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Newsletter #30 - Future of Mobility Club

🛑 🎉 Dear mobility enthusiasts, we hope you had time to purchase a Tesla with Bitcoins before Elon Musk withdrew the offer. As always, things are going fast in the mobility sector. On the menu for you this week: Bird's investor presentation, a review of EV startups after they went public, and much more... Enjoy!

👉 Club's Upcoming Events
[18/05] - VC x Mobility panel with Toyota AI Ventures, Aster, Ponooc and Luisa Alemany. Curious to know more about venture capital and investments in a disrupted industry like the mobility of tomorrow? This high-level panel should answer all of your questions!
[20/05] - Fireside chat with Paul Newman, co-founder & CTO of Oxbotica. Oxbotica has raised more than $90m in VC funding and is one of the world’s leading autonomous driving software companies. Join us for a unique opportunity to hear the story behind founding Oxbotica and get a glimpse into Paul's rare combination of engineering talent and entrepreneurial mindset.

🔍 Looking for a job?
As always, check out our section Jobs to be done at the end of this email.

🌐 Future of Mobility x LinkedIn - Follow-us

🤩 Future of Mobility x Instagram - Follow-us

Bird Investor Presentation Analysis

🚀 Interesting analysis of the Bird Investor Presentation by this (random) YouTube channel. This is a high level discussion of the investor presentation and you may agree or not agree with what is being said, but the exercise is interesting for anyone into mobility and investment analysis.

Watch here

Top news & reports

📉 EV startups lose more than $40 billion after going public

At their highs, five EV startups that went public through mergers with special purpose acquisition companies were worth $60 billion. The corrections that followed have been brutal.

Full Article

💰 Bird to go public via SPAC, at an implied value of $2.3B

Bird is merging with blank-check company Switchback II in an attempt to get cash fast and achieve profitability by 2023. The SPAC deck reveals that Bird lost $387.5M in 2019 and $208.2 million in 2020, even as it laid off 400 people in 2020. As a company with a huge cost structure and unprofitable revenue, which was made more unprofitable as the pandemic took its toll, Bird really needs this deal to work.

Full Article

📕 European shared mobility index

Fluctuo, published an insightful mobility index focusing on 16 diverse European cities. It provides in-depth analysis of shared bike, scooter, moped and car services. This is the first in a series of quarterly reports that will benchmark industry activity, market trends and performance metrics across Europe's shared mobility sector.

Full Report

🚲 Zoomo raises $12 million to expand e-bike subscription offerings

Zoomo’s focus on e-bikes for food delivery makes it unique in the electric bike rental space. Its business model offers a full-stack e-bike, from the hardware and software to same-day servicing and financing options, which especially helps big business partners deploy and manage large fleets of vehicles at scale. Zoomo’s strategy could be leading a new trend in micromobility of being a one-stop shop that promises quick scalability. They're hiring!

Full Article

🤝Uber and Arrival partner to create an EV for ride-hail drivers

Arrival, the electric vehicle manufacturer that’s attempting to do away with the assembly line in favor of highly automated microfactories, is partnering with Uber to create an EV for ride-hail drivers. Arrival expects to reveal the final vehicle design before the end of the year and to begin production in the third quarter of 2023.

Full Article

Metrics of the week

🇮🇳 India x Covid x EVs - In opposition to what has been observed in Europe, sales for two-wheeler EVs in India have decreased. India is one of the biggest addressable markets for EVs; hence it will be interesting to follow this trend.

Mobility's event

TechCrunch Virtual Mobility Week - 09/06

Join TechCrunch’s editors during this virtual event as they break through the hype to understand the current state of the mobility revolution and reveal the future of transportation.

Register here

Jobs to be done

🇬🇧 UK 🇬🇧

London Electric Cars, Fundraising Project (apply via Career Central)
ZOOMO, Product Manager (London, UK)

🇪🇺 EUROPE 🇪🇺

🌍 Rest of the World 🌍

Do you want to share a nice job offer? Please email our Co-President, Julien: jtrost.mba2021@london.edu

Club's upcoming events (coming soon)

EVENT

VC x Mobility panel with Toyota AI Ventures, Asteer, Ponooc and Luisa Alemany

Tuesday, May 18, 2021
7:00pm - 8:00pm

TBD

Add to Google Cal, Outlook, Yahoo, iCal

Curious to know more about venture capital and investments in a disrupted industry like the mobility of tomorrow? You are in the right place!

Welcome to join a Future of Mobility Club event with industry experts and get answers to the pertinent questions such as:
- how VCs evaluate and identify great companies to invest in?
- which industry trends to avoid and which may be worth monitoring closely?
- which company may be the new unicorn in mobility?
- the impact of the recent pandemic on investment strategies...
- ... and many more!

The panel will be held on Tuesday, May 18th, between 7PM - 8PM BST. Please find more information on our panellists and their respected companies below.

Speakers and their VC funds:

• Fabio Lancellotti (Partner, Aster)
Aster is a leading early-stage European VC firm based in Paris with around €300 million of AUM, focusing on areas including energy, mobility, and industry 4.0 sectors. Aster will be represented by Fabio, an LBS MBA 2010 alum. His recent investment includes Swiftly, a software solution firm from North America that provides a transit data platform for transport authorities.

• Masanori Yamato (Senior Advisor, Toyota AI Ventures)
TAIV is Toyota's first standalone early-stage VC fund based in Silicon Valley. They invest mainly in startups in the areas of AI, autonomous driving, robotics, data and cloud computing. Masanori is a Kellog MBA and has been with Toyota for more than 15+ years.

• Maurits Koning (Director, Ponooc)
Ponooc is an Amsterdam-based VC that invests in ventures with a focus on mobility or sustainable energy in the fields of generation, distribution and storage. Their investments are used to accelerate the business and should help the company take “the next step”. Ponooc has a very service-oriented portfolio: their recent investment includes a subscription service for electric delivery vehicles, a platform for fleet maintenance service, or a same-day delivery specialist firm.

Moderator:

• Luisa Alemany
Luisa is an Associate Professor of Management Practice in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at LBS and Academic Director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She holds is an MBA from Stanford and holds a PhD in Finance from Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

See you shortly!

EVENT

Fireside chat with Paul Newman, co-founder & CTO of Oxbotica

Thursday, May 20, 2021
7:00pm - 8:00pm

TBD

Add to Google Cal, Outlook, Yahoo, iCal

What is it like to build a company with a super bold mission to fundamentally change the way goods and people are moved? You may not know, but autonomous-vehicle technology is already being deployed in a number of industries and the UK-based Oxbotica is leading the way! Join us for a fireside chat with Paul Newman, co-founder & CTO of Oxbotica, hosted by Alex Tazov.
Paul co-founded the company in 2014 by spinning it off from University of Oxford, where he is the Director of the Oxford Robotics Institute (ORI). Since then, the company has made ground-breaking progress in the autonomous technology, highlighted by the recent partnership announcements with Ocado and BP. Oxbotica has raised more than $90m in VC funding from such high-profile investors as Ocado, BP ventures, Tencent and BGF. In addition to his roles at Oxbotica and University of Oxford, Paul also serves as a science advisor to the Prime Minister.
Join us for a unique opportunity to hear the story behind founding Oxbotica and get a glimpse into Paul's rare combination of engineering talent and entrepreneurial mindset. We will talk about how Paul started the company, why he decided to spin it off from the university, how he competes with Silicon Valley out of Oxford and what role business school students can play at advanced technology start-ups like Oxbotica.