No, it's, uh, it's fascinating. For being we've covered a lot today. Uh, thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, of course, this all came as an emergency podcast on the announcement of bird filing the chapter 11. And of course, a lot of the media reports coming out of it. I think if I were to summarize a lot of what you're saying today, um, this is not the end for shared micro. This is the end for a, the generation one of shared micro capital markets and shared micro business models. You see a tremendous opportunity in the future for companies that can build most likely from scratch and take over potentially some of the assets that are out there and, you know, attack what is effectively a, uh, a marketplace of 10,000 cities that are going to need a solution like this. Of course, today and then even more in the future. Um, so, you know, I want to thank you for being coming on the show, um, and for giving us such an interesting take in, and of course, thank you as well for all the work that you constantly have done in covering this space, uh, like, like no one else. So we really appreciate what you've done for the community. Um, and, uh, of course, what we think you will continue to do for the future. Thank you so much, James. Uh, just a disclaimer, it was an inflome to pod and everything that we discussed here is not a financial unright so just a disclaimer. Yeah, good point. We'll, we'll, we'll make sure that's in there. All right, for being able to have a great day. Thanks, James. Have a great day. Bye bye.