The Exchanges

Q think a lot of VCs followed it a little bit too much. And when I think about VCs following things too much, I think about kind of hype cycles and frenzies in funding environments. And it was a, Incredibly heated environment that you're in, being bluntly the scooter environment and the micro mobility environment. How do you oscillate or reflect on VC hype funding environments and think about them today?

A I would say these hype cycles are generally bad for companies because it, it allows them to avoid learning hard lessons. I feel like Lime couldn't really assert our leadership in the industry until VCs kind of moved on. Because if you could always raise money, even if your results are bad, It masks your bad operations, and it actually also masks a better business because you can always raise more money to then plow it back into growth, into discounts, and you can discount your way to a lot of market share. One of the things that I'm very proud of with Lime's financial results is that we've been able to sustain 30% growth, 30% top line growth over four years, top line CAGR, but each of the last four years we expanded our margins Which means that we weren't just growing by irrationally discounting, but if you have unlimited venture capital and more to come down the road, then you can start acting in ways that are not focused on building a good long-term business, but instead focused on the short term. And I felt that's much harder to compete with an irrational competitor with unlimited funding. But when all of the VCs moved on and it was hard to raise money, that's when focusing on great operations, great hardware, great government relations, That's when those investments actually started paying dividends. So I'm actually, I think being in a hype cycle is actually bad for startup…

AI assessment note: “I would say these hype cycles are generally bad for companies because it”

Q How does that change your mindset as a CEO? You're now no longer at the whim of someone else. You don't have a begging bowl.

A It is the biggest change in mindset. I would say my first four years as CEO, I was constantly worried about Lime going out of business, even as we kind of got out of the, uh, the pandemic. And I remember I would wake up in the middle of the night, just worried about the company because I felt so responsible. All of the people who stayed at Lime, who believed in me, gave me a chance. I felt enormously responsible to them. Enormous, like debt of gratitude to the employees, especially, but certainly to the investors who believed, who invested in Lime, to Dara, to Uber. And this feeling like, oh, we could fail at any time. Just wait on me. Wait on me all the time. I never slept well. I was always waking up in the middle of the night, worried about A or B. I would go, I would go, I would fall asleep dreaming about Lyme and everything that could go wrong with Lyme. Number one, we got to self-sustaining free cash flow positive. It was the first time in many years where I stopped dreaming about Lyme. I dream about Lyme now, but in a good ways. Not, not in, not in worrying about we're going to be out of business.

AI assessment note: “It was the first time in many years where I stopped dreaming about Lyme.”

Q Okay. So what do you believe that most around you disbelieve, Wayne?

A I believe micromobility is the future of urban transportation. That in 2030 years, we're going to be shocked that we had a system where each person owned a car and drove themselves in a 4005 thousand pound tank around the city. Generating the biggest carbon pollution of the last hundred years and killing over 1.3 million people a year. This is the fact that always shocks me that we don't talk enough about. Cars on a global basis kill more than 1.3 million people every single year. We don't even talk about it. We accept that as the cost of doing business. Imagine if, like, when seven 37 max killed a couple hundred people, we grounded the plane and said, we're not going to allow this to fly until we figure out what's, what's wrong. The number of people that are killed on a car is multitude, magnitude greater, and we just accept it as a, as the way we do business and the cost of living in urban society today. And I think we're gonna look back 3040 years from now and be like, that was insane. The amount of waste, money, and pollution that we were willing to accept for a little bit of convenience is absolute insanity.

AI assessment note: “I believe micromobility is the future of urban transportation.”

Q People start questioning other decisions you have. Absolutely. They less so do when you're a founder, I feel, and I'm intrigued in your thoughts on founder mode. We saw Paul Graham be very, um, effective in expelling his thoughts on founder mode and the benefits of it. How do you feel about founder mode given the context?

A So I, I read Paul's, um, blog. I feel like he was describing just good management hygiene, and, but then he called it founder mode. I feel like digging into details, making sure you're, you're, you trust, but you verify is what all good CEOs must do. I think the reason why I thought it was crucial to start my tenure by traveling the world and seeing warehouse up close is that I can't, I can't trust. If Harry tells me everything's going well, And XYZ city, but the results are terrible. Going there and seeing and double clicking and making sure that people, people know that you're somebody who will dig into the details is crucial to driving the results that you want. But at the same time, I think delegation, like making sure you hire great people and delegating and giving them the wrong way to run is also, I think, not a, not a higher management specific trait. I think great founders who make the transition Um, and stay with the company, oftentimes employ the same tactics. I think Paul was describing good ways to manage a company, but then he, but then he assigned, these are what founders do. These are what hired managers do. And I just don't know if that's necessarily true.

AI assessment note: “I feel like he was describing just good management hygiene, and, but then he called it founder mode.”

Q Can I ask, uh, A bit of a interesting one, which is like, when it comes to M&A, you actually haven't done much M&A. When you reflect on that, was that the right decision? And if I were to push you, is there any M&A that you wish you had done?

A First, you're absolutely right. We haven't done much M&A. The only M&A, we've done two, um, two M&A deals. One is to buy Jump from Uber, and I think that was a incredible deal. It, it, it came with a lot of cost, because it was a down round for our prior investors. What it allowed us to do was to really deeply integrate with Uber and become the micro mobility opera provider on the Uber platform, and that was critical, and it also allowed us to get the capital we needed to survive the pandemic. Line wouldn't have survived if we did not do that deal. But I think most M&A deals are value destructive, and that's probably the thought that always, that's always in the back of my head as I think about new M&A deals.

AI assessment note: “most M&A deals are value destructive, and that's probably the thought that always”

Q When your competitor raises a ton of money, are you forced to as well?

A You are, unless you can generate cash flow from your own operations. Last year was our first year getting to unlever free cash flow positive, so we were able to fund all of our capital expenditure and all of our growth from our internal profits, and that is a big, I would say, um, turning point for Lime, for micro mobility generally, because now we're able to continue to grow our business Without this forever treadmill raising more money from VCs, because we can, we've been able to fund our capital expenditure investments from profits from the, from the business. Before, when somebody raises more money, we're like, wow, we gotta go raise more money. But now I'm like, we can actually just, we can generate our own cash flow for that investment.

AI assessment note: “You are, unless you can generate cash flow from your own operations.”

Q coach who talks about improving one percent and everything is a game of inches. I absolutely love that. When talking about the one percent, one thing that's not one percent is COVID. I spoke to Jeff Jordan. I spoke to Sarah before. They were like, Obviously, the business fell off a frickin cliff. Can you just take me to COVID? You were just CEO at that point. How was it?

A So we started, like, every company builds a budget and a plan for the year. In twenty-twenty, we had our budget, we had our plan, but nobody builds a plan where your revenues fall 90, 95% in a matter of days, which is what happened in the early weeks of COVID. We knew going into twenty-twenty, we needed to go raise more money, but Suddenly what we thought was maybe six months of runway was like, like, 20 days of runway because all of our revenues went away. You still have a lot of your costs. You have warehouse costs. You have employees on the, on the, on the payroll. So suddenly you had all these costs and then your revenue went away completely. And we needed to raise emergency funding to get through COVID at a moment where I would say transportation is so much was unknown in the beginning of 20 20 and transportation was not the sexiest place to put your money going into COVID given all the uncertainty. This is also where I would really give Dara a lot of credit because we went to Uber and Uber at the time Owned and operated their own micro-mobility business called Jump. And, and I pitched them, I pitched Dara this idea of letting them sell, sell Jump to us so we can then, we can bring the two businesses together, take out costs, and then we can be the micro-mobility option on Uber. And to Dara's credit, he, I think going back to like really believing in the people that he men…

AI assessment note: “nobody builds a plan where your revenues fall 90, 95% in a matter of days”

Q Okay, but we get a good cash injection. We're now not 20 days from runway, so that's helpful. How did you integrate into the management team, dude? In COVID? Remote? Like, take me to that.

A The hardest part is, like, you're trying to You're trying to learn how to be a CEO. You're trying to build your own credibility with the team, but we didn't have like floors to walk meetings to sit in on. So it becomes harder to, and as you want to demonstrate progress quickly, but I would say to the credit of the, of the leadership team, I think that the, the leadership team that Brad and Toby bill was quite strong at line. And so, and a lot of them did leave the company because it wasn't clear where line was going. But I have a lot of respect for the people who stayed, who gave me a chance, who took a chance on me, and And I did feel like we met every single day for an hour. Every day we wake up, we kick off a Zoom meeting with the entire executive team. And it was just all the problems we're facing in the world. Let's, let's put it out on the table. I think in a crisis, you want to make sure information is flowing, that people are honest. I can't help you solve something that I don't know exists. So information flow and creating a trust-based relationship with the executive team was super important. In those early months. And I remember we met every single day for an hour for months, and we just start by saying, what are all the biggest problems? And let's just go around the horn. And everybody had different problems because even with the new capital, there's still lots of c…

AI assessment note: “Every day we wake up, we kick off a Zoom meeting with the entire executive team.”

Q Should we, should we allow Chinese cars to be sold in our cities? These are heavily subsidized to destroy our local economies and allow for a new Chinese monopoly to be created. Should they be allowed to be sold in our cities?

A I, I think that the use of tariffs in kind of like some of these Chinese electric vehicles, both in the United States and in Europe, I feel like is, is justifiable because you want to make sure people have a level playing field in terms of, I think one of the lies of the last couple of decades is that free, free trade benefits everybody. It doesn't benefit the person working on the factory plant for the last 20 years who's going to lose this job and have no ability to find a new job. And domestic production of cars is crucial, and not only for economic, um, consumption, job creation, but also to ensure that in the long run there is a domestic capacity to produce cars. So I think creating some tariffs so we can level the playing field between domestic producers and foreign producers feels fair.

AI assessment note: “I think that the use of tariffs in kind of like some of these Chinese electric vehicles”

Q Should we, should we allow Chinese cars to be sold in our cities? These are heavily subsidized to destroy our local economies and allow for a new Chinese monopoly to be created. Should they be allowed to be sold in our cities?

A I, I think that the use of tariffs in kind of like some of these Chinese electric vehicles, both in the United States and in Europe, I feel like is, is justifiable because you want to make sure people have a level playing field in terms of, I think one of the lies of the last couple of decades is that free, free trade benefits everybody. It doesn't benefit the person working on the factory plant for the last 20 years who's going to lose this job and have no ability to find a new job. And domestic production of cars is crucial, and not only for economic, um, consumption, job creation, but also to ensure that in the long run there is a domestic capacity to produce cars. So I think creating some tariffs so we can level the playing field between domestic producers and foreign producers feels fair.

AI assessment note: “use of tariffs in kind of like some of these Chinese electric vehicles... is justifiable”

Q Can I ask a final one? I hope it's okay to be personal. Um, Blake said that I should ask about it, so I hope it is, but we can add it out if not. Um, he said that, you know, you suffer from a stroke. Um, how did that impact you, how you lead, how you think as a leader? I'm just really interested by that.

A Harry, first, thank you for asking that. I actually, I've been pretty public about having had a stroke earlier this year, in part because when I was in the hospital recovering, I was like Googling around trying to find CEOs who've gone through something similar. And what was surprising to me was I found not a ton of examples of CEOs talking about health struggles. I think part of it is that when you do kind of a podcast where you do media, you want to put your best foot forward, whatever that means. And that doesn't mean talking about where people are struggling. And so I remember when I couldn't find a ton of examples, I remember thinking to myself, I need to go out there and talk about my health struggles more publicly. So it's less of a taboo. I do think this has been the hardest year of my life on a personal basis. I think the hardest thing is that When you suffer a stroke, like, I still can't move my left arm and my left hand. There's a lot of, like, physical, neurological ailments that you're struggling to get through, and I still remember the person I was and the person that I still see myself as, but the person I am today sometimes doesn't, isn't matching kind of my own self-perception. So I feel like a lot of my days are filled with disappointment, disappointment in myself, disappointment in how I, how I perform. I've really enjoyed this conversation with you, Harry, b…

AI assessment note: “a lot of my days are filled with disappointment, disappointment in myself”

Q Tell me, uh, you can be CEO of any other company for a day. Which company would you most like to be CEO of for a day?

A I would love to be the CEO of Lyme. When I was in the hospital, the thing that I thought most about was how can I get back to work? So I think about a lot of people say like, what did you change after suffering a stroke? And I think a lot of people Maybe think the answer would be, oh, I want to have this big change in my life. The thing that always really struck me was when I debated deeply, do I want to quit my job, go do something totally different, especially if life is short? Is this what I want to spend the rest of my life doing? And the incredible thing was when I really asked myself that question, I was like, yes, I want to, even if I'm going to die in the next five years, I want to be spending the next five years working on Lyme's mission to decarbonize transportation. I left the hospital. I was in a rehab, in an inpatient rehab. The next day after I left the hospital, I went back to work full time.

AI assessment note: “I would love to be the CEO of Lyme.”

Q And you think we should return to the diversity, equity, inclusion prioritization?

A I, I think I'll say this, we're lying. Because so many companies have backed away from the goals of diversity and inclusion, I feel this is a year where we really leaned forward. Because it is not, we didn't do it because it was a fad. We did it because it was the right thing to do. We absolutely believe a company benefits when it has diversity of thought. The most dangerous place to be is groupthink. When everyone thinks the same, that's very dangerous for a company. And our True, genuine commitment to recruiting people of all backgrounds makes Lime a better company. And this year was a year where I felt like a lot of companies, especially around LGBTQ rights, you felt like, I saw a lot of companies pull back on what they did for pride. This was a year Lime doubled down on making sure that our customers and our employees know that these are things that we believe in, regardless of whether or not it's in vogue, whether or not it's cool or not. And I do hear and understand some of the criticism of woke culture. But I think diversity and inclusion, the commitment for diversity and inclusion at a company feels very, very different than maybe some of the criticisms that you hear about woke culture.

AI assessment note: “We absolutely believe a company benefits when it has diversity of thought.”

Q Fascinating. Why don't you do it yourself? I'm just intrigued on the vertical integration. You know, Bundy, you make the frickin' scooters yourself. They're designed, manufactured, owned by you. Why not own actually the battery replacement supply chain as well?

A We do in the sense that all of the battery swapping operations is controlled by our software, which we build in house. Some of our competitors franchise the whole thing and really leave it up to the mom and pops kind of logistics partners to do what they need. But we have great software that dictates how an operator moves around a city, where they go next. All of our tasks within the software is automatically created. So I'll give you an example, which is We also do a lot of move tasks in a city. So we have a machine learning demand algorithm that predicts where we think trips are going to come from in all the cities we're in by the block, by the half block. So in the next six hours, we can say, we think this block will do this many trips or the next 12 hours will have this much demand. And if there is a position of our scooter or bike where we believe by moving it to a higher revenue potential position, If that incremental revenue is more than the cost that we will have paid to move that scooter or bike, it creates an automatic move task in our system. And then so how an operator, how they move around a city, what they do next is controlled by the software. So we, so we do feel like in many ways it is our operations.

AI assessment note: “We do in the sense that all of the battery swapping operations is controlled”

Q Do you think lesbian women and gay men are still prejudiced against or discriminated against in professional settings, in leadership?

A I absolutely still believe there's a lot of biases that exist in all workplaces. And, and maybe even in our own hearts that we are not. Unconscious bias is for sure real, and there's more we can do to make, to make sure that people feel heard and included in the workplace. One of the things I'm most proud of at Lime, we do a, we do a biannual company survey on employee sentiment, and the, the, the question we score the highest is, do I feel like I belong? Can I bring my full self to work? And like, 90 plus percent of limers say they believe they can. And I, I'm gay, and I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was in, I was an immigrant from, my parents are from Taiwan, moved to Nebraska when I was young, and The feeling of trying to fit in was always this thought that's kind of in your head. I think the difference between inclusion, the opposite of inclusion is fitting in. And it's spending any second of your life thinking about how do I fit in so I can be accepted in this environment is wasted time. And it's not being spent focused on how do we build a better business. So this, can I bring my full self and be accepted at work is so important to us. And I'm very, very proud that most people at Lime feel like they can. They can be their full self, but the fact that a lot of people don't feel like they can bring their full self to work is maybe the answer to your question, Harry, that …

AI assessment note: “I absolutely still believe there's a lot of biases that exist in all workplaces.”

Q Which has been the hardest city to win?

A The places where I think it's been hardest to convince the local operators, local regulators to help to bring micromobility in are probably smaller, second-tier, third-tier cities. One of the things that surprised me when I first joined Lime, I, my expectation was we were only going to work in the biggest mega, mega cities in the world where density, congestion, affordability, the problems of transportation are most acute. I think what surprised me is that we actually do really well in smaller cities. We do really well in places like Omaha, Nebraska, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma. We really do really well in Milton Keynes in the UK. Places where the regulators may not, this may not be the first solution they think about. So convincing more second tier cities to take a chance on micromobility that this is a solution for your city has been, I would say, a, a longer journey. But I think it also means there's an enormous amount of growth that's still ahead because most smaller second tier cities still don't have micromobility.

AI assessment note: “hardest to convince the local operators... are probably smaller, second-tier, third-tier cities.”

Q In that period, what was the best decision you made? What was the worst decision?

A I think the best decision, so we, we shut down operations. At the beginning of COVID, we shut down operations in most of our markets, which then also drove down a lot of the revenues, and one of the best decisions was Lime is actually a solution for COVID, because people were looking for open air, single passenger ways to move around, but restarting our business on a global, global scale, Pretty soon after COVID when we still didn't have all the information was critical at kind of getting, getting us back into the rhythm of the offense. I think nothing is worried. Waiting around for the world to end on you is not a good place to be. We needed momentum. We need to show that we can generate revenue.

AI assessment note: “I think the best decision... restarting our business on a global, global scale”

Q In that period, what was the best decision you made? What was the worst decision?

A I think the best decision, so we, we shut down operations. At the beginning of COVID, we shut down operations in most of our markets, which then also drove down a lot of the revenues, and one of the best decisions was Lime is actually a solution for COVID, because people were looking for open air, single passenger ways to move around, but restarting our business on a global, global scale, Pretty soon after COVID when we still didn't have all the information was critical at kind of getting, getting us back into the rhythm of the offense. I think nothing is worried. Waiting around for the world to end on you is not a good place to be. We needed momentum. We need to show that we can generate revenue.

AI assessment note: “restarting our business on a global, global scale, Pretty soon after COVID”

Q Which has been the hardest city to win?

A The places where I think it's been hardest to convince the local operators, local regulators to help to bring micromobility in are probably smaller, second-tier, third-tier cities. One of the things that surprised me when I first joined Lime, I, my expectation was we were only going to work in the biggest mega, mega cities in the world where density, congestion, affordability, the problems of transportation are most acute. I think what surprised me is that we actually do really well in smaller cities. We do really well in places like Omaha, Nebraska, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma. We really do really well in Milton Keynes in the UK. Places where the regulators may not, this may not be the first solution they think about. So convincing more second tier cities to take a chance on micromobility that this is a solution for your city has been, I would say, a, a longer journey. But I think it also means there's an enormous amount of growth that's still ahead because most smaller second tier cities still don't have micromobility.

AI assessment note: “are probably smaller, second-tier, third-tier cities.”

Q Dude, what's the most hard part of the business? And what's the part of the business that everyone thinks is hard, but actually is quite simple?

A I think the hardest part is that there's not one thing. Whenever I do these interviews, people say, what's the one thing that you did right? I'm like, it's, it's doing a thousand little things right. It's a, it is a true game of inches. And when you do a thousand little things better than your competitors, Then you have a different business model. And the great thing is when it's a thousand little things, it's also hard to replicate. What I love about the business model is that it's like Lyme has been advertising we're profitable, free cash flow positive in a very public way when most of our competitors have not been able to deliver similar results. Even though there's clearly a way to do it. And I think the reason why they haven't been able to replicate is because it's very hard to do what we do.

AI assessment note: “I think the hardest part is that there's not one thing.”

Q Dude, what's the most hard part of the business? And what's the part of the business that everyone thinks is hard, but actually is quite simple?

A I think the hardest part is that there's not one thing. Whenever I do these interviews, people say, what's the one thing that you did right? I'm like, it's, it's doing a thousand little things right. It's a, it is a true game of inches. And when you do a thousand little things better than your competitors, Then you have a different business model. And the great thing is when it's a thousand little things, it's also hard to replicate. What I love about the business model is that it's like Lyme has been advertising we're profitable, free cash flow positive in a very public way when most of our competitors have not been able to deliver similar results. Even though there's clearly a way to do it. And I think the reason why they haven't been able to replicate is because it's very hard to do what we do.

AI assessment note: “I think the hardest part is that there's not one thing.”

Q If today was your last day, what would you do?

A I would probably try to see my, my friends, my family, my significant other. The people of my life really is the, the thing that, that makes this life worthwhile. I threw myself a big 40th birthday party a month before my stroke. And a hundred friends from around the world flew into Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I was living at the time, to celebrate. And I remember thinking, like, how meaningful that, that, that birthday was. And then when I was, when it wasn't clear, I was thinking, like, maybe, like, you know, when you're going through a stroke, you actually don't quite know how serious it is, because you only, you can only, the only thing you can tell is watching the faces of the nurses and the doctors to try to assess how worried do they look.

AI assessment note: “I would probably try to see my, my friends, my family, my significant other.”