It’s nearly been two months since we started this accidental weekly column about layoffs happening within startups. Workforce reductions have impacted startup employees in every massive sector, from crypto to SaaS to edtech and mobility. And what felt at first like a trend that only impacted growth…
Superpedestrian, Voi among the latest micromobility layoffs
As layoffs tear through the startup world, the micromobility industry, which has long struggled to be profitable, is getting hit. Just a couple of weeks after Bird laid off 23% of its staff, the next round of industry layoffs is affecting Voi and Superpedestrian, according to LinkedIn posts from fo…
Validio, a data quality platform based out of Sweden, emerges from stealth with $15M
Data quality has been shaping up as a salient and increasingly critical part of the world of data science: enterprises are sitting on growing troves of information, but it’s only useful if we can trust it to be accurate and usable. To that end, Validio, a startup building tools to improve and…
Voi taps Drover to prevent sidewalk scooter riding in Oslo
Shared micromobility company Voi is deploying e-scooters in Oslo, Norway with Drover AI’s computer vision tech that can identify whether a scooter is on the pavement, road or cycle lane in order to help prevent sidewalk riding. As the micromobility industry consolidates around a few key playe…
Depict.ai raises $17M to give e-commerce sites Amazon-level product recommendation muscle
Amazon rules the roost when it comes to e-commerce, not just because of its size but because of how it uses that to amass large amounts information that it in turn uses to continue feeding the machine with sophisticated product recommendations, relevant advertising, and more to keep people finding …
Micromobility in 2022: Refined, mature and packed full of tech
2021 was the year micromobility as a concept, a solution and a way of life really started to settle in. Increased shared micromobility and COVID-ridden public transit helped make small electric vehicles mainstream enough for people to wrap their heads around purchasing their own. Consequently, 2021…
Voi scooters raises $115M Series D round as it preps to enter new cities — and for an IPO
The European e-scooter market is currently the main battleground for companies playing in the micromobility space, taking advantage as they are of Europe’s relatively compact cities and the desire of populations to move to more sustainable transportation. In 2021, players like Tier, Voi and Dott co…
E-scooter company Neuron trials 1,500 scooters that can detect and correct unsafe riding
Singapore-based Neuron Mobility, an e-scooter-sharing company, is updating its N3 scooters with a new operating system and additional on-board sensors that will help it detect and correct dangerous or inconsiderate riding behavior. The company will be trialing about 1,500 upgraded scooters in Austr…
Bolt Mobility launches in-app navigation for shared e-scooters
Bolt Mobility, a micromobility company co-founded by Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt, has launched an in-app navigation system for its e-scooters dubbed “MobilityOS.” To make this feature easy to use, Bolt’s next generation of scooters, the “Bolt Two,” allows a rider&#8217…
Having a great "ask" slide can reassure investors: It shows a founder wants to raise an amount of money that unlocks the next stage of growth and knows what milestones they need to hit to get there.