š“ Essential City + Tech Stories: 1.18.21
Podcast: The Ways One Mobility Company is Trying to Break into NYC
Good morning! John, here. š
Welcome back to Urban Tech, the best place for people interested in cities and tech.
Today, not only do we have the essential city and tech stories for you ā but below, youāll find my recent conversation withĀ Carl Vernersson, the chief commercial officer atĀ Voi Technology.
Voi recently raised a $160 million round of funding as it looks to expand its product and scooter services to North America ā with its eyes set on New York City as the first market it launches.
Youāll need to listen to the full conversation on the Urban Tech Podcast, but Iāve included some highlights below.
Quick note for Thursdayās edition:Ā Urban Tech Thursday features my recent interview with Political Strategist and Venture CapitalistĀ Bradley Tusk, where we discuss the calculus behind city and tech politics.Ā
Itās a fantastic conversation for anyone interested in tech, politics, or cities.
Last Mondayās most popular stories:
š„ The New York Times: āMr. Mayorā Review: A Political Comedy From Sitcom Royalty
š„Axios: Why the decline of business travel matters
š„ The Verge: Amazon will spend $2 billion to try to fix affordable housing crises in three major employment hubs
Essential City + Tech Stories: 1.18.21
ā”ļøAxios: General Motors and FedEx join the race to electrify package delivery
šµ The Real Deal: Compass Files Confidentially for IPO
š¦ Government Technology: Curb-Management Pilots Smooth the Flow of Traffic, Deliveries
Ā š” The Wall Street Journal: Rental Home Construction Climbs as Purchase Prices Surge
š¤ dot.LA: No Tipping Necessary: Hundreds of Delivery Robots Are Coming to Los Angeles
š Recode: Walmartās e-commerce chief is leaving to build āa city of the futureā
šŖ San Francisco Business Times: 'Flexible living' provider Landing raises another $100 million
Axios: General Motors and FedEx join the race to electrify package delivery
Moves to electrify transportation fleets continue to be major goals for the worlds biggest delivery companies ā and automakers who can provide the vehicles:
General Motors is launching a new business unit devoted to electrifying the goods delivery market and says package giant FedEx will be the first customer.
Why it matters: Big automakers and startups alike see a huge opportunity.
GM said it sees an $850 billion U.S. market for "parcel, food delivery and reverse logistics" by the mid-2020s.
"E-commerce already was on a tremendous growth trajectory and COVID has just taken that to the next level," Pam Fletcher, GM's vice president of global innovation, told reporters yesterday.
Driving the news: GM's new BrightDrop unit provides an "ecosystem of electric first-to-last-mile products, software and services" for delivery and logistics companies, the company said.
A key piece is a new electric delivery vehicle arriving late this year that GM says will have a range of 250 miles per charge. There's also an "electric pallet" to help move goods over short distances, as well as software products to help customers in areas like ensuring the most efficient delivery routes.
The Real Deal: Compass Files Confidentially for IPO
As The Real Dealās E.B Solomont reports, tech-powered residential brokerage Compass is officially on its way for an IPO this year.
Compass has filed confidentially to go public.
The residential brokerage, which has raised $1.5 billion from investors including SoftBank, said it submitted a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
Compass did not disclose the size of the offering. The firmās last valuation was $6.4 billion in July 2019, when it raised a $370 million Series G.
Government Technology: Curb-Management Pilots Smooth the Flow of Traffic, Deliveries
There are significant opportunities to optimize street curbs to help make our cities more efficient places to move people and goods.
StartupĀ CoordĀ is working on the problem by partnering with cities to maximize curb space, so we aren't wasting this vital street space:
Data-centered curbside-management is leading to a more organized flow of goods and services across public sidewalks and streets in several states.Ā
Technology-enabled pilot projects started last year in several cities in Colorado, Nebraska and Washington and unfolded during a time of unexpected increases in e-commerce and delivery activity as Americans were forced to change the way they shop amid the COVID-19 crisis.Ā
A project in Aspen, Colo. ā led by digital curb software company Coord ā established āsmartā loading zones where delivery services could reserve a specific time. The process has led to a deeper understanding of when delivery demand is high, by which services and for how long the space is needed. The pilot began in early November, starting with only about 20 bookings from package delivery companies like UPS or FedEx. Under the project, drivers were able to download a curb-management app developed by Coord to get placed into the reservation system. In the week before Christmas the smart zones had seen more than 125 bookings, said Mitch Osur, director of parking and downtown servicesā¦
Coord is leading a similar pilot project in Omaha, Neb., with plans to launch projects in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Nashville, Tennā¦
Coord has launched a second annual Digital Curb Challenge, where up to three North American cities will be selected for curb-management pilots. The challenge is open to cities, universities, airports and other organizations. Applications can be submitted at coord.com/digital-curb-challenge and are open until Feb. 15.
Ā The Wall Street Journal: Rental Home Construction Climbs as Purchase Prices Surge
While thereās been a big focus on the surge in Americans buying homes, there are high hopes from investors for rental housing in growing, urbanizing suburbs.
There havenāt been so many single-family homes under construction in the U.S. since 2007, yet many of these new houses wonāt be for sale.
Investors are building tens of thousands of houses expressly to rent in a bet that Americans will keep flocking to spacious suburban living even if they canāt afford to buy homes.
The Covid-19 pandemic sparked a race for space among Americans, and home prices have surged to records. The gains have outpaced wage growth, straining affordability despite historically low borrowing costs.
Homeownership is unaffordable for average wage earners in 55% of U.S. counties, up from 43% a year earlier, according to Attom Data Solutions, a real-estate analytics firm. Meanwhile, single-family landlords have reported record occupancy and fast-rising rents since the pandemic began.
Individuals, family offices, pension funds and Wall Streetās boldfaced names are shoveling billions of dollars into build-to-rent projects. Home builders are embracing the business of selling houses wholesale to landlords, and even teaming up with them to build neighborhoods that blur the line between houses and apartment complexes.
dot.LA: No Tipping Necessary: Hundreds of Delivery Robots Are Coming to Los Angeles
As ecommerce continues its surge, a race is underway to automate delivery operations wherever possible. One company, Kiwibot, has been testing some delivery bots in my backyard in Los Angeles:
Kiwibot has quietly been testing its robots ā specially designed to look cute and non-threatening ā for the past few weeks in the Valley, as well as more recently at a major university campus the company won't yet name. If all goes well, Kiwibot will begin offering delivery to students through as early as next month before expanding to Santa Monica and other parts of the city after that.
"L.A. is going to be our most important city this year," Chavez said. "In the first five months of the year we plan to employ 100 robots here in the city, and we expect that by the end of the year we're going to have around 400 robots deployed."
Postmates, which is now owned by Uber, has been testing a handful of delivery robots in West Hollywood since April. While those are accompanied by a human chaperone, the Kiwibot robots set out on their own, though operators take over remotely for more complex tasks like crossing the street.
Kiwibot has already made over 120,000 deliveries since 2017 during rollouts at University of California, Berkeley, University of Denver, and San Jose, where it partnered with Shopify and Ordermark. But L.A., with its vast geographic footprint, is a whole new degree of difficulty....
...Kiwibot chose L.A. because the city already has a high adoption of food delivery, it is home to potential partners like ChowNow and Ordermark, and the city has been a willing collaborator through its Urban Movement Labs (UML), mostly by sharing data on city streets and sidewalks.
Recode: Walmartās e-commerce chief is leaving to build āa city of the futureā
Recodeās Jason DelĀ Rey reported a top Walmart executive is leaving for a new venture that Urban Tech will be watching closely for more details to emerge:
Marc Lore, a serial entrepreneur who sold his startup Jet.com to Walmart for $3 billion and then oversaw the transformation of the retail giantās e-commerce business over the last four years, is leaving his full-time role with the company at the end of the month, he told Recode.
His next big entrepreneurial swing will be something far afield from his current expertise: a multi-decade project to build āa city of the futureā supported by āa reformed version of capitalism.ā
āItās a new model for society weāll be testing,ā he teased.
Lore declined to offer more details, but said he would be prepared to reveal additional information in the coming months. Some who have heard of the project say one focus will be on giving everyday citizens direct economic upside in the cityās growth.
San Francisco Business Times: 'Flexible living' provider Landing raises another $100 million
COVID aside, there are major opportunities for furnished living in cities.
Furnished living, plus a turn-key network of homes across the country to choose from, is the future of living thatĀ LandingĀ thinks will be popular in the years to come.
These themes/trends are the same ones that coliving and companies like Zeus Living are also hoping to capitalize on. More details:
Landing, which has built up a network of 10,000 apartments in 75 cities across the country and allows members of its service to move between them as often as monthly, has raised another $100 million in funding.
Billing itself as offering "flexible, long term living," San Francisco-based Landing secured $45 million in equity capital in a funding round led by Foundry Group, alongside $55 million in debt financing.
The increase in working from home and remote working during the pandemic has boosted Landing. Its members lease a furnished or unfurnished apartment in one city, but can relocate to a Landing property in any other city on as little as 30 days' notice.
Several Interesting TweetsĀ
The Ways One Mobility Company is Trying to Break Into NYC
Below are highlights from my recent conversation withĀ Voiās Chief Commercial OfficerĀ Carl Vernersson,Ā who explained what itās been like for the Swedish startup to apply to operate in NYC.
Listen to the full episode to hear all the insights from Carl about how tech companies can better partner with cities. Heās a rockstar who is incredibly thoughtful about how we can make mobility safer.
Where to listen
SpotifyĀ |Ā Apple PodcastsĀ |Ā Amazon MusicĀ |Ā Select Podcast Player
Carl explains Voiās services and background
CV:Ā Voi is a Swedish startup in the micromobility space, where we are solely focusing on the scooters.
Up until now, we have been entirely focusing on the European market. Coming from the Nordics, and understanding the European regulatory landscape quite well, that has been where we have put all of our efforts and focused on quite successfully to this point. Today, we control approximately 50% of the total licensed scooter fleet in Europe.
JT: Where is Voi in terms of funding? Any growth metrics that you can share?
CV:Ā We've raised approximately $300 million in total. We recently closed a new round of $160 million, which we anticipate will take us to profitability. During 2020, we actually saw profitable months during our high season.Ā
So despite COVID, and despite lower movements in cities overall, I think we've made massive progress over the last 12 to 18 months when it comes to operational efficiency.
He shares what the RFP for operating scooters in New York has been like
CV:Ā Effectively, the RFP looks very similar to what we see in Europe. I want to shout out the officials in New York. I think they've done a great job with the process. We have seen multiple attempts of licensing and RFP processes that haven't really taken the city residents nor the operators into consideration while constructing the process and the actual procurement of services.Ā
Overall, there needs to be an outstanding balance in the RFP process between allowing operators to input on fleet sizes and how they would intend to run operations ā while at the same time you have to set clear guidelines on what overall operations will look like in a city like New York.
Carl compares the European regulatory framework to the US
CV:Ā One of the biggest challenges operating in Europe because you were effectively looking at so many different layers of regulation.
How it works in Europe is what enables operators to operate is national legislation. When we launched in 2018, most of the countries in Europe didn't have federal legislation in place that allowed scooter services to operate. Cities were then missing tools to regulate the operators properly.
It became even more critical to work with the cities directly. I remembered this clear memory from late 2018. We were in discussions with the city of Copenhagen because Denmark is the neighboring country of Sweden, so that city made a lot of sense to us.
We had a great conversation, and the regulators admitted that they didn't have any tools to regulate our sector at this particular point. They asked us to hold off launching in the city until 2019, so we had many discussions before working back with regulators to envision how we could operate effectively.
Carl shares details on safety and technology innovations Voi is developing
CV:Ā From a hardware perspective, obviously making sure that our vehicles are as safe as possible for the new generation of scooters we have applied to deploy in New York. We have added turning indicators, which is effectively a new feature for us.
Other than that, we are also piloting a technology with computer vision. This technology enables us to do two things. One is to detect sidewalk riding or if riders are riding where they shouldn't. Secondly, which is more critical actually, this technology also senses if a pedestrian might be walking too close to a rider's path.
The technology enables us to work in a more preventive way when it comes to vehicle safety. On the more software side, we are also working on a couple of different initiatives. One that materialized from a hackathon that we did internally is a helmet-selfie feature.
When you approach the scooter to unlock it, the user is asked whether they are wearing a helmet or not. If they are, and they take a selfie, our technology would then detect whether they are wearing the helmet and if they are, we would wave a dollar off the ride's cost.
Thanks for checking out todayās edition! Please continue to share Urban Tech with your networks.
āļøJT