附近上门

Venture

Morning Report: Billions For Bike Sharing Seems A Bit Frothy

Morning Report:Whatever happened to efficient growth and cashflow management?

Bike sharing startup raised a this week to fuel expansion. As the noted this morning, the new capital “comes on the heels of a $450 million March investment.”

If you can’t help but find that a bit odd, things are even more surreal than you thought.

(Sidenote before the snark: Bike sharing could be a simply massive business not only in Asia, where Ofo is based, but around the world. Our point today is that capital sources of various stripes are investing at a pace that seems a touch out-of-touch.)

Ofo by itself has raised a staggering $1.28 billion to-date. If you sum just the firm’s two latest rounds, some $1.15 billion of the total came just this year, or 89 percent. That total and timeframe works out to $6.18 million per day so far in 2017.

But Ofo has competition, notably from , another China-based startup. Mobike听itself raised in June. Its total capital raise to date is $925 million. The two combined have raised over $2 billion for bike sharing, all of it in the last 12 months.

There are other players in the space, as . Rivals include , another player in China, flush with $58.24 million in total capital raised, and , based in the United States, with a comparatively modest $12 million in raised capital.

Why two dueling bike sharing companies needed to raise over $2 billion in under a year isn’t clear. This feels a bit like the FanDuel-DraftKings fight that 听and the need to merge.

There are more positive takes out there — including from my friend and former colleague — but I can’t shake the idea that raising over $1 billion in a half-year for what must work out to low-margin bike sharing is probably not conservative.

From the听:

Ofo raises $700M for bike sharing

  • Big bucks are going into bike sharing. Beijing-based听听announced that it has raised a $700 million Series E funding round to fuel global expansion of its dockless bike-share system. Alibaba, Hony Capital and CITIC Private Equity led the round, which comes on the heels of a $450 million March investment.

Felix Capital closes $150M second fund

  • , a London-based VC that pitches itself as a 鈥渧enture capital firm for the creative class,鈥 has closed on $150 million for a second fund that will focus primarily on early stage startups in Europe and the U.S.

Funding flows to remote workforce startups

  • Your startup may be headquartered out of San Francisco, but your employees don鈥檛 have to be. A听听found at least 23 venture-backed companies have a majority-remote workforce, including two well-known unicorns,听听and听. In other news, we examine the aftermath of Blue Apron鈥檚 IPO and consider whether public investors are听听tech company multiples to non-tech stocks.

iStock /听Pavel1964

Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the 附近上门 Daily.

67.1K Followers

CTA

Discover and act on private market opportunities with predictive company intelligence.

Copy link