91: The second mover advantage manifest: talking to Paul Steely White of LINK/SuperPedestrian

Today Oliver interviews Paul Steely White, head of Policy at Link by Superpedestrian. We had Assaf Bidermaan, the CEO of Superpedestrian on last year to talk about their new scooter, but that was before they launched Link and recently won one of the Seattle scooter permits. The second mover advantage in this space continues to become clearer and it was great to dig into this. Paul has been around the micromobility/bike advocacy traps a long time first at Transportation Alternatives, then Bird and now Link, and like many others we’ve had on, is a bit of an OG of the space. We hope you enjoyed this as much as we did.- His background at Transportation Alternatives, Bird and now Superpedestrian- How and why Superpedestrian decided to start LINK, and the importance of the feedback cycle in product development- What LINK does differently in it’s vehicle including the importance of being able to do granular onboard vehicle maps and how their vehicle intelligence and operations allow them to be profitable with only one ride per day.- What he thinks Bird and Lime did wrong.- The New York City RFP for scooters and what they’re seeing in the space- What he is seeing with LINK and cities now in terms of what they want for their operators- The question of infrastructure, and his experience working with Transportation Alternatives and experts like Donald Shoup to change street space allocation.- How it helps to be a second mover in the space- The emergence of debt in new rounds of scooter funding and how the question of insurance is changing as the industry matures. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit micromobility.substack.com/subscribe