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Why a scooter company is jumping into fintech

Trying to appease the byproduct of their product. Also, margins.

Jameson Zaballos
8 min readSep 20, 2021
Photo by Marat Mazitov on Unsplash

^ Who even carries scooter helmets?

Summer 2018 was a turning point in US culture. Unmoved by new music from Kanye and Drake, Apple reaching an unprecedented $1 Trillion in market cap, or the US pulling out from the Iran nuclear deal, the American culture was rocked to its very core by the new trend of micro-mobility.

They came in droves to the population’s pavement, sidewalks, and intersections. Arriving first in San Francisco, then getting kicked out, and kicked back in again, electric scooters swept across the country.

What is micro-mobility?

If planes are mega-mobility, and cars are mobility, rentable scooters are micro-mobility.

They operate in-between “last-mile” Ubers (which can be more expensive) and walking.

In the “smaller than bikes and cars, but faster than skateboards” category, these electric scooters pop up seemingly overnight on sidewalks, with signs on them like “Ride for just $1.” After downloading an app, a user taps through a bunch of terms and services, sometimes scans their drivers license, and can then scoot…

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Jameson Zaballos
Jameson Zaballos

Written by Jameson Zaballos

Work at Microsoft, writing about the intersection of technology & fashion.

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