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

1. 0:00 – 3:07

   Intro

   1. WTWayne Ting0:00

      When I first joined Lime, we were losing three dollars 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.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:19

      Ready to go? Wayne, I am so excited for this, dude. Listen, I, I heard so many good things from Blake Byers, from Jeff Jordan, uh, from Sarah Smith, so thank you so much for joining me today.

   3. WTWayne Ting0:42

      Harry, thank you so much for having me. Very excited for the conversation.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:45

      Dude, I can't wait. I told you, listen, I come out of my f- apartment every day and there's, like, 50 Limes in front of my house, um, so I think of you every day in the most romantic of senses. Um, I want to start, though, you then worked for Dara at Uber, who has had the most incredible journey with Uber over the last few years. What did you learn from Dara through his mentorship?

   5. WTWayne Ting1:04

      Dara also, Dara came into Uber at a very difficult transition, and I think what was really amazing was how quickly he reset the tone at the top. And re- one of the first things he did was he wanted to put out new values for Uber. There was a lot of criticisms about kind of the way Uber was acting or the way Uber was competing and I remember the one value that he put out that was, that resonated the most was, "Do the right thing." It sounds cliché and shallow, but I can't tell you how much it resonated with people all throughout the company. We don't... Winning is not enough. We win while doing the right thing, we win while doing the ethical thing, we win while treating each other with respect. And what I saw was that there was, there was different paths to success and Dara brought a very unique set of leadership traits that in many ways challenged Uber to think about how, how can we be a better company and a better team?

   6. HSHarry Stebbings1:56

      Can I ask you, how do you think about doing the right thing in a multi-participant economy? And what I mean by that is, if we think about, say, Uber in that case, raising prices is s- doing the right thing maybe for supply and demand, it may be doing the right thing for drivers. It's not doing the right thing for consumers, and so doing the right thing is always held in the context of the beholder. How do you think about that?

   7. WTWayne Ting2:18

      We have a similar debate here. I would say it's really important not to make business decisions, moral decisions. I would actually take pricing out of a moral context. Companies throughout the world raise prices, lower prices millions of times a day. Amazon probably does it a million times in one day just on their own platform. Raising prices, lowering prices is not a moral decision. It's a business judgment call, and I think when we bring moral dimensions to business judgment calls, we actually shut down debate prematurely. Because if I'm saying, "I'm, I'm not gonna raise prices because I'm doing the right thing," then that assumes the person arguing for raising prices is doing the wrong thing, so it's very dangerous, I think, to, to, to put immoral consequences into a regular business decision. And so, (clears throat) I think there are good arguments for why companies may need to raise prices.

2. 3:07 – 7:05

   Joining Lime

   1. WTWayne Ting3:07

   2. HSHarry Stebbings3:07

      So, we have those learnings and we have that time with Dara and Uber, and then we decide to join Lime. Talk to me about that. That was in 2018 at a time when it was a fricking hot space. Like, the hottest of spaces, I remember. Where was Lime at in 2018 when you joined?

   3. WTWayne Ting3:24

      Lime had been around for just over a year, and I think it was probably at the time, I don't recall, like, any revenue numbers, but it was maybe, like, in like, let's say, 100, 100+ markets or so.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings3:35

      100, 100, 100+ markets. It was just bikes, just scooters, what was it?

   5. WTWayne Ting3:40

      So Lime had started as an e-bike business and then sometime in, I think, early 2018, it made a transition to go hard into scooters, so it was, at that point, majority scooters and had just made a decision to go global, so it was expanding rapidly in Europe at this time.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings3:55

      Okay. So we're expanding rapidly in Europe, we're doing scooters, great. How was the business at that point for you coming in? When you think about your experience there, what were the biggest challenges for you coming into Lime at that point?

   7. WTWayne Ting4:09

      I think the, the biggest challenge was that the business was upside down at that point. I remember digging into the P&L of the business. I think we were losing three dollars for every dollar of revenue, and the biggest thing was the, the hardware. The, the industry had taken personally-used scooters and put it into a commercial space, and so these were not designed for commercial use at the time. This is six years ago, and I think the average scooter only lasted 30 days. The daily decay rate was 3%, so in the course of 30 days, your entire fleet was gone, and you can't run a business that is a hardware, CapEx-intensive business if every 30 days you need to buy a whole new fleet, so the business was completely upside down. And I know we- we didn't have great data, either. Like, one of the most, one of the first things that I was really keen on doing was we got to establish ground truth. What was even happening? So I remember I was meeting with the head of Europe when I first joined and he was telling me how profitable he was, and I was like, "It doesn't seem like it from what I can see," but the fact that he didn't know if they were profitable or not is a failure of the company because we had to give him real, accurate data so that he could make the right decisions. If he thinks he is printing money when the opposite is true, then we have not set him up for success, so I spent a lot of that first couple months building our data.Lime, which is a internal tool, to give us, like, accurate data to cross hundreds of operational da- uh, operational metrics for every region. And we can, we can pull, pull up to, like, the global level, down to the city level, so we-

   8. HSHarry Stebbings5:40

      What were the me- what were the metrics that mattered? When you established that data foundation, what were the ones you really honed in on?

   9. WTWayne Ting5:47

      Like any business, you care about demand, so, like, what's the trips per vehicle per day? What was your revenue per vehicle per day? Um, how many riders do you have? What was the retention of that rider? Then you care about your bottom line metrics and f- and, and it's-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings6:01

       Can we, can we j- j- just staying on that one, 'cause we could have trips per vehicle per day, a- and that, that could be very high but very short trips and so not as much money-

   11. WTWayne Ting6:10

       Absolutely.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings6:10

       ... or it could be very long. So-How do you think about the right metric to choose in that regard?

   13. WTWayne Ting6:16

       Ultimately, you want to be generating more revenue than your cost, and so we were looking at the economics also on a trip basis. So if I think about total revenue, it's the number of fleet, total fleet multiplied by revenue per... Fleet multiplied by trips per vehicle per day gets me to total trips, multiplied by revenue per trip gets me to total revenue.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings6:35

       Mm-hmm.

   15. WTWayne Ting6:35

       And so you don't... If- if... What you had was a lot of short trips, so low RPT, low revenue per trip trip and that was insufficient to generate a profit, and that's not a good business. And then, and then you wanna make sure you have the right cost metrics, and the biggest cost metrics at the time was simply how long our scooters lasted, so we were very keenly focused on daily decay rate. Now we look at decay on an annualized basis, but at the time we were focused on how many scooters did we lose today because we were losing so many

3. 7:05 – 11:35

   3% Daily Decay Rate in 30 Days

   1. WTWayne Ting7:05

      scooters.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings7:05

      What were you losing on a daily decay rate?

   3. WTWayne Ting7:08

      3% daily decay on a global basis. This is the... So in, in 30 days you lost your entire fleet.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings7:15

      What did you do when you saw that, Wayne? You're an incredibly data-driven, analytical, smart guy. You're like...

   5. WTWayne Ting7:22

      I remember my- I had two thoughts. One thought was, "Did I make a terrible mistake?" (laughs) Because I don't think I fully understood how upside down the economics of the industry were, and the second was, "I need to get out there to really understand what was happening." So I then spent the next three months traveling to warehouse after warehouse. I probably visited 100 warehouses and I would just sit in the warehouse and watch what people were doing. I went to the best warehouse and I went to the worst warehouse, and I spent the most amount of time sitting in the worst warehouses and just watching people, trying to understand, why is it that we couldn't make money? Like, what are we doing incorrectly?

   6. HSHarry Stebbings7:59

      Take me to the best. What made the best the best, and so efficient from a capital perspective?

   7. WTWayne Ting8:04

      From an operations perspective, the, the, the thing that made... The thing that I think was the biggest difference was the leader of the, of the team, the general manager. We copied Uber's kind of general manager model. We had a distributed decision-making process where each GM in the markets were the CEOs of their market. They could make decisions about where to invest, how to control their cost, and the biggest difference was we're-... Was the GM... The best markets, the GM knew all the op- all the mechanics by name. They were walking the floors. I remember when I went to the worst market and I sat there for eight hours. I was doing my email sitting in the middle of the warehouse, and I was just watching what everyone was doing, and eight hours later I walked out. I was like, "I figured it out." And I went to the GM of that market. It was in Southern France. I was like, "In the eight hours I sat there, and you know I'm here, you never came in one time. You never, you never walked around the floor. And then that guy over there has been fixing the same scooter for eight hours. He doesn't know what he's doing at all. He is just wasting time. And the fact that you haven't walked up to him and asked why he's spending so much time on a single scooter, he's just screwing that one screw and unscrewing that same screw." Great operations requires a hands-on approach. You gotta know what's happening to know what is going well, what is going poorly, and the quality of the leader was the biggest differentiator between a good warehouse and a bad warehouse.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings9:21

      W- where was the best warehouse?

   9. WTWayne Ting9:23

      The best warehouse that I visited on that trip I thought was the DC warehouse, and we had a, we had a gentleman who was the general manager at the time who was a military veteran, and he just had a way of thinking about running the warehouse in the same way that you would think about a military team. Everybody had a role and the expectations were clear, and people are held accountable for results, and that made all the difference. E- everybody... How many scooters you fixed in a day was clear. We'd w- wr- write it on the, on the piece, on the board so it's visible to everybody. There is celebration when you did well, and there's accountability when you did not. That visibility is super important, and so when I, when I went back to HQ my biggest question was, "Can we... If the, if the insight is that the quality of the general manager, the visibility and accountability was the difference between a good and a bad warehouse, how do we build that into our software?" It's not rocket science. It... Like, we can, we can replicate a lot of the things that a good manager is doing in the software, so we started doing things like tracking every... Everything that a mechanic would do we would track in the, in the app. So if Harry took out a scooter, we would be like, "How long did it take Harry to fix that scooter? How many spare parts did he use?" And then, "What was his productivity for the day? But then also, of the three scooters that he fixed, when was the next time it broke? How many days did it take before it broke, as a, as a substitute for quality?" And then, and then through that, we created a point system to rank the best mechanic to the worst mechanic. When you created visibility in the work people did and then you created this point system, now you can hold folks accountable. So Harry's the best mechanic. If you're doing a good job, you want to be recognized and celebrated, like all of us do, and so when you create visibility in the, the, the software that we're using, it made people wanna work harder because they wanna be recognized for their good work. It also created accountability for the folks who were underperforming, either not fixing any scooters or fixing it poorly. And so by replicating the- what I saw and observed in the field into the software, we were then able to take the learnings from one market and bring it across the world.

4. 11:35 – 14:39

   Turnaround Time and Its Impact on Profitability

   1. WTWayne Ting11:35

   2. HSHarry Stebbings11:35

      What's your turnaround time? Because I guess the velocity with which you can turn around a scooter is very important to your actual ability to drop cash to the bottom line. If it takes a week to fix versus a day, you've got six extra days of usage.

   3. WTWayne Ting11:50

      For sure. So we, we care a lot about downtime. Downtime is when a scooter is not out in the field generating revenue. It could be down because the battery's dead. It could be down because it's in the warehouse and broken. But downtime is costly to the business because you have a upfront capital expenditure, and you wanna be generating as much profits as poss- as quickly as possible to pay back for that hardware, so you can now generate incremental profits on top.... and so downtime is very, very costly, for sure.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings12:17

      Wayne, how on earth do you turn it from a 3% daily decay rate, unbelievable, to an annual decay rate? Like, what are the changes that you drove to improve in such a magnitude?

   5. WTWayne Ting12:32

      Well, I think one major thing was an investment in proprietary hardware. I think every other operator in our industry buys off-the-shelf hardware. But every scooter and bike you see on Lime's platform we, we design, we engineer, we produce, and we operate ourselves. That is more expensive, but we do it because we believe fundamentally you can't drive right customer preference if you cannot differentiate. So, we want to build something that's differentiated so that customers is willing to walk further and pay more to use Lime.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings13:05

      Why would they wa- I'm, I'm so sorry. Why would they walk farther and pay more to use Lime over another scooter?

   7. WTWayne Ting13:11

      Because the experience is differentiated. So, for example, our scooters are, have air-filled tires, versus, like, a, a solid tire. That means that you can have, air can run out, could be ruptured, but it's a much better w- better ride experience. Um, we also have a lower step-on/step-off height, so it's easier for somebody and safer for people to stop a scooter or bike. We also work... So, if you look at our scooters, it has a swept handlebar. It looks like a bike handlebar, versus kind of a straight across. That means that your elbows can be... Can sit on your side. It's more comfortable, especially if you're going long distances.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings13:47

      You push back on me when I say it's a commoditized industry, in terms...

   9. WTWayne Ting13:52

      I, I think it's absolutely not a commoditized industry if you just look at the results. And the result is that Lime... Five, six years ago, Lime was one of many, many, many operators. Today, Lime is the clear gl- global leader, and we are the market leader in almost every market where we operate. Last year, we did over $600 million in gross bookings. Our four-year top line CAGR is 30%. In each of those four years, we expanded our profit margins, and last year we did over $90 million in company-wide EBITDA, the same year our biggest competitor went to Chapter 11. So, if, if it was commoditized, then we would have the same financial results as everybody else. But we've been growing in a differentiated rate and delivering a differentiated bottom line. The proof is in the results.

5. 14:39 – 16:44

   Unit Economics vs Consumer Experience

   1. HSHarry Stebbings14:39

      Dude, it's insane. Um, but I... Do you think it's because, and you have to choose one here, do you think it's because you've mastered unit economic efficient maintenance growth that you became profitable and you won? Or do you think it's because of the little things that delivered a better consumer experience, if you had to choose which one?

   2. WTWayne Ting15:01

      I think both are super important, but I think the incremental operational improvements that allowed us to generate profits over, over the last five years is probably more important than the incremental rider experience. But I, I do think, uh, profits then allow us to invest more and more capital expenditure to build a bigger fleet, to invest more in our software and our hardware. And re- and this matters because reliability is the most important thing in transportation. You're gonna pick the platform that is more reliable. Here, you mentioned when you walk out of your apartment, your flat, you can always get a Lime. That allows you to give up your car and transition, hopefully, your transportation into micromobility. But if you walk out of your apartment, when you need transportation, you can't get it, that's very, very hard for you to, to, to give up your car and to ride bikes mostly. So, reliability is crucial. This is why when we increase our fleet in a market, we actually see our trips per vehicle per day go up, our utilization goes up. It's counterintuitive. When you grow your supply, in most businesses, the utilization per unit goes down because the demand usually doesn't go up faster than your supply. But our industry, we see the opposite. As we grow our supply, our utilization on a unit basis goes up because more people now can reliably choose Lime as their transportation default.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings16:25

      Is there a cap to that? Is there an asymptote where the more you increase supply, it does not increase demand effectively? Or not actually... Have you not seen that in any market yet?

   4. WTWayne Ting16:34

      Intellectually, I assume there's an asymptote. So far, in markets we see incremental supply drives more demand for the wh- entire network.

6. 16:44 – 17:52

   Expansion Playbook for New Markets

   1. WTWayne Ting16:44

   2. HSHarry Stebbings16:44

      Can I ask, when you expand into a new market, what does that expansion playbook look like? And can you just break that down for me?

   3. WTWayne Ting16:52

      So, I think it starts with talking to local regulators and governments, and I think we started by talking about what I learned in government. And it starts with, we wanna be there to solve a problem for the city. In transportation, the biggest challenges in transportation are affordability, congestion, and c- and carbon emissions. I mean, you convince the city to launch a pilot, and there's a competitive RFP process through that pilot, where you maybe do a one-year pilot or a two-year pilot, and they invite multiple players to come and compete in that competitive RFP. And we actually like the competitive RFP process for two main reasons. One is that it actually naturally reduces the number of competitors you have in a city, because the city is not gonna pick 20 different players. They're gonna pick between one and three. And the second thing that we like about it is Lime is really, really good at winning competitive RFPs. We have a greater than 90% win rate of competitive RFPs on a global basis, and we re- we renew our permits at a greater than 95%

7. 17:52 – 19:54

   Most Respected Competitor in an RFP

   1. WTWayne Ting17:52

      rate.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings17:53

      Can I ask you? Uh-

   3. WTWayne Ting17:54

      Of course.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings17:54

      Who is the competitor that you most respect when you come up in an RFP against?

   5. WTWayne Ting18:00

      The competitor that I spend most of my time thinking about is the car. The car is our biggest competitor. Vast... The majority of car trips are under five miles in cities, and the, the mode of passenger is one. The most common number of people in a car is one person. And so-If we can convince all the people driving f- for three miles, four miles by themselves to give up that car and use a bike and scooter instead, that is the biggest opportunity for growth, and that is our biggest competitor.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings18:33

      How much does it cost to launch London?

   7. WTWayne Ting18:35

      To launch a city probably doesn't cost that much. You need to get a warehouse, so there's some costs up front. You need to buy the scooters and bikes. Um, you need to hire an operations team, and you have to keep paying them. If there's no revenue, still have to pay them, so probably tens of millions of dollars to launch a city. But then scaling the fleet over time, just incremental investments. Maybe you need to get a second warehouse over time. That's when it becomes more expensive.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings18:59

      Can I ask you, what have you noticed in terms of payback periods on new city launches, and how has it changed over time?

   9. WTWayne Ting19:07

      That's a great question, Harry. So when, (clears throat) when I started, the payback was never because we were... (laughs) The, the scooters didn't last long enough to pay back the scooter or the bike.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings19:18

       (inhales deeply)

   11. WTWayne Ting19:18

       By building and investing in our own hardware, focusing in on these game of inches, micro-improvements. We wanna be 1% better at everything we do, and when you do a thousand things 1% better, you now have a very different, um, business than all your competitors. So we, when we deploy... and this is pretty consistent in big cities, small cities all around the world. When we deploy our hardware, we can pay it back within the first year, and it lasts for more than five years from the 30 days I was describing before. So you have four more years of, of, of cashflow generation after you've paid back your hardware.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings19:51

       Five-year lifetime?

   13. WTWayne Ting19:53

       Yeah.

8. 19:54 – 22:50

   Will Consumer Demand Drive Faster Upgrades?

   1. WTWayne Ting19:54

   2. HSHarry Stebbings19:54

      That's insane. To what extent is that actually realistic with advancements in technology? And what I mean by that is, will consumer demand get used to newer types, faster types, more comfortable types, and actually, you'll just need to upgrade them sooner than that because of consumer demand?

   3. WTWayne Ting20:11

      Maybe. I, we, we, we've been historically upgrading our fleet more frequently because I think the, the, the... each upgrade was a big jump in improvement. Certainly, our Gen 4 scooters and bikes, which is what we have in London, was a big improvement over our Gen 3, and it has actually allowed us to have a breakthrough in our, in our P&L. But today, I think the quality of our Gen 4 is good enough where I believe we can operate the Gen 4s for much longer than we've done the Gen 3 and Gen 2.5 in the past. So my, my expectation is we're not gonna have to upgrade our hardware at the same frequency a- as we've done in the past, and because they are pretty high-quality, riders are willing to, to, to stay with it for longer.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings20:51

      How did Gen 3 to Gen 4 produce a breakthrough in the P&L? I'm fascinated by that.

   5. WTWayne Ting20:57

      So when we're talking about... we design our hardware. Part of it is on, on kind of rider preference, but the other part is we, we, we track everything our mechanics do, and we're trying to figure out how do we reduce the time it takes for our mechanics to do everything, so that by doing that, we can then improve productivity and then drive down costs. (clears throat) And there's the... and, and it is a game of inches. A lot of these things are tiny, imperceptible things. We have a down tube in the scooters, and we, like, increase the length of the, of the connector so it takes less time to, to connect the connector with the CCU. That saves, let's say, 30 seconds, 40 seconds. When you do that thousands of times... In our, in our latest bike, for example, um, the, the, the battery pack sits behind the chair, and an, an operator, when they swap the swappable battery, sometimes would have to move the chair up and down, like, an inch or two to get the battery out. Again, that's maybe 20 seconds, 30 seconds, but when you multiply that by millions of times, that becomes real dollars for the... real cost to the P&L. So we made it so that an operator can always s- swap a battery regardless of any... They don't have to make any incremental changes to the seat. And we started to share parts between our Gen 4 scooters and our Gen 4 e-bikes. One major, um, breakthrough was that we moved from fixed batteries to swappable batteries. So before, at the end of each day, we need to pick up every scooter and bike in a city, drive it back to the warehouse, charge it overnight, and the next day drive back thousands of bikes and scooters to the city, deploy it again. But now with swappable batteries, you can come in with a, with a cargo bike, and you can have hundreds of battery packs just in that cargo bike, and you can swap all the b- the bikes and scooters in a region. And because they share the same battery packs, it now increases the density of the work, which then improves productivity and then drives down the cost per swap.

9. 22:50 – 26:45

   Economics of Battery Swapping and Vertical Integration

   1. HSHarry Stebbings22:50

      Wow. So I can now, as a battery replacer, go around, replace the batteries where they are on a bike, and roll and do 200, 300, 400 in a go?

   2. WTWayne Ting23:00

      (clicks tongue) Absolutely. Yes.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings23:02

      Wow. How did that change your economics? 'Cause that was the... also, respectfully, I would see people pick up bikes at the end of the day, and I'd be like, "Oh, this business." It's, it's just hard. It's really hard.

   4. WTWayne Ting23:13

      It's really hard. Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings23:13

      How, how much did that change the economics of the business during swappable batteries?

   6. WTWayne Ting23:18

      I think our swapping cusp- w- c- swapping costs were cut by half. It remains our biggest cost. And so what we're constantly thinking about, how do we continue to improve swapping costs? But (clears throat) imagine, imagine here you're working for Lime and we're, we're asking you to pick up the scooters, drive it home, charge it, drive it back the next day. You're gonna want us to pay you for all that time and effort versus swapping a battery that takes 15 seconds, 20 seconds.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings23:43

      Do you pay them on batteries swapped or on time?

   8. WTWayne Ting23:46

      So we work with logistic partners in the cities we're in, and they have employees as part of their, um, small mom and pop business, and we pay the logistics partners on a s- per swap basis.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings23:58

      Fascinating. Why don't you do it yourself? I'm just intrigued on the vertical integration. You know, bluntly, you make the fricking scooters yourself. They're designed, manufactured, owned by you. Why not own actually the battery replacement supply chain as well?

   10. WTWayne Ting24:11

       We do in the sense that all of the s- battery swapping operations is controlled by our software, which we build in-house.... some of our competitors franchise the whole thing and really leave it up to the mom and pops, kind of logistics partners to do what they need. But we have great software that dictates how an operator moves around a city, where they go next. All of our tasks within the software is automatically created. So I'll give you an example which is, we also do a lot of move tasks in a city. So we have a machine learning demand algorithm that predicts h- where we think trips are gonna come from in all of the cities we're in by the block, by the half block. So in the next six hours, we can say, "We think this block will do this many trips," or, "The next 12 hours will have this much demand." And if there is a position of our scooter or bike where we believe by moving it to a higher revenue potential position, if that incremental revenue is more than the cost that we will have paid to move that scooter or bike, it creates an automatic move task in our system. And then so how an operator, how they move around a city, what they do next is controlled by the software. So we i- we, so we do feel like, in many ways, it is our operations.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings25:30

       So if I go and leave it by a remote river in London, and it's like obviously not in a optimized revenue location, it will set a move task for it to be moved back towards a more central business district?

   12. WTWayne Ting25:43

       Absolutely. As long as the incremental revenue between the two locations is greater than the cost it will, it will cost us to hire you to go move it for us.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings25:54

       Wow. That is-

   14. WTWayne Ting25:54

       So every move task has to be ROI positive.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings25:57

       Dude, what's the most hard part of the business and what's the part of the business that everyone thinks is hard but actually is quite simple?

   16. WTWayne Ting26:04

       I think the hardest part is that there's not one thing. Whenever I do these interviews people say, "What's the one thing that you did right?" I'm like, "It's, uh, it's doing 1,000 little things right." It's a, it is a true game of inches, and when you do 1,000 little things better than your competitor, then you have a different business model. And the great thing is when, when it's 1,000 little things, it's also hard to replicate. What I love about the business model is that it's, like Lime has been advertising we're profitable, free cashflow positive in a very public way when most of our competitors have not been able to deliver similar results even though there's clearly a way to do it. And I think the reason why they haven't been able to replicate is because it's very hard

10. 26:45 – 30:30

    Bolt VS Uber and Lime

    1. WTWayne Ting26:45

       to do what we do.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings26:46

       Do you have to be number one in a city for the business to be an o- overriding success?

    3. WTWayne Ting26:50

       It's a winner take most market dynamic, so being number one has a lot of advantages. Going back to the point about reliability, so in Rideshare as a customer you want to be on the platform with the most number of drivers, and the drivers wanna be on the platform with the most number of riders. So when you are the number one platform on reliability, you suddenly gain a bunch of market share because that reliability is a positive flywheel. More drivers wanna be on the number one platform, more riders wanna be on the number one platform. That then further improves the reliability of the system which then draws more customer in. Similar dynamics exist in micromobility because scale gives you more data. We talked about kind of demand forecast, and we have more data to then build better supply positioning, better demand forecasting tools. The more cities we win, the more Lime is the obvious choice for other cities to pick when they're thinking about which operators to go with. Every city wants to know you're bringing the best and latest technology. Lime is the only operator, scaled operator today that develops our own hardware in-house. Everybody else buys from the same Chinese manufacturers.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings27:58

       Can I be, uh, dire, a little bit contrary? Are you sure? 'Cause Marcus at Bolt very clearly said-

    5. WTWayne Ting28:04

       Right.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings28:04

       ... they were the only ones.

    7. WTWayne Ting28:06

       So you're right. I actually, uh, first I wanna say enormous respect for Marcus. Marcus actually, Marcus is developing their own hardware. See, he and I caught up recently, and I was surprised that he was developing his own hardware. But to his credit I believe they are doing, I trust, I, I trust he's telling the truth. So, so Bolt, Bolt may be the other player that's developing their own hardware. The, the challenge with buying off the shelf is that, Harry, if my business is to sell you more scooters and parts, I'm not so incentivized to make the decay rate low, make it more efficient, because the better my scooters are, the less money I make. There is a disincentive for off the shelf hardware manufacturers to make their hardware better. And the longevity and decay rate of the hardware is the key unlock to profitability in this business.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings28:51

       Which has been the hardest city to win?

    9. WTWayne Ting28:54

       The places where I think it's been hardest to convince the local operat- local regulators to br- uh, help to bring micromobility in are probably smaller second-tier or third-tier cities. One of the things that surprised me, when I first joined Lime I, my expectation was we were only gonna work in the biggest mega, mega cities in the world where density, congestion, affordability, the problems of transportation are most acute. I think what surprised me is that we actually do really well in smaller cities. We do really well in places like Omaha, Nebraska; Oklahoma City; Tulsa, Oklahoma. We really, do really well in Milton Keynes in the UK, places where the regulators may not, this may not be the first solution they think about. So convincing more second-tier cities to take a chance on micromobility that this is a solution for your city has been I would say a, a longer journey. But I think it also means there's a enormous amount of growth that's still ahead because most smaller second-tier cities still don't have micromobility.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings29:55

        Wayne, which city are you not number one in yet that you would most like to be number one in?

    11. WTWayne Ting30:00

        Lime has won almost every competitive RFP since we launched. This is why when we do lose a competitive RFP, I remember it very, very deeply.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings30:11

        Which one do you remember most deeply?

    13. WTWayne Ting30:13

        The ones that I, that I probably carry the most pain is Lyon in, in France, Calgary in Canada.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings30:20

        Wh- What happened?

    15. WTWayne Ting30:22

        Uh, i- idiosyncratic reasons, but like I would say we love to win. We hate losing.... and that culture

11. 30:30 – 32:39

    Covid Times

    1. WTWayne Ting30:30

       of hate- hating losing probably more than liking winning drives a lot of our success.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings30:36

       I love so many elements of how you think. I love the competition, I love your hatred of losing, I love your... Dave Brailsford is the English cycling coach who talks about im- improving one percent and everything's a game of inches. I absolutely love that. When talking about the one percent, there's one thing that's not one percent, is COVID. I spoke to Jeff Jordan, I spoke to Sarah before. They were like, "Obviously, the business fell off a fricking cliff."

    3. WTWayne Ting31:01

       (laughs)

    4. HSHarry Stebbings31:01

       Can you just take me to COVID? You were just CEO at that point. How was it?

    5. WTWayne Ting31:06

       So we started... Like, every company builds a budget and a plan for the year. In 2020, we had our budget, we had our plan. But nobody builds a plan where your revenues fall 90, 95% in a matter of days, which is what happened in the early weeks of COVID. We knew going into 2020 we needed to go raise more money, but suddenly what we thought was maybe six months of runway was like, (slaps legs) like 20 days of runway because all of our revenues went away and you still had a lot of your costs. You have warehouse costs, we have employees on the, on the, on the payroll. So suddenly you had all this cost and then your revenue went away completely, and we needed to raise emergency funding to get through COVID at a moment where I would say transportation is... So much was unknown in the beginning of 2020, and transportation was not the sexiest place to put your money going into COVID given all the uncertainty. This is also where I really give Dara a lot of credit because we went to Uber and Uber at the time owned and operated their own micro-mobility business called Jump, and, and I pitched them, I pitched Dara this idea of letting them sell, sell Jump to us so we can then, we can bring the two businesses together, take out costs, and then we can be the micro-mobility option on Uber. And to Dara's credit, he... I think going back to, like, really believing in the people that he mentors, I think he, he led the round and through that round I became CEO. So I became CEO after COVID had started when this round came, came together.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings32:38

       Wow.

12. 32:39 – 38:42

    Uber's Investment

    1. HSHarry Stebbings32:39

       How much did Uber invest in that round?

    2. WTWayne Ting32:41

       Um, I think the total round was $140 million.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings32:45

       Wow. God. Okay, fantastic. So w- we finally have 140-

    4. WTWayne Ting32:50

       Not all of it was from Uber. Not all of it was from Uber. In fact, I think-

    5. HSHarry Stebbings32:52

       Yeah, sure.

    6. WTWayne Ting32:52

       ... less than half is from Uber.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings32:54

       Okay, but we get a good cash injection. We're now not 20 days from runway, so that's helpful. How do you integrate into the management team, dude, in COVID, remote? Like, take me to that.

    8. WTWayne Ting33:07

       The hardest part is, like, you're trying to, you're trying to learn how to be a CEO, you're trying to build your own credibility with the team, but we didn't have, like, floors to walk, meetings to sit in on, so it becomes harder to... And also you want to demonstrate progress quickly. But I would say to the credit of the, of the leadership team, I think that the, the leadership team that Brad and Toby built was quite strong at Lime. And so... And a lot of them did leave the company because it wa- wasn't clear where Lime was going, but I, I have a lot of respect for the people who stayed, who gave me a chance, who took a chance on me. And (clears throat) , and I did feel like... We met every single day for an hour... Every day we wake up, we, we kick off a Zoom meeting with the entire executive team and it was just all the problems we're facing in the world, "Let's, let's put it, uh, out on the table." I think in a crisis you want to make sure information is flowing, that people are honest. Like, I can't help you solve something that I don't know exists. So information flow and creating a trust-based relationship with the executive team was super important in those early months. And I remember we met every single day for an hour for months, and we'd just start by saying, "What are all the biggest problems? And let's, let's just go around the horn." And everybody had different problems because even with the new capital, there's still lots of challenges dealing with, "Well, do we risk our business? Do we... What are we gonna do with, um, certain, like..." But... And also we've got to bring our cost down, so when I first joined it was also... Immediately it was clear we needed to go through layoffs and cost cutting, and it's always hard when you're doing that and you're new to a job and you're trying to establish credibility because that is one of those things that sometimes can hurt trust and hurt credibility. One of the lessons you learn is that sometimes in life you just have a choice between bad and worse. And, and I think, I think trying to take over a business in the middle of... A transportation business in the middle of COVID, most of our choices were bad. And so, so in those moments the worst thing you can do is not make a decision because now your bad and worse decision becomes worse and worser. So making a call quickly and, um, and I would say cutting deeper than maybe you would expect was, uh, really important because if we'd gone back for another round of layoffs, that's when I think a management team really loses credibility, so we thought it was important for us to cut deep and cut quickly.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings35:25

       In that period, what was the best decision you made? What was the worst decision?

    10. WTWayne Ting35:29

        I think the best decision... So we, we shut down operations. At the beginning of COVID, we shut down operations in most of our markets, which then also drove down a lot of the revenues. And one of the best decisions was Lime is actually a solution for COVID because people were looking for open air, single passenger ways to move around, but restarting our business on a global, global scale, pretty soon after COVID when we still didn't have all the information, was critical at kind of getting, getting us back into the rhythm of the offense. I think nothing is wor... Waiting around for the world to end on you is not a good place to be. We needed momentum, we had to show that we can generate revenue.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings36:09

        So that was a good thing, coming back as soon as possible. What was the worst decision?

    12. WTWayne Ting36:14

        So w- we did end up doing two rounds of layoffs, and I would say that is never a good thing. Like, when you're doing layoffs, it's always... It always feels so painful, too painful, but I would say it's never painful enough. The most painful thing is coming back three months later with another round of layoffs. And I would say not cutting deep and hard enough was probably one of the, one of the... Probably the worst decision.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings36:36

        Is there anything you'd do differently, having been through layoffs now?

    14. WTWayne Ting36:39

        Never promise people, "This is, this is the only round," because you never know, because you're, the, you're, you're doing it as a way to save the company, to bring the cost in line with the revenue expectations. If the world gets worse, if your revenue expectation gets worse, then you likely need to bring your costs down even further, so unless you are 100% sure you can make that promise, don't promise people what you're not gonna have, "This is the only round of layoffs." And I see that happening with friends and, like, CEOs all the time. They, they promise, and then they have to go break their word. When you break your word, then people start questioning other decisions that you have.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings37:12

        People start questioning other decisions you have, absolutely. They less so do when you're a founder, I feel. And I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts on founder mode. We saw Paul Graham be very, um, effective in expelling his thoughts on founder mode and the benefits of it. How do you feel about founder mode, given the context?

    16. WTWayne Ting37:31

        So I, I, I read Paul's, um, blog. I feel like he was describing just good management hygiene, and, but then he called it founder mode. I feel like digging into details, making sure you're, you're, you trust but you verify, is what all good CEOs must do. I think the reason why I felt it was crucial to start my tenure by traveling the world and seeing warehouse up close is that I can't, I can't tru- if Harry tells me everything's going well in XYZ city, but the results are terrible, going there and seeing and double-clicking and making sure that people, people know that you're somebody who will dig into the details is crucial to driving the results that you want. But at the same time, I think delegation, like, making sure you hire great people and delegating and giving them the runway to run is also, I think, not a, not a higher management-specific trait. I think great founders who make the transition, um, and stay with a company oftentimes em- th- employ the same tactics, and I think Paul was describing good ways to manage a company, but then he as- but then he assigned, "These are what founders do, these are what hired managers do." And I just don't know if that's necessarily true.

13. 38:42 – 42:00

    VC Hype Cycles and Micromobility

    1. WTWayne Ting38:42

    2. HSHarry Stebbings38:42

       And I think a lot of VCs followed it a little bit too much, and when I think about VCs following things too much, I think about kind of hype cycles and frenzies in funding environments, and it was a incredibly heated environment that you were in, being bluntly, the scooter environment and the micromobility environment. How do you oscillate or reflect on VC hype funding environments and think about them today?

    3. WTWayne Ting39:05

       I would say these hype cycles are generally bad for companies because it, it allows them to avoid learning hard lessons. I feel like Lime couldn't really assert our leadership in the industry until VCs kinda moved on, because if you could always raise money even if your results are bad, it masks your bad operations, and it actually also masks a better business because you can always raise more money to then plow back into growth, into discounts, and you can discount your way to a lot of market share. One of the things that I'm very proud of with Lime's financial results is that we've been able to sustain 30% growth, 30% top line growth over four years, top line CAGR, but each of the last four years, we expanded our margins, which means that we weren't just growing by irrationally discounting. But if you have unlimited venture capital and more to come down the road, then you can start acting in ways that are not focused on building a good long-term business, but instead focused on the short term. And I felt, that's much harder to compete with, an irrational competitor with unlimited funding. But when all the VCs moved on and was hard to raise money, that's when focusing on great operations, great hardware, great government relations, that's when those investments actually started paying dividends. So I'm actually, I think being in a hype cycle is actually bad for startups because it makes, it allows you to not actually focus on the things that truly matter.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings40:28

       But would Lime have got to where you got to without the huge amounts of cash? Like, was the incredibly, incredibly large cash reserves necessary to kickstart, continue, sustain, to get to the point where you then need to refocus?

    5. WTWayne Ting40:45

       Yes, I d- I, I think that's fair, that's a fair push, Harry. I do think without the early funding, Lime wouldn't be where it is today. But if the f- if the funding continued to flow without real assessment of whether or not a company's doing a good job or bad job, I think Lime would not be the global leader right now because it would allow our kind of worst-managed competitors to continue to scale and grow and gain market share through simply taking VC money and setting it on fire.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings41:12

       When your competitor raises a ton of money, are you forced to as well?

    7. WTWayne Ting41:16

       You are unless you can generate cash flow from your own operations. Last year was our first year getting to unlever free cash flow positive, so we were able to fund all of our capital expenditure and all of our growth from our internal profits. And that is a big, I would say, um, turning point for Lime, for micromobility generally, because now we're able to continue to grow our business without this forever treadmill of raising more money from VCs because we can, we've been able to fund our capital ex- expenditure investments from profits from the c- from the business. Before, when somebody raises more money, we're like, "Wow, we gotta go raise more money." But now, I'm like, "We can actually just, we can generate our own cash flow t- for that investment."

    8. HSHarry Stebbings41:57

       How does that change your mindset as a CEO?

14. 42:00 – 52:42

    Becoming CEO

    1. HSHarry Stebbings42:00

       You now are no longer at the whim of someone else. You don't have a begging bowl.

    2. WTWayne Ting42:03

       It is the biggest change in mindset. I would say my first four years as CEO, I was constantly worried about Lime going out of business, even as we kinda got out of the, uh, the pandemic. And I remember I would wake up in the middle of the night just worried about the company 'cause I felt so respon- all of the people who stayed at Lime, who believed in me, gave me a chance, I felt enormously responsible to them, enormous gr- t- like, debt of gratitude to the employees especially, but certainly to the investors who believed, who invested in Lime, to Dara, to Uber.... and this feeling like, oh, we could fail at any time just weighed on me, weighed on me all the time. And I never slept well. I was always waking up in the middle of the night, worried about A or B. I would go- I would go- I would fall asleep dreaming about Lime, and everything that could go wrong with Lime. Remember, when we got to self-sustaining, free cash flow positive, it was the first time in many years where I stopped dreaming about Lime. I dream about Lime now, but in a good way. It's not- not in- not in worrying about we're be- going to be out of business.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings43:04

       Can I ask, uh, a bit of a interesting one, which is like when it comes to M&A, you actually haven't done much M&A. When you reflect on that, was that the right decision? And if I were to push you, is there any M&A that you wish you had done?

    4. WTWayne Ting43:18

       First, you're absolutely right. We haven't done much M&A. The only M&- we've done two, um, two M&A deals. One is to buy Jump from Uber, and I think that was a incredible deal. It- it- it came with a lot of costs, because it was a down round for our prior investors. But what it allowed us to do was to really deeply integrate with Uber, and become the micro-mobility opp- uh, provider on the Uber platform, and that was critical. And- and those allowed us to get the capital we needed to survive the pandemic. Lime wouldn't have survived if we did not do that deal. But I think most M&A deals are value destructive, and that's probably the thought that always- that's always in the back of my head as I think about new M&A deals, because we-

    5. HSHarry Stebbings44:02

       Wh- why so?

    6. WTWayne Ting44:03

       Because we have our own hardware, because we have our own operations, because we have great operators on the ground. Well, if we buy a competitor, we may not want their hardware. That's a lot of lost cap- CapEx. We may not want to use their operators. We may want to take our own operational model and put it over their business. So by doing that, we're actually essentially saying we don't- we're not really buying much when we look at M&A. So instead, the alternative is like, can we invest an equivalent amount of money that w- it would take to buy that company and invest in our own business? Will we get a better ROI, a better return on that capital invested than buying a company? 'Cause usually you have to pay up to- to get, um, get control.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings44:43

       You mentioned down round there. That is a poisonous word to most founders' ears. Do you think that we overestimate the negatives of down rounds?

    8. WTWayne Ting44:52

       I do. I think any CEO, any founder c- cannot use down round willy-nilly because investors have believed in you, invested in you, and down rounds are very, very destructive for your- your investor base. And- and- and when you lose that trust, it's hard to get it back. But I would also say, like when I see companies sometimes unwilling to raise a round because it's gonna be lower than this like fictitious number they have in their own head, I see this with like IPOs now, where like companies are like, "Oh, well, I can't go public unless I hit the valuation I had in 2020," and that valuation is fake. And then so you're making irrational business decisions because you're trying to hold onto a dream, a pipe dream that never should have happened in the first place. I think it's important to not be- not be so keyed in on a val- on a valuation unless you believe that valuation is justified in today's world, and whether or not you should raise and at what valuation is... I- if there's a marketplace out there, if every VC is telling you, "I'm willing to give you money at this lower valuation," that j- may just be the reality you face. And I think as CEOs, as managers, facing reality is super important. Living in fantasy always results in worse business outcomes.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings46:06

       Wayne, what was your latest valuation?

    10. WTWayne Ting46:08

        I don't know if we ever shared that, but I would say we- we... It was a convertible round, so I- I- I don't know if there's any specific valuation to the round, yeah.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings46:16

        Okay, perfect. Um, how do you feel about going public, Wayne? The business is profitable. As you said, 90 in EBIT, fantastic, amazing turnaround. How do you feel about going public?

    12. WTWayne Ting46:28

        I think Lime is a great future candidate as a public- publicly traded company. We are the market leader in a very fast-growing industry with a big TAM, and we have demonstrated over many years a differentiated financial results, both in top line growth and in bottom line. So I feel like Lime is a great candidate to be public one day. I would say whethe- when and whether we do it, a lot of it does depend on the macro environment. I think it was great to see ServiceTitan go out last week.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings46:59

        Why- why- why is that? You think that the macro environment won't bluntly give you a multiple or a valuation that's attractive enough. Is that it, basically?

    14. WTWayne Ting47:06

        I feel like these markets go through kind of these like- these trends. There's moments where there's a lot of IPOs that go out, and there's a lot of interest to invest in IPOs, and then- and then the mood shifts, and then people are less willing to invest in IPOs. And certainly it's a... It would impact how much money you can raise, the valuation you can get, so I... I- it... You can't ever time the market, but I think being generally in an up cycle, in an IPO pro-cycle is probably helpful for an IPO.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings47:33

        Do you think you are ready today? Like if the market was there, would you be ready to go out?

    16. WTWayne Ting47:38

        I think there's probably still more work we need to do internally around things like, uh, accounting and controls that probably will take a bit more time to be ready.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings47:47

        Is there anything with the business metrics that you think would need to be changed to get ready to go public?

    18. WTWayne Ting47:51

        I think Lime's business metrics is in a great spot. I think most of the things we gotta get ready are around kind of internal controls, how fast we can close a book, how- how quickly can we like file a 10-K, 10-Q, the types of things that are part of like... that are- that are necessary and critical to be a publicly traded company. But as a private company, you're not thinking about filing your 10-Q in seven days after the quarter.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings48:14

        Can I ask a final one?

    20. WTWayne Ting48:16

        Of course.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings48:16

        And I- I hope it's okay to be personal. Um, uh, Blake said that I should ask about it, so I hope it is, but we can edit out if not. Um, uh, y- he said that, you know, you suffer from a stroke. Um, how did that impact you, how you lead, how you think as a leader? I'm just really interested by that.

    22. WTWayne Ting48:33

        Hey, Harry, first, thank you for asking that. I actually... I've been pretty public about having had a stroke earlier this year, in part because when I was in the hospital recovering, I was like Googling around trying to find CEOs who've gone through something similar, and what was surprising to me was I found-... not a ton of examples of CEOs talking about health struggles. I think part of it is that when you do kind of a podcast or you do media, you wanna put your best foot forward, whatever that means, and that doesn't mean talking about where people are struggling. And so I remember when- when I couldn't find a ton of examples, I remember thinking to myself, "I need to go out there and talk about my health struggles more publicly, so it's less of a taboo." I do think this has been the hardest year of my life on a personal basis, and I think the hardest thing is that (clears throat) when you suffer a stroke, like, I still can't move my left arm and my left hand. There's a lot of, like, physical, neurological elements that you're struggling to get through. And I still remember the person I was and the person that I still see myself as, but the person I am today sometimes doesn't- isn't matching kind of my own self-perception. So I feel like a lot of my days are filled with disappointment, disappointment in myself, disappointment in how I- how I perform. I've really enjoyed this conversation with you, Harry, but I'm sure the second we get off this podcast, I will be very disappointed in myself in so many different ways, places where I didn't answer the question correctly. Because it- it's a- it's hard to go through a moment where you used to be this person and now you're a different person. You're still doing your very best, but those two things don't match up. I would say one person I wanna give a shout out to is Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Oscar Health. He wrote a great book about his health struggles, and he suffered, I- I believe, a ski accident. This is- his book is fantastic. I think it's called Visionary Leadership. And to his credit, somebody introduced us and he spent two hours over Zoom just listening to me complaining about all the challenges I face, and he just was so thoughtful in the response that he gave. And the biggest thing he said to me was, "You gotta- you gotta- 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. How do you make the best out of this new reality that you live in? That's the only question you should be asking yourself." And hearing that from- from somebody like Mark, who's been a phenomenal CEO and his turnaround of Oscar has been one of the most incredible things I've seen over the last couple years. But also he- the- the kindness that he- he took, two hour- two hours out of his busy day just to listen to me and- and almost, like, play the role of a psychologist, and the feedback and the advice he gave me was so wonderful. And I think about that and it's- it is- the- the positives of- of this- this year of struggling with the stroke is that I got to meet a lot of people. Almost every CEO that I meet have had their own health struggles and have had their own challenges, and how do we normalize all of us talking about it more so that when you are in a hospital half paralyzed and trying to imagine how do you make a comeback, there- you don't feel like you are alone on that journey? And that was the thing that was probably the scariest. I was like, "Am I the only CEO who's gonna have to figure out how to overcome a stroke and get back to work and hopefully lead Lime to higher- greater heights?" But the more we talk about it, the more we support each other. Hopefully the less taboo it becomes as a topic.

    23. HSHarry Stebbings51:56

        I mean, it- it's something that makes me quite emotional, to be honest, quite, Wayne. My mother's got multiple sclerosis and, um, so she- she's probably not what she used to be in terms of physical, and I remember once she said to me, "I'm- I'm very scared that I won't be able to, like, hold your children and you won't trust me to look after them." And I'll always remember her saying that to me, 'cause that was probably the most heartbreaking thing for me. Um, and by the way, now she walks two marathons a weekend with me and is a per- per- Pilates instructor (laughs) and fitter than me and everyone. But she had to go through finding a new reality and she doesn't go to the gym. She walks marathons instead. So, but yeah, thank you for sharing that, dude.

    24. WTWayne Ting52:39

        Yeah, of course. Thanks, Harry.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings52:41

        Uh, I would

15. 52:42 – 1:04:12

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. HSHarry Stebbings52:42

       love to do a quick fire with you, so I'm gonna say a short statement. You're gonna give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

    2. WTWayne Ting52:47

       Let's do it.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings52:48

       Okay, so what do you believe that most around you disbelieve, Wayne?

    4. WTWayne Ting52:52

       I believe micro-mobility is the future of urban transportation, that in 20, 30 years we're gonna be shocked that we had a system where each person owned a car and drove themselves in a 4,000, 5,000 pound tank around a city, generating the biggest carbon pollution of the last 100 years and killing over 1.3 million people a year. This is the fact that always shocks me that we don't talk enough about. Cars on a global basis kill more than 1.3 million people every single year. We don't even talk about it. We accept that as the cost of doing business. Imagine if, like, when 737 Max killed a couple hundred people, we grounded the plane and said, "We're not gonna allow this to fly until we figure out what's- what's wrong." The number of people that are killed on a car is multitude- magnitude greater and we just accept it as a- as the way we do business and the cost of living in urban society today. And I think we're gonna look back 30, 40 years from now and be like, "That was insane." The amount of waste, money and pollution that we were willing to accept for a little bit of convenience is absolute insanity.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings54:02

       I'm gonna throw a grenade in here, Wayne.

    6. WTWayne Ting54:04

       Please.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings54:04

       Should we- should we allow Chinese cars to be sold in our cities? These are heavily subsidized to destroy our local economies and allow for a new Chinese monopoly to be created. Should they be allowed to be sold in our cities?

    8. WTWayne Ting54:20

       I- I think the- the use of tariffs in kind of, like, some of these Chinese electric vehicles both in the United States and in Europe I feel like is- is justifiable because you wanna make sure people have a level playing field in terms of... I think one of the lies of the last couple of decades is that free- free trade benefits everybody. It doesn't benefit the person working down the- the factory plant for the last 20 years who's gonna lose his job and have no ability to find a new job. And domestic production of cars is crucial in not only for economic-... um, consumption, job creation, but also to ensure that in the long run, there is a domestic capacity to produce cars. So, I think creating some tariffs so we can level the playing field between domestic producers and foreign producers feels fair.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings55:07

       What city has the highest, like, vandalism/vehicle destruction rate?

    10. WTWayne Ting55:13

        Um, in the history of Lime, it was pr- it would probably be San Diego.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings55:19

        Huh, fascinating. Uh, I remember, I remember... sorry.

    12. WTWayne Ting55:22

        We were seeing actually, like, gangs of people coming into San Diego and then stealing the, the, the bikes and scooters and driving it to Mexico. So, it was hard for us to, to, like, police and react to it.

    13. HSHarry Stebbings55:34

        That's amazing. I didn't, I didn't know about that. What's the most profitable city?

    14. WTWayne Ting55:37

        Probably London.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings55:38

        I'm not surprised. Living in London, trust me, dude, I'm not surprised. Uh, what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

    16. WTWayne Ting55:45

        This may not be th- the type of answer you're looking for, but I'll say, if you ask me for the... I- I'm a strong believer in Silicon Valley and the tech community. If you ask me for the last, like, decade, I would have been, like... I would have said this belief in diversity, equity, inclusion is a genuinely felt moral principle. But if you ask me now, I'm not sure. I feel like what's shocked me is how many companies, how many VCs have abandoned the, the values of diversity, equity, inclusion over the last year to now openly mocking it in ways that I- I could have never, never expected before.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings56:22

        And you think we should return to the diversity, equity, inclusion prioritization?

    18. WTWayne Ting56:28

        I, I think... I'll say this for Lime, because so many companies have backed away from the goals of diversity and, and inclusion, I feel this is a year where we really leaned forward because it is not... We didn't do it because it was a fad. We did it because it was the right thing to do. We absolutely believe a company benefits when it has diversity of thought. The most dangerous place to be is groupthink. When everyone thinks the same, that's very dangerous for a company. And our true, genuine commitment to recruiting people of all backgrounds makes Lime a better company. And this year was a year where I feel like a lot of companies, especially around LGBTQ rights, you felt like... I saw a lot of companies pull back on what they did for Pride. This is the year Lime doubled down on making sure that our customers and our employees know that these are things that we believe in regardless of whether or not it's en vogue, whether or not it's cool or not. And I do hear and understand some of the criticism of woke culture, but I think diversity and inclusion, the commitment for diversity and inclusion at a company feels very, very different than maybe some of the criticisms that you hear about woke culture.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings57:36

        Do you think lesbian women and gay men are still prejudiced against or discriminated against in professional settings, in leadership?

    20. WTWayne Ting57:43

        I absolutely still believe there's a lot of biases that exist in all workplaces, and, uh, and, and maybe even in our own hearts that we are not... Unconscious bias is for sure real, and there's more we can do to make, to make sure that people feel heard and included in the workplace. One of the things I'm most proud of at Lime, we do a, we do a biannual company survey on employee sentiment. And the s- the, the, the question we score the highest is, "Do I feel like I belong? C- Can I bring my full self to work?" And, like, 90-plus percent of Lime-ers say they believe they can. And I, I'm gay and I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was in... I was an immigrant from... My f- my parents are from Taiwan, moved to Nebraska when I was young. And the feeling of trying to fit in was always this thought that's kind of in your head. I think the difference between inclusion, the opposite of inclusion is fitting in, and if spending any second of your life thinking about, "How do I fit in so I can be accepted in this environment?" is wasted time, and it's not being spent focused on how we build a better business. So this, "Can I bring my full self and be accepted at work?" is so important to us. And I'm very, very proud that pe- most people at Lime feel like they can. They can be their full self. But the fact that a lot of people don't feel like they can bring their, their full self to work is maybe the answer to your question here, that I still think there's a lot of work to be done.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings59:08

        I'm sorry to be so personal, but we have, you know, millions of listeners now, and m- many gay listeners as well. Um, was coming out a hard process for you? You mentioned kind of telling your parents, e- and middle o- that you k- grew up in Nebraska, I mean. Was that a hard process?

    22. WTWayne Ting59:25

        Uh, yes, it was definitely very hard. I came out very young though. I came out to my parents when I was, I think, like, 11 years old. I think the hardest thing was... Uh, I think my mom was like, "I don't... Look, do you even know what you're talking about? What does it mean to be gay when you're 11?" And I think that's a fair question. But I just remember thinking, like, whatever people are describing, that doesn't feel like it reflects who I am. And I want... and I, and I felt like I wanted to be honest and transparent with my parents about it.

    23. HSHarry Stebbings59:53

        A- And they were good?

    24. WTWayne Ting59:55

        They were very, they were, they were very supportive, and, uh, to their credit.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings59:58

        Tell me, uh, if you can be CEO of any other company for a day, which company would you most like to be CEO of for a day?

    26. WTWayne Ting1:00:05

        I would love to be the CEO of Lime. When I was in the hospital, the thing that I thought most about was, "How can I get back to work?" So, I think about... (clears throat) A lot of people say, like, "What did you change after suffering a stroke?" And I think a lot of people maybe think the answer would be, "Oh, I wanna have this big change in my life." The thing that always really struck me was when I, I debated deeply, do I wanna quit my job, go do something totally different? Especially if life is short, is this what, what I want to spend the rest of my life doing? And the incredible thing was when I really asked myself that question, I was like, "Yes, I want to... Even if I'm gonna die in the next five years, I want to be spending the next five years working on Lime's mission to decarbonize transportation." I left the hospital, I was in a rehab, in, in-patient rehab. The next day after I left the hospital, I went back to work full-time.

    27. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:53

        If today was your last day-What would you do?

    28. WTWayne Ting1:00:56

        I would probably try to see my, my friends, my family, my significant other. The people of my life really is the, the thing that, that makes this life worthwhile. I threw myself a big 40th birthday party a month before my stroke and 100 friends from around the world flew into Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I was living at the time, to celebrate. And I remember thinking like how meaningful that, that, that birthday was. And then when I was... When it wasn't clear, I was thinking like maybe, like... You know, when you're going through a stroke, you actually don't quite know how serious it is because you only, you can only... The only thing you can tell is watching the faces of the nurses and the doctors to try to assess-

    29. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:38

        (laughs)

    30. WTWayne Ting1:01:38

        ... how worried do they look?

Episode duration: 1:04:03