20VC: Lime's CEO on Going from Losing $3 on Every $1 to $90M in EBITDA | How Lime Built the Global Leader in Micromobility When Competitors Went Bust | Losing 90% of Revenues in COVID and The Uber Deal That Saved the Company with Wayne Ting
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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
1h 6m
2 speakers
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When I first joined Lime, I think we were losing $3 for every dollar of revenue. The daily decay rate was 3%. So in the course of 30 days, your entire fleet was gone. So the business was completely upside down. I would say my first four years as CEO, I was constantly worried about Lime going out of business. Lime wouldn't have survived if we did not do that deal.
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I've wanted to make this show happen for a long time. I live in London, and here, Lime bikes, they're everywhere. But most people think, honestly, that micromobility providing is a bad business, that these companies lose money. Well, Lime did over $600 million in gross bookings, with $90 million in EBITDA last year. They're the global leader, and they've proved all the naysayers wrong. And so today I'm thrilled to sit down with Wayne Ting, Lime's CEO, to discuss what Lime have done and got so right that so many others bluntly have got so wrong and how they built the global leader that they have. But before we dive in today, it can be difficult to build a team that's aligned on everything from values to workflow. But that's exactly what Coda was made to do. Coda is an all-in-one collaborative workspace that started as a napkin sketch. Now, just five years since launching in beta, Coda has helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page.
With Coda, you get the flexibility of docs, the structure of spreadsheets, the power of applications, and the intelligence of AI, all built for your organization. Coda's seamless workspace facilitates deeper collaboration and quicker creativity, giving you more time to build. And whether you're a startup looking to organize the chaos while staying nimble, or an enterprise team looking for better team alignment, Coda matches your working style. To try it for yourself, go to coda.io slash 20VC today and get six months free of the team plan for startups. That's Coda, C-O-D-A dot I-O slash 20VC to get started for free and get six free months of the team plan. Now that your team is aligned and collaborating, let's tackle those messy expense reports. You know, those receipts that seem to multiply like rabbits in your wallet, the endless email chains asking, can you approve this? And don't even get me started on a month-end panic when you realize you have to reconcile it all.
Well, PLEO offers smart company cards, physical, virtual, and vendor-specific, so teams can buy what they need while finance stays in control. Automate your expense reports, process invoices seamlessly, and manage reimbursements effortlessly, all in one platforms. With integrations to tools like Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite, Plio fits right into your workflow, saving time and giving you full visibility over every entity, payment, and subscription. Join over 37,000 companies already using Plio to streamline their finances. Try Plio today. It's like magic, but with fewer rabbits. Find out more at plio.io forward slash 20VC. And don't forget to revolutionize how your team works together. Rome, a company of tomorrow, runs at hyper speed with quick drop-in meetings. A company of tomorrow is globally distributed and fully digitized. The company of tomorrow instantly connects human and AI workers. A company of tomorrow is in a Rome virtual office.
See a visualization of your whole company, the live presence, the drop-in meetings, the AI summaries, the chats. It's an incredible view to see. Roam is a breakthrough workplace experience loved by over 500 companies of tomorrow for a fraction of the cost of Zoom and Slack. Visit Rome, that's O-R dot A-M, for an instant demo of Rome today. Nobody knows what the future holds, but I do know this. It's going to be built in a Rome virtual office, hopefully by you. That's Rome, R-O dot A-M, for an instant demo. You have now arrived at your destination. Wayne, I am so excited for this, dude. Listen, I heard so many good things from Blake Byers, from Jeff Jordan, from Sarah Smith. So thank you so much for joining me today. Harry, thank you so much for having me.
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