The Ledger
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why aren't all 35 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Refusing Down Rounds Due to 2020 Valuations Is Irrational
“When I see companies sometimes unwilling to raise a round because it's going to be lower than this, like, fictitious number they have in their own head. I see this with, like, IPOs now, where, like, companies are like, oh, well, I can't go public unless I hit …”
Western Tariffs on Chinese Electric Vehicles Are Justifiable to Protect Manufacturing
“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 lie…”
Tech Companies and VCs Have Abandoned and Openly Mocked DEI Values
“I feel like what's shocked me is how many companies, how many VCs, Have abandoned the values of diversity, equity, inclusion over the last year to now openly mocking it in ways that I could have never, never expected before.”
Lime Is the Only Micromobility Company Building Proprietary Hardware
“I think every other operator in our industry buys off the shelf hardware, but every scooter and bike you see On Lyme's platform, we design, we engineer, we produce, and we operate ourselves.”
Increasing Lime's Fleet Supply Counterintuitively Boosts Per-Unit Utilization
“This is why when we increase our fleet in a market, we actually see our trips per vehicle per day go up. Our utilization goes up. It's counterintuitive. When you grow your supply in most businesses, the utilization per unit goes down because the demand usually…”
Lime Has Not Yet Hit a Demand Limit for Incremental Supply Growth
“Intellectually, I assume there's an asymptote. So far in markets we see Incremental supply drives more demand for the entire network.”
Initial Corporate Layoffs Are Rarely Deep Enough, Destroying Management Credibility Later
“When you're doing layoffs, it's always, it always feels so painful, too painful, but I would say it's never painful enough. The most painful thing is coming back three months later with another round of layoffs.”
CEOs Should Never Guarantee to Employees That a Layoff Is Final
“Never promise people this is the only round because you never know because you're the, you're doing that as a way to save the company, to bring the cost in line with the revenue expectations. If the world gets worse, if your revenue expectation gets worse, the…”
Paul Graham's 'Founder Mode' Is Just Basic Management Hygiene
“I read Paul's 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 trust, but you verify is what all good CEOs must do.”
VC Hype Cycles Harm Startups by Masking Poor Operational Hygiene
“I would say these hype cycles are generally bad for companies because it allows them to avoid learning hard lessons.”
Lime Lost $3 for Every $1 of Revenue When Wayne Ting Joined
“When I first streamed Line, we were losing three dollars for every dollar of revenue.”
Lime's Early Scooter Fleet Suffered a 3% Daily Decay Rate
“The daily decay rate was three percent. So in the course of 30 days, your entire fleet was gone.”
Lime Hit $600M Gross Bookings and $90M EBITDA in 2023
“Last year, we did over six hundred million dollars in gross bookings. Our four-year top line CAGR is 30%. In each of those four years, we expanded our profit margins. And last year we did over ninety million dollars in company-wide EBITDA.”
Lime Achieves Hardware Payback in Under One Year With Five-Year Lifespans
“When we deploy our hardware, we can pay back within the first year, and it lasts for more than five years from the 30 days I was describing before. So you have four more years of cash flow generation after you've paid back your hardware.”
Lime's System Only Generates Scooter Relocation Tasks If ROI Positive
“Every move task has to be ROI positive.”
Lime Would Not Lead Micromobility if Unvetted VC Funding Had Continued
“If the funding continued to flow without real assessment of whether or not a company is doing a good job or bad job, I think Lime would not be the global leader right now because it would allow our kind of worst managed competitors to continue to scale and gro…”
Lime Would Not Have Survived the Pandemic Without Acquiring Jump
“Line wouldn't have survived if we did not do that deal.”
Lime's Metrics Are IPO-Ready, but Internal Accounting Controls Need Upgrading
“I think Lime's business metrics is in a great spot. I think most of the things we've got to get ready are around kind of internal controls, how fast we can close a book, how, how quickly can we, like, file a 10 K, 10 Q, the types of things that are part of, li…”
Micromobility Will Replace Urban Personal Car Ownership Within 20 to 30 Years
“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.”
Wayne Ting Feared Lime Would Go Bankrupt for His First Four Years
“I would say my first four years as CEO, I was constantly worried about Line going out of business.”
Lime Achieves an Over 90% Win Rate in Competitive City RFPs
“We have a greater than 90% win rate of competitive RFPs on a global basis, and we renew our permits at a greater than 95% rate.”
Personal Cars Are Lime's Main Competitor, Not Rival Scooter Companies
“The competitor that I spend most of my time thinking about is the car. The car is our biggest competitor. The majority of car trips are under five miles in cities, and the mode of passenger is one. The most common number of people in a car is one person. And s…”
Lime Cut Battery Swapping Operational Costs in Half With Swappable Batteries
“I think our swapping costs were cut by half.”
Lime's Revenue Dropped 90% to 95% in Days at COVID-19's Onset
“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.”
Lime's Cash Runway Shrank to Just 20 Days in Early 2020
“Suddenly what we thought was maybe six months of runway was like, 20 days of runway because all of our revenues went away.”
Uber Provided Under Half of Lime's $140M Emergency COVID Funding Round
“I think the total round was a hundred and forty million dollars. Not all of it was from Uber. In fact, I think less than half is from Uber.”
Lime Achieved Unlevered Free Cash Flow Positivity to Fund Internal Growth
“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”
Wayne Ting Believes Lime Is a Strong Candidate for an Eventual IPO
“I think Lime is a great future candidate as a public, publicly traded company. We are the market leader in a very fast growing industry with a big tan, and we have demonstrated over many years a differentiated financial results, both in top line growth and in …”
Wayne Ting Cannot Move His Left Arm Following a Recent Stroke
“When you suffer a stroke, like, I still can't move my left arm and my left hand.”
San Diego Suffered Lime's Highest Vehicle Theft Rate Due to Gangs
“In the history of Lime, it was, it would probably be San Diego. We were seeing actually like gangs of people coming into San Diego and then stealing the bikes and scooters and driving into Mexico. So it was hard for us to like police and react to it.”
Wayne Ting Visited 100 Lime Warehouses in Three Months During Turnaround
“So I then spent the next three months traveling to warehouse after warehouse. I probably visited a hundred warehouses, and I would just sit in the warehouse and watch what people were doing.”
Lime Uses Machine Learning to Predict Trip Demand by the Half-Block
“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.”