My visit to the Mobike headquarters and what I learned from founder Hu Weiwei

In late July, I did a tour of Mobike’s headquarters in Beijing and had a fascinating talk with their founder Hu Weiwei and VP of international expansion Chris Martin. It was a fantastic experience, and I left with a much better appreciation of the rocket ship ride the company has been on. I’m writing three (more serious) business articles on the bike-sharing business from this experience, but here is a summary of my trip and the five big things I learned.

Arriving at Mobike HQ

The Mobike headquarters is near the Liangmaqiao subway station in northern Beijing. So, on the way there, I got a nice walk along the river (canal?). And, of course, I couldn’t help but notice all the on-demand bikes on the way. These days, the bikes are mostly Mobike and Ofo, which is a change from six months ago when there were more than 30 companies in the market. It got to the point where there weren’t enough new colors to go around and they had to do combinations. Here is one of my favorites.

I also passed one of Mobike’s new outdoor ads. You can see similar ones by Ofo in the subways now. I’d been noticing these and wanted to ask Mobike about them. Given their overwhelming presence on the streets, why use outdoor media? Their answer to that is below. Here’s the ad I passed (sorry for the glare).

I arrived at their new headquarters at the Manning International Center and immediately started having deja vu. I had definitely been in this building before but couldn’t quite remember when. I just remember giving a talk on the roof, getting pretty drunk at the cocktail party after, and then stumbling around inside this building. That last part is pretty fuzzy though.

The HQ’s lobby was pretty much what you’d expect—a lot of people hustling around, working on laptops in random places, employees meeting at a cafe on the side, and orange everywhere.

On the left wall, there was an interesting mural of the history of bicycles. Mobike was listed as the newest part of that history. On the right wall was the company’s timeline. The line stretched across the entire wall, marking various milestones. But then I noticed that the timeline only began in 2015. So at this rate, that timeline is going to run out of wall space in like November.

And of course, everyone in the bustling lobby was noticeably young and casually dressed. Standing in the lobby in my suit, I felt pretty out of place and a bit old. I made a mental note to drop a couple of references to One Direction.

Luke Schoen and Huang Xue, both from media relations, met me at the lobby. I immediately felt the compulsion to disclose that I had been drunk in their building in the past. In retrospect, that was maybe not a great way to introduce myself. They politely ignored that and off we went on a tour as I pulled out my long list of questions.

Meeting the founder

We headed up to the building’s second-floor deck, which resembled the bow of a ship. I continued peppering Schoen and Huang with various questions, likely pushing the boundaries of acceptable social graces. I was then surprised to be joined by Martin and Hu.

I was pretty lucky, as Martin was the person spearheading their international expansion (a topic I wanted to learn more about). Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he came across as someone perpetually in motion. This makes sense, as Mobike has been launching in a new city almost every week. In the last couple of weeks, they have launched in Manchester, Florence, and Milan (and maybe London next month).

Hu, on the other hand, makes a different impression. She’s poised and well dressed (like a Fortune 500 CEO). She has an assistant hovering behind her, constantly trying to get her attention about various things. There is none of the odd behavior that seems so common in Silicon Valley CEOs these days. I scribbled down two notes while she was talking: “Very smart” and “gravitas” (which I circled twice). She struck me as a particularly good example of the newest generation of Chinese women entrepreneurs, a demographic worth paying close attention to.

Two caveats

5 takeaways on Mobike and bike-sharing