The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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
30 Jan 2025
Full Episode
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,
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