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Wayne Ting, CEO @Lime: From Losing $3 on Every $1 to $90M in EBITDA | E1252

Wayne Ting is CEO of Lime. The global leader in micromobility, the first to achieve a fully profitable year (2022). Last year, Lime did over $600M in gross bookings, $90M in EBITDA. Their 4-year top-line CAGR is 30%. Before joining Lime, Wayne spent four years at Uber in various roles, including Chief of Staff to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and General Manager of Uber's Northern California business. Wayne previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor on the White House’s National Economic Council under President Obama. ---------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:04:12 Lessons from Dara Khosrowshah 03:07 Joining Lime 07:05 3% Daily Decay Rate in 30 Days 11:35 Turnaround Time and Its Impact on Profitability 14:39 Unit Economics vs Consumer Experience 16:44 Expansion Playbook for New Markets 17:52 Most Respected Competitor in an RFP 19:54 Will Consumer Demand Drive Faster Upgrades? 22:50 Economics of Battery Swapping and Vertical Integration 26:45 Bolt VS Uber and Lime 30:30 Covid Times 32:39 Uber's Investment 38:42 VC Hype Cycles and Micromobility 42:00 Becoming CEO 52:42 Quick-Fire Round ---------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Wayne Ting We Discuss: Is Lime Really a Good Business: How did Wayne turn Lime from losing $3 on every $1 to $90M in EBITDA? What worked? What did not work? What did Lime do that he wishes they had not done? What did they not do that he wishes they had done? The Moments that Changed Everything: COVID: Lime lost 95% of their revenues overnight. What did Wayne and Lime do to save the business in such a short space of time? Uber Deal: How did the Uber deal led by Uber CEO, Dara, save Lime as a business? Battery Innovation: How did an innovation on the transportability of batteries and replacing them change the entire Lime business? The Dangers of VC Funding and Capital Efficiency: Why does Wayne believe that VC hype cycles are so damaging for companies and sectors? How did the heat around micromobility damage Lime? What did Wayne and Lime do to increase their capital efficiency so much? What worked? What did not? AMA with the CEO of Lime: What company did Lime not acquire that Wayne wishes they had? How did having a stroke change the way that Wayne leads? Which competitor does Wayne most respect and admire? What were his biggest lessons from working with Dara @ Uber? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZ... Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: / harrystebbings Follow Wayne Ting on X: / wayneting Follow 20VC on Instagram: / 20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: / 20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/con... ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #WayneTing #Lime #founder #CEO #venturecapital #startups #fundraising #Uber #DaraKhosrowshahi

Wayne TingguestHarry Stebbingshost
Jan 26, 20251h 4mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Lime’s CEO on Surviving Crisis, Mastering Ops, and Beating Cars

  1. Wayne Ting recounts taking over Lime when it was losing $3 for every $1 in revenue, with scooters lasting only 30 days, and explains how rigorous operational discipline and proprietary hardware turned it into a $600M+ revenue, $90M EBITDA business.
  2. He describes Lime’s ‘game of inches’ approach: thousands of small data‑driven optimizations in hardware design, warehouse operations, routing, and city relationships that compound into a defensible advantage over rivals.
  3. The conversation covers navigating COVID (including an existential down round and the acquisition of Uber’s Jump), the dangers of VC hype cycles, and what it means to operate free‑cash‑flow positive without dependence on external capital.
  4. Ting also opens up about suffering a stroke, the psychological challenge of reconciling his old and new self, and why he’s intentionally public about health struggles and LGBTQ+ identity to normalize vulnerability in leadership.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Fixing unit economics starts with hard, honest data and ground truth.

Ting’s first move was building an internal data platform to understand real profitability by city, fleet decay, and per‑trip economics; without accurate visibility, local leaders thought they were profitable when they were not.

Operational excellence is mostly about local leadership, visibility, and accountability.

The best warehouses had hands‑on GMs who knew mechanics by name, walked the floor, tracked output visibly, and held people accountable; Lime then encoded these behaviors into software to scale them globally.

Incremental hardware and process tweaks compound into major P&L impact.

By designing its own scooters and bikes (e.g., longer connectors, shared parts, easier battery access) and switching to swappable batteries, Lime cut swapping costs roughly in half and extended vehicle lifetimes from 30 days to 5+ years.

Reliability and density create a demand flywheel in micromobility.

Contrary to intuition, increasing fleet size in a city raises per‑vehicle utilization because people adopt Lime as a primary mode only when they can reliably find a vehicle, reinforcing Lime’s market‑leader advantage.

In crises, swift, deep decisions beat delayed, incremental cuts.

During COVID, Lime’s revenue dropped ~90–95%; Ting argues that cutting costs quickly and deeply, and avoiding multiple layoff rounds, is crucial for preserving credibility and survival, even when every option feels bad.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

When I first joined Lime, we were losing three dollars for every dollar of revenue.

— Wayne Ting

Great operations requires a hands-on approach. You gotta know what's happening to know what is going well, what is going poorly.

— Wayne Ting

It's a true game of inches, and when you do 1,000 little things better than your competitor, then you have a different business model.

— Wayne Ting

Lime wouldn't have survived if we did not do that deal.

— Wayne Ting, on acquiring Uber’s Jump

You gotta let that go. You can't spend your life worrying about how you're gonna be the person that you were. This is your new reality.

— Mark Bertolini, as quoted by Wayne Ting

Turning Lime’s broken unit economics into sustainable profitabilityOperational excellence: warehouses, mechanics, data systems, and routingProprietary hardware design and the impact of swappable batteriesCity expansion strategy and winning competitive RFPsCOVID crisis management, the Jump acquisition, and down roundsVenture capital hype cycles and the shift to free‑cash‑flow self‑fundingPersonal health (stroke recovery), leadership mindset, and inclusion

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