These Singaporeans built a scooter startup and sold it to Ford for $100m in 20 months

A Spin e-scooter near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge / Photo credit: Spin

How many Singaporeans does it take to launch a US bike-sharing startup, pivot it to e-scooters, and sell it to one of the world’s biggest carmakers, all in the space of just 20 months?

The answer is three.

Though their paths and destinies crossed on the other side of the Pacific, Spin co-founders Euwyn Poon, Derrick Ko, and Zaizhuang Cheng all hail from the Lion City. And Poon thinks their shared heritage has played a key part in the startup’s recent success, including its acquisition by auto giant Ford for a reported US$100 million, announced in November.

To start at the beginning of the Spin story, however, we need to go to China.

On your bike

While it’s now recognized for its on-demand dockless e-scooters, Spin began life as a bike-sharing service. It’s an idea that Poon – who was born, raised, and educated between Singapore, Canada, and the US – happened upon in the place where it all began.

“I was living in Beijing, using Mobikes to get around, and realized I was getting addicted to having this convenient mode of transport around, and not having to wait for a Didi or Uber,” he explains.

“I realized there was this gap [in North America] for short-distance trips. When you’re waiting for an Uber, your short-distance trip can become an uncertain 20-minute trip.”

It’s very appropriate that us Singaporeans ended up starting this.

Poon thought that the Chinese had it right with their two-wheeled solution. Returning to San Francisco, he bought himself a bicycle to get around on.

“Inevitably, it got stolen. So I never tried that again!”

Nevertheless, that idea of dockless bikes as a way of supplementing other transport options, allowing Californian commuters to complete the first or last mile of their journeys, stuck in his mind.

The other thing that enthused Poon was the monetization possibilities that the bike-sharing model presented.

“It was a user acquisition channel that had never really been tried [in the US]. Traditional channels, Facebook advertising, mobile app installs, had been done to death. This was untapped and turned out to be incredibly effective when coupled with the cost of bikes at the time,” he says.

Birds of a feather, flock together

Kiasu for the win

Pivot

Scootergeddon

Confucianism and thinking outside the box